I saw an advertisement for a T-shirt in my feed recently. It read, “I’m a good person. Please don’t bring out my evil side”. My immediate thought was, if I were a good person, I wouldn’t have an evil side. But, I do, so I’m not. Each day I strive to be less evil than I was yesterday. Some days are more successful than others. Lest you think I’m being needlessly self-deprecating, I’m really not, because the above is also true of everyone reading this.
See, we’re not noble beings with hints of corruption, we’re corrupt beings aspiring to nobility. Selfish Jerk is the default setting for humanity. One merely needs to see a child during the “Mine” phase. Virtue and decency have to be taught. Left to our own devices, we’d be amoral, thoughtless and rude. It’s the desire of mankind to be better than we are, that builds civilizations. It’s our inherent moral weakness that destroys them.
I’ve been hearing for decades that the solution to human evil is education. If people were just knowledgeable enough, there would be no evil. The trouble with this line of thinking is that it is demonstrably wrong. Robespierre, Hitler, Stalin and Mao were all highly intelligent, well educated men, who spilled blood by the gallon. Being smart doesn’t make you good.
I can make my point using Science Fiction. In Wrath of Khan, McCoy is shocked when he learns of the Genesis Device. He’s rightfully appalled, because of its potential as a Weapon of Mass Destruction. “My God,” he says. “Are we intelligent enough to handle this?” He asked the wrong question. The right question is, “Are we good enough?” The answer is “No”.
In the classic Forbidden Planet, Edward Morbius is the smartest man on two worlds, thanks to his exposure to the Krell machine. But, his vast intellect doesn’t prevent him from becoming a subconscious mass murderer. “We’re all part monsters in our subconscious,” says Captain Adams. No one’s hands are clean. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is descended from conquerors and the conquered. Enslavers and the enslaved. It’s our common heritage as human beings.
Everything I’ve written to this point, is why I’m a Constitutionalist, Conservative and Classical Liberal in the mold of the Founding Fathers. The republic and government they designed was all about damage control. Every aspect: Three co-equal branches, the House of the States (the Senate), the House of the People (the House of Representatives), even the Electoral College, were established in order to minimize the amount of control any person or group had over others.
My friends, the centralization of power is never a good idea. I don’t care if we’re talking healthcare, food, housing or whathaveyou. Individual people, brought up in a proper moral environment can and will do more than any government program. Stop ceding your responsibility to your fellow man to the government. Do what’s right voluntarily. Stop thinking that because you’ve passively let government confiscate and dole out your resources, that you’ve done your bit. Let’s take back our self-determination. Let’s take back our humanity. We’re Americans, Damnit!
One reply on “What Evil Lurks”
I like your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Seriously I do agree with what you’ve said though I might disagree in some of the wording or quibble with some details.
I think people can be good (or bad) if they generally behave, but (especially if you’re coming from a religious perspective) people are not perfect. They fail at being good, sometimes at critical times. The are lazy and do less good than they could and otherwise fail to live up to their full potential. A good student can get As and Bs on tests, generally pass quizzes and study sufficient to get good grades. A bad student, possibly while quite intelligent, does not put in the time, does not show up for class and receives Ds or Fs. An excellent student studies enough to get all As, but may still not understand every thing taught or presented in the text book but might still get all 100s by not having any questions too hard to answer enough for credit. A perfect student would learn everything about a topic, fully understanding it, the implications of each facet and how it ties into all other topics. This is impossible since we have not enough time in the day to study this much nor are enough of us geniuses to understand something to this depth.
The form of government we have has one more reason it is better than most: the lack of omniscience in leadership. Even were humans fully well behaved there is too much information required to make good decisions and too much in the future that is unknowable to properly plan and execute a 5 Year Plan. So, spread decisions out and to the lowest level possible so that people can react in little ways to little bits of information and not overwhelm any single point.
School boards, not the Department of Ed make teaching decisions. Local zoning should take over for HUD. As the joke goes BATFE should be a national store chain (especially as there is yet another story of an insider walking off with guns and gun parts for the last 3 years!) and local police, backed by state and the FBI can handle gun crimes.
We’re kings of our own fate, and we have the responsibility to ourselves first of all to take up the mantle of that power. We also owe it to our fellow citizens, who are not subjects to us or to some distant king making decisions on our behalf, to care for our common green. Not out of some misguided loyalty to the socialist collective but because we’re humans, not chimps living in trees or buffalo on the prairie (or because God Himself gave it to use with the command to care for and maintain it).