Walter In Denver

On Evil

This Peevish post leads to this one at Mahablog, which in turn quotes David Gerrold, all discussing the nature of evil. Here's some of the Mahablog post:

For a long time I’ve noticed that when racists are portrayed in films they are nearly always depicted as people who are scowling (or smirking) and disagreeable all the time; think Rod Steiger in The Heat of the Night. Yet in my experience — I grew up in an all-white redneck zone — racists can seem to be lovely people in any other context; they can be soft-spoken, considerate, and reasonableness itself except on the matter of race. It’s as if some part of their conscience were missing. It can be hard to grasp that nice Mr. Smith who voluntarily cuts the grass on the church lawn, or sweet Mrs. Johnson who bakes pies for the old folks’ home, would be capable of evil. Yet history tells us that a whole lot of “ordinary” people have taken part in evil acts in the past.

Gerrold writes, “I think evil occurs as a complex cocktail of forces.” I suspect most people are capable of evil if they get caught up in these forces. This is not an excuse for evil, but a warning to take care to recognize those forces and avoid them. People fall into evil because they don’t recognize evil as evil. They mistake it for justice, or righteousness, or even God’s Will.

“Evil does not see itself as evil,” writes Gerrold. “Those who commit evil acts do not see those acts as evil or even malicious. They see themselves as justified.” This is exactly right. [emphasis mine - ed]

And I mostly agree. As I read through all these posts, each by left-leaning bloggers, I was thinking of the evils of leftism, motes and planks in eyes and all that, so I got a chuckle from this comment -

It’s amazing how far we’ll go to justify our own actions. Not to start an argument here (as in, if anybody wants to argue this, please don’t), but for example, it seems to me that the entire political theory/party known as libertarianism, particularly the objectivist variety, is just an attempt to be able to not want to pay your taxes, and feel virtuous about that.

I'm not going to argue, but to point out the irony. I was thinking the opposite, of the evil of forcing a version of societal justice via the extraction of the efforts and blood of others.

To take the racist analogy a step farther, a racist can see his views as an extension of good. Society, according to him, would be better off if someone mowed the church lawn, and baked pies for the invalid, and took action against the _________ (name your disfavored ethnic group here). He then is likely to discount the rights of the _________ , by giving them less than full human status, or illegal status, or somesuch.

The leftist social engineer does the same, rationalizing that the property owner doesn't really own his property, including his labor, or at least isn't entitled to own it. Society would be better off that way. Remember the labor theory of value? The error is the same as that of the racist, although it is more socially acceptable these days.

Equal time: I can think of (at least) one obvious example of rightwing conscience failure, too. I've heard some linking the lowered crime rate in the U.S. to the high rate of incarceration. For the sake of argument I'll assume that link to be true. The evil that's been done to incarcerate so many, including long sentences for petty crimes, criminalizing victimless 'crimes,' and overloading the justice system to the point where many innocents are in jail, none of that is justified by the good of having a lower crime rate.

I think I've said before, good intentions are not enough.