How to Stare Into the Abyss Without Losing Your Soul
How to look at evil without letting it poison your spirit, and how to turn outrage into responsibility, discipline, and light.
There’s a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche that hits harder the older you get, not because it sounds good, but because it becomes more accurate.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
That isn’t an edgy line for a wallpaper or a gym hoodie; it’s a warning label for modern life because right now, in our “age of tech,” it’s easier than ever to “gaze into the abyss.”
You don’t have to walk through a war zone or interview a criminal to see evil; you can find it on your phone in five seconds. You can consume unfathomable atrocities while you’re eating breakfast, and when you do that long enough, your mind becomes both desensitized and hyper-aware of the darkness that exists within our reality.
This is why most people end up tense, exhausted, sleep-deprived, and emotionally flat as they age, without recognizing why that deterioration from the inside out is happening to them.
The problem is that people confuse exposure with wisdom.
I’ve found that people think being aware of evil automatically makes them wise, strong, or “prepared,” and it doesn’t.
Awareness is just information acknowledgement.
Wisdom is how you integrate that information into your behaviors and routines; ultimately, it’s what kind of person you become while carrying it.
You’re not weak for being affected by what you see. If you’re human, certain things are supposed to disturb you:
Kids being harmed, innocent people crushed by systems, the rape of men and women, violence packaged as entertainment, exploitation framed as acceptable behavior, the desecration of religious symbols, and unfair brutality released upon innocent souls…
If that doesn’t register emotionally, you’re either unusually stoic in your acceptance of the way the world is, or, as has become the case in a majority of folks, you’ve gone numb, and numbness isn’t strength.
In fact, tuning out from it all, or just turning off your feelings, is often the first symptom of a slow spiritual and psychological infection.
This is where the abyss becomes dangerous.
The negativity and “abyss” don’t just want your attention; they want your identity.
It wants you to start speaking in absolutes and saying things like people are trash, everything is rigged, nothing matters, hope is naive, and trying is pointless.
That mindset doesn’t make you informed; it makes you powerless, turning you into a spectator who believes the only rational posture is cynicism and retreat.
Nietzsche wasn’t saying “don’t look into the abyss”; he was saying “Don’t move into it.”
There’s a difference between studying darkness and building a home inside it.
Some people learn about evil and come back sharper, cleaner, and more disciplined.
These are the people who saw the monsters in the abyss and tightened their personal boundaries, protected their families, and then developed their discernment to better see who they allowed into their lives.
Other people treat darkness as normal entertainment and content that belongs on their “For You Page”; they doomscroll, binge on outrage, and call it “being informed,” while their minds quietly become permanent war rooms.
I know men who could tell you everything about everything when it comes to underground cells, domestic terrorists, anti-2A laws, and all of the corruption that is occurring in their state…
