The Epstein files tell me something important about human nature. We all have a monster within. One who delights in the depraved and the taboo.

If it was not so, Epstein's honey-pot would not have worked at all. The people behind it, understood this. Many of the men and women who scream very loudly and are very outraged, know this very well.

Though they would not admit it in a million years.

The Epstein case tells us something hard to swallow. Making something taboo alone is not a safeguard against that which we have made taboo. On the contrary, it might make it more attractive to us because the taboo is exciting. It is dangerous. Seductive.

Moral absolutism has always coexisted with secret transgression. Often they feed each other. Taboo alone does not prevent behaviour. In some cases, it eroticizes or intensifies it. And when the taboo eroticizes children, who created that?

When we make something illegal and taboo, we create something very specific. Something very alluring and seductive. This is what Epstein exploited to trap people in his web.

The people who rule the world, knows human nature very well. If they did not, they would not be in power. Knowledge is power, in this regard.

The fact that a honey-pot such as this, with minors and trafficking could function at scale implies that these particular destructive impulses are more widespread than we like to admit.

The reason Epstein's honey-pot worked, is that the mechanisms it exploited in human nature has been so condemned, so universally reviled, that it is personal and professional suicide should it come out that anyone have acted on their urges.

The taboo and illegal nature of what we have outlawed, becomes the mechanism of entrapment.

Jeffrey Epstein didn’t invent corruption. He exploited conditions that already existed: secrecy, power asymmetry, social reverence for status, and a moral system that treats exposure as worse than wrongdoing.

In that sense, the scandal exposes a structural weakness in civilization itself, not just individual depravity. And it also exposes human nature, in a way we may be unwilling to accept.

It tells me that very normal human beings have within them the capability to take pleasure in the pain and degradation of other human beings, and the corruption of innocence.

People become outraged when I tell them that they could have been nazis, and that they could have enjoyed being one. People hide their darkness. Because no one can see the "real me". Ever.

So we go through life attempting to convince ourselves we are good human beings. People want to believe evil only happens because of “bad people.”. Other people. Not people just like me.

History suggests otherwise. Ordinary people, under certain incentives and pressures, can normalize almost anything. That realization threatens the story we tell ourselves about being fundamentally good.

But I think most of us know we are not "good people". Not deep down. Deep down, every human being knows, there is a monster that lives within. Disney has this image of the devil on one shoulder, and the angel on the other. And we laugh. But it is not a laughing matter.

We all struggle, I believe, not to let it out. To not show it. And the most dangerous of us, is the one who does not know the monster within at all. These are the very virtuous men, who would rule you because they know right from wrong.

"Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness." - Werner Herzog

Anyone can be corrupted, because the corruption is already present within. Acknowledging the monster isn’t the same as excusing it.

It’s the opposite. Denying the darkness is what lets it act unseen. Restraint, ethics, law, and care only make sense once we stop pretending we’re pure by default.

We're not.

Carl Jung spoke of this. It was in his view crucial that we integrate the shadow. Admit to it. Own it. I tend to be in agreement. The taboo serves a signaling function ("I am a good person who abhors this") but actively prevents the problem-solving function ("how do we actually protect children most effectively"). No one can speak of these things, because the outrage is immediate and damning.

If the way we've organized our moral understanding of this creates the conditions for the harm we're trying to prevent.. how do we protect the children? If no one ever speaks about this, nothing changes. The same mechanisms continue. The same vulnerabilities persist. The same blackmail operations work. Children remain unprotected by strategies we can't discuss. We need to speak about our shadow.