Cause and effect.

Things don't "just happen". Life, the universe, may seem like one damn thing after another without rhyme or reason, but actually there is cause and effect. Causation. Causality.

Stuff happens because other stuff happened to cause it.

This is important because it means that there are consequences to our actions.

I look at a monster of a person, and I wonder what happened to make that monster. George Lucas tried this, right? He failed, but he tried. And it's important that he tried, because I believe in our hubris and our self-satisfaction we look at terrible people, or terrible countries, and we say "Well, they're evil, you know." or "That would never happen here because...."

Or we say "They were insane." What is sanity? Do we really, really know?

It is not just foolish, but dangerously foolish to think ourselves immune.

Given the right (or wrong) circumstances it can happen anywhere to anyone. Rip apart support structures, abuse, torture and deprive someone, and you can create a monster.

And there are many monster-types, and degrees of monster. They are not all created alike. There is it seems no shortage of narcissistic, materialistic, pleasure-obsessed monsters. I encounter them every day. On the road. At the office. At the store.

What is their story? Who abandoned them? Who abused them? Who told them "you're not hurting"? Who denied them agency?

Millions of little monsters out there, and sometimes one of them grows up into a very big monster that threatens to kill us all if given the chance.

My current novel in progress is about some monsters who are trying to grow up.