A Study of Evil

 THE HARM

As is alarmingly clear at this point that defining evil is a torturous task and even attempting it requires a high level of presumption. In order to understand something, though, one must first define it in some way, even if the definition is operational or simplistic.

We have narrowed our definition of evil to actions between individuals or groups of individuals. Unfortunately this leaves the treatment inflicted upon the planet or our companion living species for another day’s work. We are busy enough with, as the college students of old used to cite, “man’s inhumanity to man.”

Now what must occur to reach the infamous label of evil? Let us assume, for our purposes, that evil includes, but may not be limited to, the following necessary acts perpetrated against others by direct action, orders, participation, or legality:

·       One may inflict gratuitous pain on another;

·       One may inflict physical or mental torture on another for arguable purposes;

·       One may set actions in progress that harm others for reasons unassociated with the safety of the state or planet;

·       One may murder for no biological gain;

·       One may deprive others of one or more necessary daily functions of life;

·       One may, without gain or provocation, destroy the stasis of another’s existence;

·       One may establish organizations that inflict evil;

·       One may, while possessing powers of intercession, remain silent and inactive in the presence of the above; or

·       One may, in a profession, a daily life, or position of authority, support or condone any of the above.

We now turn to establishing “ground-level points” at which one moves into a definable stage of participating in the above. Some prove easier than others. For example, most would agree that:

·       Genocide practiced against an innocent people is evil.

·       Preventable and senseless murder or maiming is evil.

·       Physical torture is evil unless measurable gain can be proven.

·       Mental torture is evil unless measurable gain can be proven.

·       Abuse of a child is evil.

·       A pursuit of greed that requires the impoverishment of others is evil.

·       Enslavement of a people who posses no legal rights against society or their masters is evil.

The above represent examples about which reasonable people would not argue, even (to most) when any of those occur through religious edict. Even within those, however, levels of comparison exist. Comedy sketches in popular film, for example, represent torture for gratuitous reasons inflicted by means of tickling the feet of another. Some laws preventing or reducing any of the above remain dormant due to the impossibility of enforcement. In the minds of many, religion takes priority, for example, over legal protection of children from many forms of abuse.

Finally, national mental states contribute to the relaxation of measures of prevention. The “Dirty Harry” films that began during a period of perceived high crime rates in America struck a responsive chord in a country still existing under the so-called “frontier mentality.” Laws are still appearing that empower vigilantism in our society. As a result, deaths and maimings in “but for situations” still dominate our national news. Such laws seem to rely upon the good nature of the populace, rather than its evil nature.

That brings up a topic to which we shall return. How are evil and goodness connected?

A Study of Evil

 EVIL AND SOCIETY

 Now we come to the moment of truth. We consider the individual in terms of evil—not a multitude, not a cult, not a religious sect, not an army, not a populace. We see only a person with a soul that permits an act of evil against another person or group of persons. We don’t deal with gradation. Instigating the murder of millions is evil. Remaining silent during the execution of evil is evil. Numbers, as we have noted, only tend to magnify, sanctify, intensify, and vilify evil according to its breadth and scope. It all begins with an individual action.

Let us begin by supposing that the act of evil deprives someone or some group of something which is necessary to enjoy not a grandiose life, but an average and acceptable condition of existence. That includes a long spectrum, ranging from the ability to vote in an election to the ability to breath, with the right to live free from pain and distress somewhere in between.

Within that broad spectrum, it seems reasonable to limit our search further. For example, here are some examples that may rise to the level of sin[i] or illegality,[ii] but not evil:

The procurement of sexual activity between two consenting adults;

Activities relating to dietary laws;

Minor financial deceit;

Violations of religious edicts not otherwise defined as evil;

Victimless crimes;

Failure to conform to societal or military edicts or laws:

Public nudity; or

Public profanity, as defined by someone or something.

Moving up the scale one notch are actions considered acceptable or normal in some sects but defined as evil in others. For example:

The beating of children as a training exercise;

Domination and/or abuse of women by men.

