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"Evil" is among usAugust 19, 2004"Evil" walks among us. "Evil" is to be found in all varieties of public discourse, as much in secular-minded Europe as in God-fearing Red States. That "evil" is to be found at Hobson's Choice, should come as no surprise. "Evil" is actually all over the place.Readers will at once see a gimmick here. Why the quotes? Are they scare-quotes? No, they are not. "Evil" is a term that has been retired from secular discourse, for understandable reasons: the use of the word smacks of religiosity. On 8 March 1983, Pres. Ronald Reagan made the following speech to the National Association of Evangelicals: It was C.S. Lewis who, in his unforgettable Screwtape Letters, wrote: "The greatest evil is not done now in those sordid 'dens of rime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is not even done in concentration camps and labor camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered [...] in [...] offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice."The speech urges the clergy listening to regard every adversary the US government decides to confront as Adolf Hitler ("final territorial demand"), and regard calls for a nuclear freeze as "defeatist," appeasing evil. The speech was extremely effective; a lot of the condemnation it received at the hands of critics missed the mark. Reagan's allusion to a sense of good and evil was extremely appealing; his appeals to historical verities a familiar conversational tactic, usually invoked by people whose knowledge of history stops emphatically with what they learned in the fourth grade.1 It obscures the fact that he's talking about his desire to threaten the world with extermination at the hands of missiles, if he doesn't get his way. The use of the term "evil" is very offensive with most secular-minded people; ever since, the term "evil empire" has been used to lash Reagan, almost as if it was the worst thing he ever did—characterize America's Cold War adversary as an "evil empire." This strikes me as a bit odd, since many leftists have been pretty reliable about characterizing the USA as "imperialist" (as an existential attribute of our nation) and, if not "evil," certainly possessing the features thereof. In fact, part of the difficulty of writing about imperialism is precisely this—the term has become associated with a narrowly anti-US jacobinism with which I had absolutely no desire to be associated. So I wonder, what do we mean by "evil," why does it have a strong stigma as a concept, and why do we still use the word despite the embarrassment it causes? In Romance languages like Spanish, "evil" is rendered malo, which also means simply, "bad." "If I say I don't want to donate, does that make me a bad person?" would be an example of this correspondence in English. Yet "evil" and "bad" have very different connotations in English. "This is a bad idea" versus "this is an evil idea." Compare "a bad policy" to "an evil policy." Merriam-Webster defines evil as "morally reprehensible; SINFUL, WICKED; arising from actual or imputed bad character or conduct." When Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as an "evil empire," he was evidently implying that Soviet designs on the West, or on the 3rd World, were morally reprehensible; he was imputing a bad character to the USSR. Doesn't this sound like Dr Helen Caldicott or Ziauddin Sardar characterizing the USA? While couching his condemnation of the entire population in anthropological language, Mr. Sardar most assuredly does characterize the USA as cohesive, malevolent, driven by reprehensible motives, and genetically wicked. His rants are not so much excessive, as pointless; if Americans are moral monsters by virtue of the conquest of the continent from indigenous peoples, no amount of repentence is going to spare us his condemnation. His moral universe, like those who think like him, is crude: the atom of moral agency is the nation; America is, in his eyes, a single entity whose malice is taken as read. This isn't a tirade against either Dr Caldicott nor Mr. Sardar, who represent inevitable byproducts anyway. It is worth noting that they are randomly chosen examples of writers who have found their secularized version of "America is evil" has found a receptive audience. I wish it didn't, but it has. Yet they avoid using the term "evil." I would imagine it's because it would expose them to the charge of being a reflection of the sovereign devil of their cosmos: simple-minded, sanctimonious moralizers, possessing every last one of the attributes of character they condemn. One of the most hackneyed cliches is that Americans are religious fanatics (e.g., BBC), and hence, simple-minded, warlike, fanatical. If I were to paraphrase Mr. Webb's own opinions using the term "evil," I expect he would object strenuously. Yet he's attributing policies Britons object to, to the national character of Americans. In fact, that's the ideologogical narrative of the BBC: British foreign policy is [sometimes] bad because of stochastic human clumsiness; American foreign policy is bad [now] because Americans are innately simple-minded fanatics, incapable of subtle reasoning. We're evil because we believe in evil. But what is evil? Why don't I calm down and accept objective wording? My definition of evil is an attempt to capture the connotation. I would say that when we speak of an evil act, we are talking about doing a destructive or unpleasant thing, for another motive which is reprehensible. Does this distinction sound weird? Suppose I seized power in a coup; I might use my police powers to enforce legislation. Suppose the reader knows only this much; she can't be sure if I'm evil, just that I have power and used it. Now, suppose she discovers the legislation was radical environmental remediation. At my trial, after my ouster, I demonstrate to the court that only my BTU tax and rebate scheme could protect the USA from economic meltdown and the world from environmental havoc. What I did was bad, but my motives were benevolent.Now, suppose it turns out my motives were to seize the oil resources of the Persian Gulf for control of my cronies; had I achieved the same through constitutional means, my ultimate motive would be reprensible. But in this counterfactual, in either case I used extralegal methods to silence my opponents. If I use these methods to save the world from environmental disaster, most onlookers are going to be conflicted when they pass judgment. But if I use these reprehensible methods for a goal which is also reprehensible in another way, then most people will judge me as evil. But what if the methods and the ends sprang from identical motives? That would never happen, however, because strongmen always have another, reprehensible motive. Megalomania? Racialist supremacy? These would creep out later. But if they did not, then observers would simply see more bad methods, not evil.The mixture of motives-method is bad for reason A, motive is bad for reason B, implies a detailed knowledge of motives usually lacking in real life. If