Evil Part 2- a Definition

PART TWO OF A SERIES ON EVIL. IN THIS PART WE COME TO A DEFINITION OF WHAT IT IS AND IS NOT...


"Though in their hurried flight the shadows thus
Were running scattered o’er the Champaign wide
Towards the mount where justice searches us,"

An excerpt from The Divine Comedy, Purgatory
Dante



A BRIEF HISTORY OF EVIL

Evil is, at it's core a lie. It is the antithesis of the truth, and since truth can be manipulated, interpreted and degraded the line between evil and truth is terribly thin. The lie is certainly as old as mankind, undoubtedly the symptom of negotiations between our selfish souls and those of others. Separated from one another by the needs of the body and the ignorance of the mind we are certainly suffering the legacy of those first lies, and, hence, their inherent evil. We may also be suffering the echoes of the first recorded lie.

The battle of Thermopylae in 435BC has been rendered as the battle that saved Western Civilization. For nearly 2500 years that simple assumption has gone virtually unquestioned. What if it was a lie? What if the battle, rather than saving Western Civilization from Eastern hordes and Persian despots, actually precipitated the long slow demise of the West, or at the very least had retarded the growth of human civilization through the pointless distraction of war and hate? Perhaps the result of a Persian success might have forced Persian and Greek society to assimilate, eliminating nearly three millennium of antagonism and animosity. The fact remains that the Greeks were, in comparison to the Persians were barbaric, prone to fighting with their neighbors and with one another. Thermopylae is a lie, one which has done nothing to benefit humanity. It may have been the first lie

There are few words as misused or misunderstood as the word Evil. For some it is the embodiment of the worst the human heart and mind can conjure. To others it is a living thing, an ethereal essence or spirit that tempts and persuades us to cruel and selfish acts. Some believe that Evil is its own power, one that must be crushed and driven from the world. To those who eschew that belief evil is a misnomer, a cartoonish way of describing a process. Some believe that strength and force are the only means of confronting evil, while others hold that if it can be dissected, and understood, that the roots of “Evil” can be treated or diagnosed before causing greater harm.

The Left wants to quantify and cure it, or at the very least gain the understanding to predict it's rise. The Right wants to crush it out of existence with punishment and mercilessness. There is no reasoning, no understanding to that eternal curse. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle, picking and choosing from those ideological extremes. In short, the debate over evil in the world is not simply a Right/Left issue, though the uses, or misuses, and perceptions certainly are. Those differences seem irreconcilable. As the humanity struggles into the Twenty-first Century who wins the debate on Evil may very well decide the course of history.

There is a simple story from history that illustrates the point well. In 435 B.C. the Persian King Xerxes invaded Greece, in what, for millennium, was described as the first epic engagement between East and West. Dramatized by a blatantly propagandistic film “300,” the battle of Thermopylae has long been view as the battle that saved the West. On closer examination one might draw the conclusion that rather than saving the West the battle may well have set humanity on a long unending course of conflict. Indeed, the Persians, though certainly contemporaries of a more primitive era, were perhaps more progressive and, arguably, more civilized than the Greeks who constantly squabbled among themselves and with their neighbors. It is merely a matter of perspective to understand that a Greek loss might have predicted an integration between East and West, a cultural interchange marked less by war than by commerce and a convergence of philosophies and ideas.

Indeed, ancient history is filled with cultural interchange between opposing and conquering societies. Celtic migrations into the Balkans overwhelmed indigenous Illyrian communities before being absorbed by them. The cultural assimilations lasted throughout their shared history. The warring Hittites were eventually absorbed into a number of Mediterranean cultures, the Greek influence in Egypt led to the Ptolemaic dynasty. The Phrygians, who found themselves caught between Greece and the Persian Empire, and so-called barbarian cultures conquered by Rome, took on flavors of those other societies. Even Pol Pot, the butcher of Cambodia, learned the art of revolution from the very French colonialists he fought against. An understanding on the true nature of evil is no different.

The purpose of this narrative is simple. The manipulative and coercive nature of the word evil must be diffused, or humanity risks stagnating in the swamp of it’s tribal and primitive past. The Right employs the word to strategically skew the argument in favor of religion. Simply if something or someone is evil then what more needs to be said? In a religious context there are simply two sides; Good and Evil. Their arguments do not rely on reason or progressive thought, but rather on regressive and simplistic emotion. The argument inherently divides the world into two parts, with the danger of individual biases and prejudices becoming battles of good and evil.

I saw this first hand in the Balkan during the siege of Sarajevo. Serbian nationalists used perceived historic animosities and current antagonisms to justify the wholesale slaughter of tens of thousands of Muslims, a religion they considered evil. Osama bin Laden, believing the West’s presence in the mid east was evil, organized an attack using civilian jetliners against the World Trader center and Pentagon. Evil becomes a rationalization for any belligerent act or retribution. In that regard there is a moral equivalency, because my idea of evil will never coincide with yours. The two positions, in that argument of intransigence, becomes irreconcilable.