Racial discrimination;

Masturbation;

Sex with minors;

Prostitution;

Polygamy;

Sex or marriage to close relatives;

Public execution of criminals or deviants;

Same-sex love and/or marriage, or homosexuality in general;

Rape;

War or aggression;

Tattoos;

Usery;

Contraception; or

Unnatural sex acts as defined by the sect.

This complicates things further, but wait. Some among these have changed in context due to a sort of civil evolution. For example, polygamy enjoyed approval and participation by Judo-Christian ancestors but fell out of favor somewhere along the line, as did slavery among a large segment of the population. The execution of criminals in America evolved from public spectacles to near extension, now carried out in shameful quietude. Now to lighten this depressing journey up a bit: As the old comedy line suggests, masturbation has moved from an absolute, hell-promising sin guaranteed to produce blindness to the prohibition of, “just until you need glasses.”[iii]

With that, we will close and work on a modest definition.

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[i] Let us use: “Any thought, word, or act considered immoral, selfish, degrading, shameful, detrimental to order, or alienating by a defined religious or societal group."

[ii] As defined by appropriate legal codes.

[iii] From the film Can I Do It Til I Need Glasses? distributed produced by Dauntless Productions and distributed by National American Films, 1977.

 FOCUS

We have reached the point where we must assign some value system to evil itself. Thus, we face the indomitable task of attempting a definition. Does this represent a cosmic case of hubris or is it a necessary step in understanding evil?

We gave narrowed our definition previously to the point of limiting it to an act of a person or group of persons against another person or group of persons. Eliminating the teaching or punishment to promote evil by the spirit world removed a great percentage of the historical treatment of our subject. We might term it “the great simplification.”

We are free to focus on human interaction, with perhaps some input from our biological cousins.

This will be difficult to the point of impossible one might say and that is true. Immediately, we find societal norms that define the same act as abhorrent to the point of capital punishment to an act that is lauded, even commanded by the polis.

Simply consider the act of same-sex love.

Or men’s dominance over women.

Or genocide.

Or the treatment of children, including the implanting of a vicious primal fear in the minds of the young by force-feeding the terrible prospect of being thrown into an eternal burning fire for the act of not following parental teachings.[1]

The last example becomes even more complicated by the teachings of the cult that promotes it. The punishment described, or the alternative—an eternity of undefined bliss—is not determined, according to some writings of the cult, by one’s interaction with living creatures, but by a consistent and fervent faith in an invisible being.[2] Complicating this particular instance further is the fact that the same teachings that govern this cult suggest that salvation (an eternity of bliss) is, conversely, obtainable by doing good.[3]

Let’s complicate things further. What about the fact that some historical icons of goodness began life immersed in evil?

What about the former slave runner who repented and fought against that evil trade, even to point of writing perhaps the most beloved hymn in the protestant faith?[4]

What about the rounder and royal companion in mischief who repented and gave his life in defense of his church?[5]

What about the Apostle Paul, considered by many to be one of the chief architects of Christianity, who by his own admission, first engaged in persecuting Christians before repentance?[6]

So it goes. And we have yet to touch the broad spectrum of evil. It runs from the murder of millions in an attempt to conquer the world to the suborning or absolution of evil in order to get a favored politician elected.

We have a rough road to hoe, as our rural ancestors would note. But, next we try.

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[1] For a terrifying example, but one that will sound familiar to many Americans who grew up in the so-called “Bible Belt, see the account of installing this fear by James Joyce. (Joyce, J., & Deane, S. (1992). A portrait of the artist as a young man. London: Penguin.)

[2] Ephesians 2:8-9

[3] Romans 2:7

[4] Celebration Road Show & Newton, J. (1970) Amazing grace Hymn .

[5] Thomas à Becket, Chancellor of England (1155-62) venerated as a saint and martyr in the Roman Catholic Church and in the Anglican Communion.

[6] Galatians 1:13

   Becalmed

 We find ourselves becalmed now in a sea of doubt. If we are to study evil, we must tackle some headwinds in our pursuit of its actual nature.

