struggle against evil

I guess there's no way avoiding what happened in Paris. Well, not only in Paris. Friday the thirteenth lived up to it's reputation, not only in homely Europe but in many far corners of the world.

But I'm not sure which I thought was more sad; the hate and xenophobic war drums booming around on social media or the widespread sorrow. While the grief may hurt, the hate sure does more harm. People seem to have trouble separating Islamic extremism from your everyday Muslims, which leads to horrible stigmatization. 

In Finland, we have had freedom of religion for some time. Our country, like most of the modern world, is built upon libertarian ideals. Each to their own. It's a very dear thing, but something we may easily take for granted. It's extremely distressing to read peoples anonymous opinions on various message boards, and even moreso to see how these destructive ideas gain support instead of scorn and disdain. Some of the things I read and saw upvoted on social medium Jodel were downright depressing.

This recent cruelty has nothing to do with Islam. It has to do with human evil. Devilish people will find reasons to be evil, and there's no stopping it. Human immorality is a game of dominos. Vengeance is a concept that is never very far from thought. To fight evil is hopeless, it will always find us, affect us. The only thing we can do is try to keep ourselves from being evil in return. And that, I've noticed, is something we're terrible at.

This is a portrait of a young Tom Selleck. No particular reason behind it, the reference I found by making an image search for "mustache". It's nice to draw from reference, coldly copying. It lets me just shut my brain off and let routine and technique take over for a couple hours. It's not as interesting or difficult as drawing from mind or imagination, but as I've said before, it serves a certain purpose as an exercise and it is rather therapeutic.