Limited imagination?

     I am the oldest player on the court of the racquetball game. I am not fast, not quick, just there.  One of the better players served me the ball once, and like a miracle, I hit a excellent kill shot. As he turned to take up the defensive position, he said, "I didn't see that coming." (He probably won't see another one like that for a very long time, either.)
     "I did not see that coming."  It was the same thing the family of the gun enthusiast said when the woman, who believed in carrying a loaded assault weapon with her to the grocery store, to the bank, with her all the time, loudly defending her so call 'right to bear arms" went home and shot her husband.  "We knew they were having trouble. They had filled for divorce, but we did not think this could happen. We did not think she was that troubled."
     That seems to be a very common reaction to the great tragedies in our society.  We humans seem to be unable to imagine the ultimate worst happening.  Many of us, we acknowledge that we are sinners, that we partly evil and partly good, that there is a kind of selfishness that pervades all of our actions.  But we just are not willing to believe the worst.
      Three mile island disaster happened, I am told, because the workers just could not believe what the instruments were telling them. Pearl Harbor happened because the look outs just could not believe what they were hearing on the radio. Twenty children and six adults were killed in Newtown two years ago because the doctors, the parent, the "system" just did not believe it had gotten that bad. They did not see that coming.
        In a meeting with some other Democrats one of the professionals was telling us about what preparations needed to be made to make sure the election was fair and law abiding.  Several of the members kept shaking their heads at what they were being told.  They repeated over and over that they would have never thought of that kind of dirty trick.  We concluded that we just did not have the kind of imagination that could think that way.
        Perhaps one of the great powers of evil is the power to convince us that evil is not really that bad.  Torture is really just "enhanced interrogation."  Bernie Madoff got by with his scheme because nobody could really believe that he would cheat, steal, and embezzle that much from all those friends, Jewish charities, and widows.  How could anybody be that evil?  How can human beings slaughter rhinos for their horns when they are so rare?  How can anybody be that evil?  Ah, we have a tremendous failure of imagination. We refuse to believe humans are capable of that kind of evil. So we seldom see it coming.