The first item we find floating past is the concept of context. Anyone who has dealt with modern religious aficionados knows that this is a common defense of doctrinal contradictions. The “taken out of context” explanation ranks only second to the “his ways ain’t our ways” dodge.

Some modern “theologians” would no doubt find themselves unable to speak if forbidden the use of the phrase “out of context.”

An anecdotal story from my own life can set the stage for an explanation of how tricky the concept of context becomes when applied to real-life situations.

Someone who was very dear to me was taken from a rural life on an Arkansas farm in the mid-1940s and mustered into the United States Army to go and fight the Axis powers in Europe. There, he survived unspeakable horrors before his side won. He would speak of artillery attacks in which he, “would want to live one second longer, just one second.” He also told of a stray shell, listlessly fired by Germans during the last days of the war, taking off the head of “the shortest man standing in line for chow.”

The Army disbanded his division, the 79^th Infantry, after VE day and he moved to the First Infantry Division.

Yes, that First Infantry Division: The Big Red One.

Remember that the U.S. was still at war with Japan at that time, and that country’s leaders had vowed resistance to an invasion by every man, woman, and child in the country, using every cannon, gun, plane, knife, sword, implement, stone, and stick available. Not a pleasant scenario for a member of a unit renowned for being assigned to “the first wave.”

When evil prevents evil, is evil sanctified by context? Was the vaporizing of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians through the first use of nuclear weapons—an evil end that eliminated further resistance and obviated the end of plans for further military invasions—justified?[i]

We will be debating that question when the remaining homo sapiens take their last breaths, sigh and say, “Look what our hands have wrought.”

Spoiler alert: The man in question survived the war and occupation, returned home, married, and helped produce a beautiful daughter to whom I am still married after 49 years.

It gets murkier, not the story but the consideration of context.

We drift along and encounter some complicated concepts. They are far beyond the scope of this amateur analysis but deserve mentioning.

The first is one currently in play with regard to the idea of sexual orientation. We shouldn’t tack anywhere near that emotional squall, or must we? We’ll see.

The concept is one called “social constructionism.” This is a theory stating that characteristics typically thought to be immutable and solely biological—such as gender, race, class, ability, and sexuality—are products of human definition and interpretation.[ii]

It only requires a look at how the female of our species fares in an historical context to see the ideas creating social construction as a valid concept. In early creation myths, woman is sometimes simply a catalyst for the development of man.[iii] Later, she becomes property, the earliest forms of marriage simply being a contract by which a man protected his harem from theft or, uh, invasion.[iv] In some later societies, woman enjoyed the simple definition of a thing possessing ovaries. We follow a tortuous path of supporting roles to modern times wherein, as a social construction, we create “categories based on certain bodily features; we attach meanings to these categories, and then we place people into the categories by considering their bodies or bodily aspects.”[v]

Let us steer from the dangerous shoals and drop in on the Wannsee Conference outside Berlin on January 20. 1942. There, with the aid of a translator no doubt, we hear high-ranking Nazi officials determining what some historians call “the final solution,” i.e. which innocent humans deserved to be slaughtered by the regime and how. We hear them deciding if a person’s “Jewishness” (a major standard for extermination) relied on a fractional portion of racial “blood” or perhaps whether an individual considered herself, himself, or, one supposes, their children, Jews. What is particularly terrifying is that their production goal (11 million) relied on countries which they hadn’t yet conquered but would get to as soon as they finished with Russia.

Those decisions were social constructs, not fact-based. The evil was not that the victims were Jews. The evil was that the Nazis slaughtered six million of them. Perhaps (almost) all of us can agree that this was not an act perpetuated by “some fine people."

Ahh. A breeze. Let us sail away from this dreadful spot.

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[i] See: Hersey, J. (1946). Hiroshima. New York: A.A. Knopf.

[ii] Saraswati, A. P. L. A., Shaw, A. P. B., & Rellihan, H. (2017). Introduction to women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. Oxford University Press.

[iii] Genisis: 2:4-25 NIV

[iv] Durant, Will, and Ariel Durant. The Story of Civilization. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1935.

