With
all due respect to the Mayor of
Charleston, and the others who called the Charleston massacre some
variation of “an act of pure evil,” this explanation for human
behavior is a shibboleth that needs to pass into history along with
the Confederate flag. It explains nothing, and is no different than a
preacher caught with his hand in the till saying “the devil made me
do it.” It suggests that there is such a thing as existential evil
that occasionally, or frequently (depending on what one chooses to
call evil) takes charge of human behavior or human affairs. The
massacre of nine innocent people by a deranged racist was not an act
of evil, it was the murderous, criminal act of one young man, a
"warrior" in the historic race-war agenda, performed on behalf of
all those who have failed to evolve with the rest of us. Is this
agenda evil? It is banal and useless to call it that. Is Roof evil?
You may as well ask if he's a garden gnome, something he does rather
resemble. Is the agenda he was representing regressive, criminal,
misguided, bad for everyone, and born of ignorance, ill-will, and
stupidity? It must not be doubted.
To ascribe such acts to evil, however,
is to somewhat discount, if not excuse, the actors, and imbue the
institutions, symbols, and attitudes that promote
this kind of horror with supernatural power. They have no more
supernatural power than the right-thinking, insightful, heroic, good
people who have helped us along in our growth from parochialism,
racism, jingoism, perfidy, and blind self-interest. Are some things bad
and others good? Of course. How can this be asserted without
invoking existential good and evil, without divine command morality?
With little difficulty. We have evolved beyond requiring these concepts
to make us
good, or explain our “evil.” These beliefs have instructed us in
our history, have tutored us as we have grown as a species; but we
are outgrowing this tutor and must at last take responsibility for all
of our
personal and collective actions. These notions have also historically
led us into war, terror, atrocity, and overweening notions of
righteousness and retribution, either with God on our side, or simply
against our “evil” enemies. May we properly use the terms “good”
and “bad” outside the context of divine command morality, of
existential good and evil? We have little basis to confidently use
them otherwise, even in a religious context. The Bible and the Koran make it clear that God's ideas concerning
good and evil are fluid, circumstantial, and, in actuality, based
upon the prejudices and ideas, both helpful and otherwise, of the
writers. Was German National Socialism evil? Consult the
ultra-Orthodox Jews who believe that Hitler was God's avenging angel
sent to punish Jews for the sins of intermarriage and assimilation,
among others. Is genocide wrong? Consult Moses and Joshua. How about
religious intimidation, war, and forced conversion? Ask Mohammed. Ask any
number of popes, kings, and queens. Ask Martin Luther and John
Calvin.
Ideas of good and evil have grown up in
every human community, generally having to do with what is helpful or
harmful to the furtherance of that community. What is good is what
furthers the general interests and happiness of my community and the
individuals who comprise it; what is evil is that which opposes those
interests. Naturally, there is a good deal of variation here
depending upon a community's beliefs and superstitions, and these
variations have caused conflict between individuals and communities.
Some ideas of good have been very bad for, say, the victims of human
sacrifice, or for the tribe on that piece of land we want very much,
and suspect God wants us to have as well.
These parochial notions of good and
evil are no longer useful, they no longer help in fulfilling the
interests and happiness of our communities. They cause us to shirk
our individual and collective responsibility to own our actions, and
repent of them when they are harmful to others. This is because we
are, at this point in human experience, a global community. And that
which is good or evil has become that which promotes or subverts the
interests, well being, and happiness of all of us. None should
quarrel with those who believe their God encourages them towards acts
of kindness, grace, and self-sacrifice; however, any god that
enjoins violence, terror, ethnic cleansing, or the imposition of beliefs upon
others, is a god that, with the swastika, the Dixie flag, and
existential notions of good and evil, should be left in our
collective past.
There is no “problem of evil.”
There are problems of behavior, problems with poisonous ideas
that result in enormous harm. Dylann Roof was poisoned by by
pernicious ideas. Read his “manifesto.” Uglier, more misguided,
ignorant rhetoric can hardly be imagined. These ideas did not leap
fully formed from his head, like Athena from Zeus. He was infected
by them. The latent racist aspects of our culture lowered his immune
system, and ideological contagion, waiting on countless websites to
infect the weak, ate through his soul like a cancer. This resulted in
his massacre of nine innocent people, his destruction of his own
life, and his enshrinement of own his name in infamy. And he is
responsible for all of it. He, not “evil,” did all of it, but not without help. Be
sure of this: Those who promote the ideas he came to embrace
are accessories before the fact, no less responsible than the Islamist radicals who
recruit young people into their particular brand of delusion and
death. Our racist history is also an accessory
before the fact. Both are rooted in history, real and imagined grievances, and,
most perniciously, imagined divine sanction.
