In "Stranger in a Strange Land," the main character (a human raised in a Martian colony and returned to Earth) describes phenomena with a detachment uncommon to Earthlings and in contrast to our emotional reactivity. Example: "Waiting is." Rather than be impatient, he simply accepts delay as the current condition.
I would say, here, evil is. Or maybe, depravity is. Addiction is. Escalation is. Corruption is. Conspiracy to conceal is. Control through blackmail is. Malice is. Psychopathy is. Sadism is. Predation is. Bottomless horror is.
We long for some higher sense of meaning to give us context for madness and darkness. Is there any in these things? Perhaps none inherent. Our responses, however, create meaning and even a sense of purpose. Ideally we through our works produce progress in reducing the above while magnifying the goodness and wonder which are so often drowned out in the howling, tilted narrative that aims to keep us divided and exhausted.
Discovery is. Compassion for the victims is. Outrage is. A thirst for retribution is (some might say this only feeds the dark). Under some conditions, maybe empathy for our devils is. Maybe that's even the aim of the game. It's not for me to say, and maybe not for us to know.
But for now, as we stumble upon the often invisible tragedies of this world, sadness is. A measure of complicity is. A measure of complacency is. Guilt is. Urgency is. Desperation is, in some cases. Yet we must remember that increasingly, awareness is. Contact with our cultural shadows is. In good time, redemption is, though we don't know the shape it will take. Balancing is.
A parasitic fear-feeding paradigm with a helplessness-projecting agenda is. Darkness is. And yet ever more, light is. In the meantime, opportunity for kindness is. Inner work is.