In most fictional accounts of the battle of Good versus evil; evil is personified as some kind of Dark Lord; or, if not that, then as a dark "party" - a specific and circumscribed group who impose evil upon the majority.
The defeat of evil then means the defeat of the Dark Lord, or the ousting and replacement of the evil grouping (usually foreigners or aliens) who are oppressing and tormenting the majority.
What this also entails is that the majority, the "normal people" are implicitly Good - such that if or when the evil overlord is removed, then a (more-or-less) Good society can spontaneously emerge from under the oppression.
The archetype is a situation of Us against Him/ Them; virtuous-Us, against wicked Him/ Them.
Our situation nowadays is very different... Evil is now so diffused and pervasive that only the ignorant or naïve (or manipulative) suppose that the removal or any person or party would result in a significant fundamental shift towards Goodness.
A neglected implication, is that this implies that the majority are no longer Good.
And I think that this is true: the majority are mostly-evil; "we" are pretty badly corrupted, and indeed are not even motivated towards real Goodness.
So much is this the case, that people have ceased to be able to discern the fact! People seem, nowadays, to suppose that it is enough (i.e. that it is "good") when people are merely selfish!
The (minimal) positive idea behind a great deal of political motivation, is to allow "ordinary people" to "get on with their lives".
By which is meant; the majority should be enabled to lead pleasurable lives of prosperity, comfort, convenience, amusement - and stuff like that.
And that is supposed to be "goodness"!
Despite that it amounts to little more than the morality of the barnyard - a morality of how (for example) farm animals ought to be treated, rather than a morality for Men.
Unsurprisingly; this hedonic pseudo-ethic does not have the power to inspire the majority to acts of courage...
With the consequence that, despite "asking for" nothing more than to get on with their lives, people are having even that taken away from them by the actuality of evil.
Westerners seem to know only how to conceptualize themselves as innocent victims of localized and focal evil.
It is not evident, and indeed (for obvious reasons!) usually denied, that the much bigger problem here-and-now is that evil is permeated widely.
We no longer a virtuous majority oppressed by a Dark Lord: instead this is an era of Diffuse Evil.
Such that most of the problem of evil in our civilization today is spread-out through the masses: The main problem is in "Us": not Them.
Very true! Russian literature best captures the diffuse nature of evil, and I remember how extremely alien that was to me when I was first exposed to it. Ayn Rand sort of brought that into the American ethos, but she still ultimately divided it into an us vs them of those who made honest mistakes vs those who hated the good for being good. And then of course the long-term rational selfishness very quickly breaks down as vividly seen in her own life and the lives of all her close associates. But setting that aside, I do wish Americans could take more seriously that “hatred of the good for being good” phenomenon. Another important one from Rand was the mental state she called “drift,” which is the state the vast majority of people remain in the vast majority of the time. Choosing real engagement with mortal life has to be #1 before we can even sort out how to be on the side of Good, but hardly anyone even recognizes that primary choice. If you bring that up with most people, they hear a platitude like “Never stop learning,” by which they mean keep absorbing factoids and second-hand narratives. That’s like running super hard on a treadmill instead of taking an epic journey- it doesn’t matter how hard you work at it, the parameters of the exercise miss the point!
ReplyDeleteIt’s easy to find the situation of diffuse evil discouraging, but I do find the Russian message ultimately encouraging when properly understood. Pierre in War and Peace wants so much to inwardly transform, and so he finally does, and it hardly seems to matter that almost no one else around him does. But it matters a lot whether you view reality as a living thing you spiritually contribute to or something separate from yourself that you merely seek to analyze as accurately as possible, ideally from a dispassionate distance.
@Mia - Interesting comment. I know very little about Russian Lit; but it surprises me somewhat that the Russians would have written about diffuse evil at a time when - by the standards of most of history - Russia was such a very devout Christian nation. Maybe this made them more sensitized to the evils of the human condition.
ReplyDeleteNowadays, The West is certainly far more diffusely evil that 19th century Russia - but most people consider themselves to be the most moral humans in all of history, and are offended and angered by any suggestion otherwise.