Although the people in these audiences opposed many of the same trends and practices that alarmed me, many were not comfortable with my using that ancient and freighted term "evil" to describe them. I came to understand that underlying this discomfort was a worldview. And I've come to believe that this worldview -widespread in liberal America""is part of what has made it possible for such dark forces to gain power.
For this reason, I have been glad to confront the controversy raised by my using this deep and spiritual concept.
Objections to the concept of 'evil'
One objection I've heard from liberals is that it can't be right to see our current ruling group as agents of evil forces "because they really believe that what they're doing is right." But it is a complete non sequitur that if people believe in their rightness that they can't be the instruments of evil.
As if most of the world's evil weren't done by people who'd persuaded themselves they were doing right --from the torturers of the Inquisitions, to the Nazi mass murderers, to the men who flew the planes into the World Trade Center.
As if the psychologists hadn't shown us that, if you understand people only in terms of the motives they acknowledge in themselves, you'll hardly understand them at all.
Indeed, if part of the essence of evil is a pattern of brokenness, one would expect precisely that kind of psychic brokenness -that profound disconnect in the realm of self-knowledge""in which people can persuade themselves that they are doing God's work when in fact they are serving their own darkest impulses.
A related objection -and perhaps the most frequent one""is that one should never label others "evildoers" because, historically, so much human destructiveness has accompanied such accusations
Admittedly, through the millennia, great peril has surrounded people's wielding of the ideas of good and evil. But the same has been true for all ideas about which people feel passionately""God, truth, love of country. Any beliefs that come from the core of people can lead to destructive or constructive consequences depending on how whole and clear, or how broken and twisted, are the souls or psyches of those who hold them.
So while there are reasons for great caution when operating from the deepest and most passionately felt beliefs, it hardly follows that we should reject these beliefs or ignore them when we act in the world. In particular, from the fact that the idea of "evil" has often been used in distorted and destructive ways, it does not follow that it's never important and right to label as 'evil' the forces one sees at work.
Moral relativism and the opening of the door
Perhaps the deepest element in the widespread liberal resistance to the idea of evil lies in the strain of thought called "moral relativism." It's surprising how widely such thinking has infiltrated our culture. Among students I've dealt with across two generations, it's been common to hear -even from those who describe themselves as Biblical Christians""such statements as "What the Nazis did at Auschwitz isn't what I would have done, but from within their perspective it was right, and so it was right for them."
The idea that there is no important distinction to be made between right desire and wrong desire has its sources in modern philosophical thought but is probably most powerfully driven by our consumerist economy, which doesn't care what kind of impulse we gratify so long as we seek our gratification through what can be bought and sold.
But whatever the sources of this moral relativism, among the results of this failure to distinguish between choices that are good and those that are not has been a radical transformation -a degradation""in this nation's cultural expressions.
Compare, for example, the films made in the 40s and 50s with those of more recent vintage. The older ones are filled with an ethos of aspiration toward an ideal, toward some image of how human life should be lived. In recent decades, movies are more likely to encourage us to indulge our most crass, even our most debauched, impulses. We're more apt to see a film about a serial killer than about anyone worthy of our admiration.
This unraveling of old moral ideals, in which American liberalism has been largely complicit, is one of those cultural developments that has diminished the power of the forces of goodness to resist the advance of evil.
And it is in that interplay between opposing forces that we find one indication of the value of the idea of "evil": when there's an opening, the forces opposed to goodness will advance. We see an opportunism in these forces, as if they were animated by some spirit of darkness looking to expand its empire.
For this reason, I have been glad to confront the controversy raised by my using this deep and spiritual concept.
Objections to the concept of 'evil'
One objection I've heard from liberals is that it can't be right to see our current ruling group as agents of evil forces "because they really believe that what they're doing is right." But it is a complete non sequitur that if people believe in their rightness that they can't be the instruments of evil.
As if the psychologists hadn't shown us that, if you understand people only in terms of the motives they acknowledge in themselves, you'll hardly understand them at all.
Indeed, if part of the essence of evil is a pattern of brokenness, one would expect precisely that kind of psychic brokenness -that profound disconnect in the realm of self-knowledge""in which people can persuade themselves that they are doing God's work when in fact they are serving their own darkest impulses.
A related objection -and perhaps the most frequent one""is that one should never label others "evildoers" because, historically, so much human destructiveness has accompanied such accusations
Admittedly, through the millennia, great peril has surrounded people's wielding of the ideas of good and evil. But the same has been true for all ideas about which people feel passionately""God, truth, love of country. Any beliefs that come from the core of people can lead to destructive or constructive consequences depending on how whole and clear, or how broken and twisted, are the souls or psyches of those who hold them.
So while there are reasons for great caution when operating from the deepest and most passionately felt beliefs, it hardly follows that we should reject these beliefs or ignore them when we act in the world. In particular, from the fact that the idea of "evil" has often been used in distorted and destructive ways, it does not follow that it's never important and right to label as 'evil' the forces one sees at work.
Moral relativism and the opening of the door
Perhaps the deepest element in the widespread liberal resistance to the idea of evil lies in the strain of thought called "moral relativism." It's surprising how widely such thinking has infiltrated our culture. Among students I've dealt with across two generations, it's been common to hear -even from those who describe themselves as Biblical Christians""such statements as "What the Nazis did at Auschwitz isn't what I would have done, but from within their perspective it was right, and so it was right for them."
The idea that there is no important distinction to be made between right desire and wrong desire has its sources in modern philosophical thought but is probably most powerfully driven by our consumerist economy, which doesn't care what kind of impulse we gratify so long as we seek our gratification through what can be bought and sold.
But whatever the sources of this moral relativism, among the results of this failure to distinguish between choices that are good and those that are not has been a radical transformation -a degradation""in this nation's cultural expressions.
Compare, for example, the films made in the 40s and 50s with those of more recent vintage. The older ones are filled with an ethos of aspiration toward an ideal, toward some image of how human life should be lived. In recent decades, movies are more likely to encourage us to indulge our most crass, even our most debauched, impulses. We're more apt to see a film about a serial killer than about anyone worthy of our admiration.
This unraveling of old moral ideals, in which American liberalism has been largely complicit, is one of those cultural developments that has diminished the power of the forces of goodness to resist the advance of evil.
And it is in that interplay between opposing forces that we find one indication of the value of the idea of "evil": when there's an opening, the forces opposed to goodness will advance. We see an opportunism in these forces, as if they were animated by some spirit of darkness looking to expand its empire.
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