Evil came to town
#34: A 100-word poem-y essay on two bad ideas that won't die...
This is one of my more philosophical posts — perhaps a self-indulgent exercise in sense-making. Sometimes I’m moved by a piece of art, a film, a song or a movie and it makes me want to understand the human condition better. Why are we the way we are? I’d love your thoughts on all of this as I beg your indulgence for this exploration.
Evil came to town
Evil had a college degree.
Perhaps a doctorate, maybe two?
Evil spouted popular ideas.
“Isn’t she so well-informed?”Evil worked hard
Evil was honest, upright
Evil loved his family
“What a stand-up guy he is”Evil led our popular cause:
Country, the “deserving”, his people
Evil urged friends on his path
We asked to be Evil’s friend!Wars broke out, wounds renewed
The world forgot to forgive
“Ends justify the means!”
We nodded in righteous furyEvil partook for his tribe
Fiery ardor for his people flowed
Evil did what had to be done,
Later, he said, “I followed orders!”
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reena | over the past several months of 2023-24…
This 100-word essay-poem came about as a result of watching a Netflix documentary called Ordinary Men: The "Forgotten Holocaust" that examines how and why thousands of ordinary Germans carried out mass atrocities as members of Nazi police squads during the Holocaust. Nazis’ own documents, live recorded testimonies of the soldiers, of officers themselves, and eye-witness accounts are examined in the film.
A few chilling facts…
The officers and soldiers who were given the task of executing hordes of Jewish women and children at point blank range were neither coerced, nor forced to do so! In fact, since executing unarmed human beings was considered rather “unpleasant” (how civilized!), soldiers could refuse to participate without consequence to their rank or station. Yet, only an abysmally tiny percentage of soldiers refused. Those who did, felt guilty for having “let their comrades down”!
Yes, mind-boggling. But it gets worse.
The officers who led these executions were hardly frothing-at-the-mouth, manifestly “evil” or sporting satanic horns. On the contrary they were well-educated, accomplished gentlemen, with wives and children in loving families, highly respected and admired in their private lives. Great patrons of the arts, and classical music. Even dog lovers! Hard to fathom but they believed they were doing the right thing by their nation, and their people. No different than what communists did in the name of creating a better society or terrorists do in the name of religious piety.
~~~
This is hardly a thing of the past. Simplistic explanations such as: the other side is evil, greedy, stupid, lazy, blah, blah abound, but don’t help. Education, wealth, and even smarts fail to correlate with simple human decency; much less so with independent thinking. So how do (good) people go so wrong? In my explorations, I’ve identified at least two notions that get us in trouble:
Evil lives outside of me/my tribe: We play a dangerous game in demonizing the “other” and declaring our side as good. I fall for this one too. Often this notion has us employing simplistic “purity tests” — tribal, identitarian or ideological — to identify the enemy. Fact is, given the right circumstances, each one of us is capable of sublime goodness AND terrible evil. This mindset also prevents us from humanizing the “other” or considering peace or compromise (brilliantly covered in Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion)
Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains… an unuprooted small corner of evil. "
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Ends justify the means: We convince ourselves that the ends we’re seeking (welfare of the downtrodden/ our way of life/ patriotism/ social justice/ MY God’s way/ egalitarian society) are so supremely noble that they justify any means employed to get there. This is how we make convoluted excuses for horrific cruelty, even massacres, in the name of whatever “good” we believe in. Moral compasses are safely put away. The rest is shameful history staring us in the face.
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions"
– Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), a Cistercian abbot
Does any of this ring true at all? I’d love your thoughts….
Thanks for this thoughtful piece Reena. Yes, when we “other” a group, a particular kind of person, a practice, we lose our ability to see the people involved as human. And then, unfortunately, we can do whatever we want to them much more easily. We do not see them as ourselves, and I would argue, as you do, that we do not see ourselves. It’s so important to look at our own hearts, do our own work, and to have compassion for ourselves so that we can extend it to others. Thank you!
I think the "two notions that get us in trouble" at the end of the post are in substance spot on, but with regard to the framing of the second—"ends justify the means"—I have an observation to make, which is that ends often do justify means. Just think of criminal justice, where severe punishments are inflicted on those found to be guilty of committing serious crimes. This is in service of an important end, justice, and that end justifies the means: the harm inflicted. I think the expression, "the ends don't justify the means," has plausibility because people are thinking of material ends, and they mean to say that the pursuit of material goods doesn't justify cutting moral corners. But when the ends are themselves moral—as in the criminal justice example—the calculus changes. The moral end of justice licenses inflicting harm that would normally be highly immoral. Moral ends determine the moral status of the means! And the ends you cite are all of that kind: "welfare of the downtrodden/ our way of life/ patriotism/ social justice/ MY God’s way/ egalitarian society". You say, "all moral compasses are safely put away," but—ironically—those who do evil very often have their eyes glued to their moral compasses! No doubt, many people's moral compasses do not indicate true north. The point remains that "morality," not neglect of morals, is what justifies and indeed drives much or even most violence. Bad morals, not amorality, are the problem.
A nice essay on this appeared in Aeon in 2015: "How Could They?", by Tage Rai. (https://aeon.co/essays/people-resort-to-violence-because-their-moral-codes-demand-it)