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?

Sadness On The Land

Back to Gettysburg. The news of recent days distracted me. Finally, I decided that it seemed appropriate to return to a previous crisis in which 85,000 men fought to save the Union and dissolve slavery and 75,000 men fought to save slavery and dissolve the Union. It started when elements of Heth’s Division stumbled into Union Forces north of the city of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and ended when Robert E. Lee withdrew his defeated army and retreated to Virginia. More than 7,000 soldiers and one civilian, a woman named Jennie Wade would lie dead. The Union would survive and the bigotry and inhumanity that ignited would end.

They thought. We thought.

I once worked with a great-grandson of Thomas G. Clark who marched into Gettysburg on July 1, 1863 with his two sons Jonathan and Albert as members of the 42^nd Mississippi Regiment under BG Joe Davis, a nephew of Jefferson. He shared transcripts of letters now in the Confederate Museum at Oxford, TN.  Captain Clark had written to his wife on June 13^th: “Try to keep in good spirits for I intent to come home this summer or fall to stay for I think that the Boys have had experience enough now to git along without me and it is my duty to pay some attention to my family at home and in fact I think that I am gitting to old and have become unhealthy and I think that in justice to myself and family at home it it is my duty to quit this army at least for a while.” [Grammar transcribed as written.]

Thomas and his son Jonathon would die on July 1, when General Heth’s division ran into that of General Buford. Many of Davis's men would die in an abandoned railroad cut when he lost control of the division after an initial victory. It's likely this included the father and son. No one knows where they are buried.

Albert would die on July 3 as part of the left flank making the assault on Cemetery Ridge. A few of the men in that sad and battered regiment would make it to Emmetsburg Road and maybe 50 would cross it. The Virginian descendants of the Pickett’s fresh division would cruelly blame those on the far left for the failure of the insanely ordered assault. History can be as deceitful as the present.

A granddaughter would later write of the widow and mother of the Clark men: “When the news of this awful disaster reached home, Grandmother Clark prayed and shouted all night, and she often told us in speaking of those days that we didn’t know what sorrow was.”

Renown author Zora Neale Hurston would have one of her characters in “Their Eyes Were Watching God” express the war differently: “But it was a long time after dat befo’ de Big Surrender at Richmond. Den de big bell ring in Atlanta and all de men in gray uniforms had to go to Moultrie, and bury their swords in the ground to show they was never to fight about slavery no mo’. So den we knowed we was free.”

Free? As we have found over the last days, not quite yet.

Day One: The Railroad Cut