[v] Saraswati, et al, op cit

Failure As An Option

I’m hardly an expert on foreign policy. That represents a big difference between most who post on Facebook and me. Between the political experts and Constitutional scholars, social media has just about obviated the need for formal education or rational thought.

I can't help thinking, though, of the news about Afghanistan or the potential future. It’s not a pretty picture, but an inevitable one. "All things must end," as Bernie Madoff said when made off with the last dollar with which anyone trusted him.

It took us longer to fail in Afghanistan than it did the Russians. That, I admit, is "damning with faint praise."

I’m temped to say that it was an example of applying the wrong solution to the right problem which is, someone said, better than applying the right solution to the wrong problem. The bull enclosed in the ring and surrounded by thousands of screamers is not wrong to charge. It's just that the red cape isn't the right problem.

In our case, it was right to deal with the terror, cruelty, murder and instability created by unreasoning religious fever. It's just that guns were never going to accomplish the goal of peace against an army whose members were going to receive 72 virgins in Heaven upon death in battle. Oh, and lest we forget, it was an army supplied and supported by a neighboring country with its own flair for duplicity.

We held the zealots back for a long spell with sheer force. But in the long run, their god was stronger than our god. Instead of applying military power in such cases, we might have tried facts, reason, and rationale. After all, we had 20 years.

But to do that now, we’d have to set an example right here in America first. The current situation in our state doesn't suggest success though.

Takeaways and reflections:

I hate to say it, but I fear this terrorist rebellion will prove far more inclusive that we now imagine. I hope I'm wrong. I think I'm not. When I heard that the assault had begun, I imagined lines of motorized vehicles and broad phalanxes of police and soldiers roaring into action. Instead I saw a largely unimpeded flow of terrorists charging almost unopposed into the most important building in America like crowds entering stores on Black Friday.

Yes, I expected the National Guard. I had heard they would be on hand, since anyone who had observed a legitimate news source in a month knew the assault was coming. Then I learned that the Guard’s mission was "traffic control” and could not be changed except through the chain of command, a chain of command controlled by the person who instigated the assault.

This mad me think of something with which I am familiar. I imagined a U.S. Naval vessel encountering a sister ship under attack or a modern-day Titanic with her bow sliding beneath the waves and our Captain saying, “Nope, can’t stop. Our mission is to proceed to home port.” Maybe the National Guard is different. I don’t know. I hope not.

How many times have I heard, “Oh, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley must be smart. They graduated from Ivy League law schools." Folks, I've known Ivy League graduates. They are well educated, fitting one of Plato’s requirements for a good life. Many show spirit in the use of their education, completing a second layer. But it is in the “appetitive” layer, the rational element in our gut that builds moderation, and distinguishes the restraint-guided human soul, that many, including the likes of Cruz and Hawley, lack entirely.

In fact, of three people I’ve known in my life who best fit the prime example of a smart, well ordered life, one graduated from the Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, one from what is now the University of Central Arkansas at Conway, and one from Arkansas Technical University in Russellville. Cruz and Hawley smart? No, they are devious, cunning, and resourceful. Morally, they most resemble the type of people from whom our state suffers, ones who have never worked a day at a job but somehow keep a steady supply of cigarettes and beer on hand for their survival. They squander their health and abilities like Cruz and Hawley squander their educations. We Americans suffer equally from both.

Finally, I haven’t resolved how I can approach what I once considered good, decent people who still support the American president who certainly incited, perhaps took a hand in planning, the terrorist assault on our nation’s Capitol and Constitution. I can’t take them seriously, but my standing orders, both from the Galilean and the military oath I took, require that I offer them the same care and concern as those who would seek a more meaningful life. The hardest to love will be those who spew societal treason from the pulpit of a church. They seem to believe that that the problem of two men, or two women, loving one another outweighs the sight of terroristic thugs ravaging the hallowed halls of Congress.

I’ve much thinking to do. Won’t you join me? Our country needs us.

