Like most of us, I guess, I grew up in a world in which we can readily see evil, and identify pure evil as a cause of events.

Specifically, I grew up to see Hitler and Stalin and Mao as evil, and the terrible destruction of life that arose from them as something caused by their evil. I still think they're evil. But the second part of that sentence may be simplistic.

It may be that Hitler and Stalin and Mao were the norms for our new world - not exceptions, but terrible examples of a new normalcy.