I, the authoritarian dictator, am regarded as defender of you and yours, you'll accept it with patience when I screw up; when my goons beat up my critics, or expropriate private property. If I lose that trust, then my power is terrifying, not reassuring. This should be trivial; but please observe it is an entirely secular description of evil. Finally, I would like to close on the note of a brilliant remark by a visitor to this site. I had written the following: Secular society eventually rejected the idea of a "devil" because unhappiness was seen to not originate in a point-singularity; "evil spirits" didn't contribute to understanding crop failure, but knowledge of drainage or pests did. I recommend doing the same thing with countries.Conrad Barwa, in comments, objected: I find this highly idealised; secular societies did not give up the idea of the devil it was simply displaced. Go back to what I said about the extremist forms of fantasmastic politics and dis-enchanment of the public sphere these are Weberian ideas; most scholars argue that Communism, Fascism etc are nothing more than a secularised religion—a “return of the repressed” to used Freud’s terminology. To think that the devil can be banished is the height of Enlightenment optimism....Conrad was obviously correct. I groaned when I read that because I had made my point above as a rhetorical oversimplication; of course I knew that belief in a devil persisted. Ironically, it was the whole thing I was complaining about. UPDATE (Wednesday): The sentences above were confusing: Now, suppose it turns out my motives were to seize the oil resources of the Persian Gulf for control of my cronies; had I achieved the same through constitutional means, my ultimate motive would be reprensibleThis is a logical impossibility. Allow me to elaborate: suppose GWB were actually a very smooth Europeanist who had won the heartfelt trust of both the Russians and the French. He does what I would have done after 9/11, were I able: he consummates a rapprochement with Iran, and let us suppose the leadership is grateful. Suppose, finally, that, by heroic efforts in conjunction with Moscow, Paris, Amman, and Damascus, Pres. Bush had revived the peace process long before 9/11/01 and stuns the Arab world with his sympathetic responses to the Palestinian plight. (This might have been impossible, but suppose it weren't). When Bush moves against Iraq constitutionally, on the basis of UN SC resolutions, he receives an emphatically friendly hearing from other members, who each have strong motives for cooperating. In some places, as US forces mass on the border with Iraq, there is grumbling about American imperialism-accurate grumbling-but lo! it is imperialism with a UNSCR imprimatur. In the capitals of Europe, anti-war opposition is directed isotropically against the local government, not against Washington or London. The methods are legitimate, yes? No. Instead, the perpetrator-the moral agent committing the crime-is bigger. The internal mechanisms are harmonious, just as they were inside the corridors of power in Washington. Legitimate means, diabolical motives, are essentially a logical contradiction. Apparent exceptions merely misidentify the perpetrator of evil. In reality, it was a clique of national executives; in my counterfactual, unilateralism is merely replaced by a bigger clique. SECOND SENTENCE: This sentence is also confusing where it appears: But in this counterfactual, in either case I used extralegal methods to silence my opponents.In other words, I suggested two different hypothetical scenarios where I seize power in a coup and use illegitimate means to control the state. In the first, it's to do something benevolent; in the second, something malignant, but different from merely maintaining power. I suppose it's logically possible for, say, a junta to use draconian measures to stay in power-with no other motive, not even corruption or class affinity-but self perpetuation. This is improbable, though, and I doubt it's ever happened. UPDATE2: In comments below, Mr. Halasz mentions that motives are usually mixed and unknowable. In the case of a junta, especially a falangist junta, this is very clear. One of my objections to A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn, is that even when he admits a certain act was necessary—e.g., defending post-war Europe against Soviet expansionism—he insists the motives of the USA were malignant: the elites running the country were afraid of Communism because it offered a hopeful alternative to the worker, not because it was a totalitarian and aggressive ideology (although he admits it was). This is bad history, not merely easy-answer jacobinism. Since even individuals, let alone national governments, always act with mixed motives (and while that does pose a philosophical challenge that merits examination), there's no way I could suggest a reliable way of arbitrating amongst a host of known motives. NOTE: 1 Appeals to history insist that the speaker's adversaries don't know basic facts, such as the "fact" that the USA alone stood up to Nazi Germany and thereby taught Europe a lesson about resolve. This is something the listener presumably "knows," knowledge shared with the speaker. But this is absurd; how could an American have never heard of this version of history? Television programs and movies about the War nearly always reiterate it. Newspaper editorials iterate it. The answer is that it's doctrinal-an article of faith. People who contradict this nonsensical drivel aren't supposed to be so much ignorant as heretics—the fool who has said in his heart that something he's been taught since infancy is not so.It would appear that this is argued more frequently yet with economics. In high school, like all AP students, I was taught about the laws of supply of supply and demand. In courses taken since then, that touched on economics, I was again and again exposed to the basic principles of a self-correcting market economy. The notion that the economy is a self-correcting market is referred to endless by conservative web loggers, newspaper columnists, et al., as "Economics 101" as if that meant there were nothing else to know about the subject. People who suggest things like imperfect competition, game theory, elasticity, trade theory, or welfare economics, are obviously ignoring "Economics 101" and necessarily idiots. Does the minimum wage hurt poor people? Econ 101 says it does. Economics you take afterwards—or research in other fields—suggests the picture is more complicated. Economics is not physics, but I'm going to make an analogy: "Physics 101" says objects put in motion tend to remain in motion. Friction comes later. Angle of moment comes later. Air resistance comes later. Inelastic collisions come later. All of these things appear to contradict what is taught in "Physics 101" about the block sliding on a frictionless plane forever after you push it. Economics can be an evolutionary science, if students are allowed to relax initial assumptions made for ease in exposition.
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