On the other hand the Left grossly misunderstands the power of the word, and as well as the tactics of the Right. It fails to comprehend that once the word is employed and excepted by an audience the argument is largely over. Particularly in war, where fear and concern and paranoia invariably polarize opposing sides. It is very difficult to see a conflict in shades of gray when personal survival or the lives of loved ones appears to be threatened.

During the Bosnian war I met Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, Albanians and Muslims. Before the war they enjoyed secular lives. In a crowd it was impossible to tell one ethnicity or nationality from another. They spoke the same language and were bound by the same laws. Culture was less a matter of religion than of thousands of years of shared history. Most of that history, I should add, contrary to popular belief, in peace. The war magnified the minor differences of religion and nationality, and blew them out of all civil proportion. The fear, starvation and prospect of imminent death acted as a social smelting process, driving out so-called impurities to strengthen and protect the community. Worse it created a cycle of vengeance that prevented any chance for reconciliation.

Rwanda was much the same. As a relief organizer I was told that those of the Hutu tribe were shorter and darker than their Tutsi counterparts. From piles of bodies, or the millions of suffering refugees flooding into neighboring countries, those differences were difficult, if not impossible to recognize. The conflicts were arbitrary, each side evil to the other. Every conflict is the same. In the end the premise is simple: There is no evil, only ignorance of the process of injustice.

Any history of the word must begin not with the word but with the concept of Evil. There was a moment when humanity arrived at, confronted or invented the concept of Evil. Perhaps the word followed soon after, though almost certainly the idea of Evil, as envisioned by early humans was far different from the idea of it today. What binds us still to those distant ancestors is a deadly ignorance of the word.

What is the nature of evil? Where does it come from? If a person does evil then we are left with but a few possibilities. That is, they are either seduced, are tricked, or are too weak to resist evil. If that is the case then someone or something ultimately must be responsible, and since the devil, or some dark specter, is not liable under the law we are left to judge the human perpetrator or accomplice to the evil act. If some one is under the influence of evil, is it something akin to a coercion, a trance or a drug? Finally we are left to ask if a person is evil? In which case they either succumb, fail to resist, or act upon that inherent evil quality.
The Right would have us believe that people are, in fact, evil, or that there is a human disposition towards evil. They tend towards the views of the philosopher Thomas Hobbes in that regard. Hobbes envisioned a mankind who tended towards chaos unless order was imposed upon by a tyrant or king.

The Left on the other hand tends towards the argument that people are basically good, but are capable of perpetrating evil. They tend, over all to the views of John Locke, that man is basically good at his core, fighting a battle against temptation. Again, the outcome of that disagreement is crucial to mankind’s future, and the future course of civilization.

We are woefully ignorant of the word and the concept. Only love, the true antithesis of evil, is a less understood concept. For example, is evil a threshold or an accumulation? Do we leave the innocence of childhood at a specific moment, or do we accumulate cynicism and pain until that innocence is a lost destination? Is it a character of the human animal, some aspect like sexuality, selfishness and aggression? All of these things serve a purpose to define us, save us or perpetuate the species. Therefore, if it is removed, or cured or erased do we lose ourselves, or doom our existence? Perhaps it is akin to AIDS, its origin wholly misunderstood, and whose treatment is wholly individual to the host; fatal in some and benign to others.

Does it require a catalyst, like a spark, or a particular environment to rage out of control? Can it be synthesized, controlled, vaccinated against used commercially or for warfare? Some might argue that war is the attempt to harness evil for one side against an enemy.
Certainly the very word is a generic term, an umbrella word covering varied and even necessary evils. It also describes innocuous things, like an evil smell, and the like. Is sadistic evil different from abject evil, manipulative evil, genocidal evil and many others?

For much of human history mental illness carried the stigma, if not the outright accusation of evil.No rational person today would describe a person suffering from Manic Depression, Schizophrenia, or turret’s syndrome as being possessed of the devil or evil any longer. So, here we have seen the definition of evil rolled back. That would indicate that we continue to awaken from our ignorant past. Is it therefore reasonable to continue further ignorance, as the Right seems to, by labeling anything and everything opposite their worldview as evil? On the other hand does the Left’s desire to quantify and understand the origins and causes of evil impede reactions to a sudden crisis, like the September 11th attacks, or a despotic dictator who threatens our security?

We have already set limits on evil/ For instance, no reasonably educated person believes a hurricane is evil, Though the late Jerry Falwell believed Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans, was retribution by God for homosexuality in America. Right wing politicians and talk show hosts, who continued to embrace Falwell, never condemned those statements. The argument must always, for them, remain one of good against evil, because then it is about God and the Devil.

There is a belief in the modern world that nature is benign, without consciousness or intent, and therefore incapable of evil. From a theological perspective that is a subjective decision. The human mind as draw a line and defined what evil is and what it cannot be. We have evolved beyond viewing every storm, a drought, blizzard or lightening strike as evil. For a critical mind that must also call into question every belief in the existence of evil. As we will see in PART 3 nature had its evil side as well, and that horrific earthquake in Lisbon in 1355 helped to change man's understanding of evil for all time.