The Future

 Friend texted: “Why worry? Future only holds that abortions are illegal, no health care, teachers start each school day with a Christian prayer, low-income minority neighborhoods can’t vote, women work for half pay, low minimum wage, and people who own stocks do great. Won’t affect you. It will be just like 1957. Men like you did fine then.” 

Me: “Two things trouble me so.” 

Him: “What?” 

Me: “That pesky U.S. Constitution and the worrisome 25^th Chapter of Matthew.”

Blessed are the poor

Please pardon the length but my heart is too burdened today for brevity. The profession I chose, and still dabble in, has suffered a horrible blow, perhaps a fatal one. Urban planners must deal with countless factors that determine how a city functions. Some challenges appear new and full blown. Solar panels please some and infuriate others. How does a city balance those feelings for the common good? Outside interests buy homes in a quiet neighborhood and covert them into mini-motels. What could possibly go wrong? Digitally active billboards appear that could, some believe, distract already anxiety-burdened motorists. Actually though, it turned out that nobody looked at the darn things. Problem solved.

Throughout recent history, however, the profession sought one goal that would surely have pleased the Galilean. Everyone should have a home—a decent, safe, and sanitary place to come home to after a day’s work. In recent history, a share of the population believes that the worker at a plant should deserve the same domestic solace, albeit not as opulent, as its corporate owner. Others believe that the poor, yes, the ones that Luke mentioned, can contaminated “decent” folks like some unmanageable virus. They advocate having the service workers, teachers, and tradesmen motor into their city, service the needs of the rich, and leave by sundown, to hell with the traffic it requires.

It forms a struggle based as much on religious strictures as fact-based ones. That’s why it weighs so heavy on my heart to read where the president of the United States of American told families in the suburbs that they would “no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low-income housing in their neighborhood” if he remains in office. 

If that vow crushed my heart, think how the Galilean must feel.

The poor will find a place to live.

Darkness

In the world’s greatest gallery of sinners, I’ve always held my own. I doubt if I’ve ever been used as a role model. Friends tell stories about me around campfires. My relatives call me an anarchist and won’t let their kids come near me. The word “potential” never appears in a sentence about me without the ubiquitous “squandered.” Through it all, I pressed on, hoping for some ray of hope, as William Faulkner said of Boon Hogganbeck from The Reivers. “No epoch of history nor generation of human beings either ever was or is or will be big enough to hold the un-virtue of any given moment, any more than they could contain all the air of any given moment; all they can do is hope to be as little soiled as possible during their passage through it."

I persevered, and I think I changed some for the better. My attitudes changed on numerous topics.  For example, I entered the United States Navy with a churning belly full of resentment. Now, I wouldn’t take a million dollars for those four years. In other ways as well, I have altered my attitudes. I’ve even learned to like English Peas and poetry.

A friend once said of me, “I love you for you don’t have a 24-hour and attitude about anything.” But I think he was wrong.

Now that I’ve offered my mea culpas, let me argue that I don’t think the “better angels of my nature” have changed over the years, and, if they have, the direction was for the good of humanity. When I was a teenager, I believed in the equality and sanctity all races and backgrounds of people. I still do. When a college student, I came to believe that The Sermon on the Mount was a sublime piece of literature and righteous guidance. I still do. I believe in honesty, good government, striving to help others, truth in advertising, not trusting Russia, and the paramount superiority of turnip greens and cornbread over escargots or kidney pie.

I did flirt with a wee bout of conservatism once when I became seduced into believing it would further my career. Mike Huckabee cured that when he threatened to close migrant worker center in south Arkansas. For those who should have been paying attention, that was a preview of things to come. The road to Hell is not one hidden long from view.

Anyway, about this idea of core beliefs. I see examples of change for the worse every day in friends I have known for years, some for a lifetime. These are folks I once knew to be kind, generous, and caring people. Or they seemed to be. Now, it seems as if a dark cloud settled upon them. They post bad things about good people on social media, and good things about bad people. Something or someone seems to have stolen their sense of righteousness. There is no example of avarice and mendacity for which they cannot find praise if the offeror claims the right political initial after his or her name.

These are not the people I once knew. Or, are they? I don’t know. Dark monsters hide deep within us are monumentally patient. Something rose in my friends, and it isn’t pretty.

They appear, from all aspects to worship a serial divorcee, liar, swindler, adulterer, cheat, and hatemonger. They even boast that the possibility of upsetting me about it is funny.

I’m bemused. The Galilean must be nauseated.

That’s the darkest irony involved. Many, if not most of whom I speak, claim to be Christians. Not Galilean ones, mind you, but followers of the part of the old and new books of faith that espouse despising gays and supporting slavery. Some even claim to be preachers of the Christian faith. Their only core belief lies in the topic of abortion. They want it to be criminalized, but it eludes them that a heavy concentration on sex education, availability of contraception, elimination of poverty, and male accountability would be much more effective (and good for the country) than electing political scoundrels who pretend to be on their side.

Yes, they attend, or lead, services on Sunday mornings and then spend the afternoon on Facebook bearing false witness against Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama (and his wife), Jimmy Carter, and others.

Something changed them. Maybe the aliens who pick through our smoldering remains will figure it out.

On Kneeling …

Yesterday, I spent two hours with an AT&T tech, fixing an internet snafu at our Little Rock condo. On leaving, I discovered that he had served in the U.S. Army, with assignments in the Middle East, including Afghanistan. He didn’t learn his technical skills there. He served as a medic. My mind shot back to when I was waiting for the bus to take me to the air base at Da Nang to “leave country.”

Amidst the happy, talkative group waiting to go home, there was a young man in a wrinkled outfit with insignia stating that he was a Navy Corpsman. He didn’t talk, just stared through vacant eyes into space. I remember thinking how, after a year in a war zone, I couldn’t imagine what that man had experienced. That’s why I don’t respect people who swagger around with flag decals on their lapels and ask why I don’t wear one.

My oath of enlistment stated that I would “… support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I [would] bear true faith and allegiance to the same.” I’ve researched it numerous times, and I can’t find an exemption limiting that oath to people who look and believe like me.

After we boarded the plane, and it rose aboard the blue waters of the South China Sea, applause broke out. Among the celebrants was a sizable number of shipmates and comrades who, when arriving home would find themselves denied the opportunities and personal safety that I, a white man of Northern European descent, would enjoy. Some had fought their way through Hue, during the Tet Offensive. Some had defended Khe Sahn. Some had held dying friends in their arms. Some had served on riverboat patrols.

All had spent a year or more not knowing what breath they took might be their last.

Some had been called “boy” on the same day they had had suffered wounds on behalf of their country. Some would be stopped for “driving while black” on arrival in an ungrateful country. Some would be denied the opportunity to purchase a home, as I did, in a decent neighborhood. Some would be denied jobs because of the color of their skin.

Their oath of enlistment, which they had fulfilled with honor, was the same as mine.

I think about these things. In the famous line from the movie, they just wanted “their country to love them as much as they had loved it.”

 Kneel for the music, or stand for the music, it’s your right. I don’t give a damn one way or the other, and don’t expect me to. Flag decal or no, standing without having sacrificed will never make you as tall as a kneeling comrade who was shortchanged by the country he served.

Love and Grace

Saw something unusual yesterday, a post by a Christian espousing love and grace. Yes, of course it was from  a member of one of the mainline religions that still follow the teachings of the Galileans.

You don't hear much about love and grace from the Evangelicals these days. There's lots about the joys of greed and the dangers of not worshiping their new Messiah, nothing about grace or love for our brothers and sisters.

The new Messiah? Oh he's a billionaire who's on his third wife and who doesn't allow an hour to pass during the day in which he doesn't violate the Commandment that we not bear "false witness." I think he's a little light on the adultery one too, maybe some others as well. The Evangelicals don't mind. Situational morality is their newest and strongest doctrine.

Franklin Graham loves him for some reason and pronounces dire punishment to those who don't.

I think I'll take some time today and try to determine what, if anything, the God of the Good Book says about the ownership of vengeance.