Follow-up

[fabrisse]

This post is my questions playing themselves out. The answers are surprising me a bit. And clarifying them to siderea and alexx_kay (and whoever else may choose to play later) is opening up whole new avenues.

All of this came from siderea saying that I don't believe that anyone is evil in my post on Nitze.

In response to my last post, Siderea said: That seems to be saying, "I wouldn't use the term 'evil' to apply to someone even if it were true because it would be counter-productive to use the word."

I think I'm coming to the conclusion that evil doesn't exist. Please understand, I think that there are some moral absolutes. Violating them is wrong; upholding them is right.

My problem is that I see too many people using evil to describe what's happening in the world or to describe those making the decisions that allow/cause these things to happen. What I see are officials making wrong choices based on bad information.

Are the results evil? Possibly. Is evil just a preponderance of bad decisions? Maybe.

But something inside me keeps coming back to balance.

When I make a decision, I often go by what feels right or wrong. And let me be clear, I'm aligning myself with Granny Weatherwax on this: Once you know Right and Wrong so that it goes clean to the bone, you can't knowingly choose the Wrong.

St. Augustine came up with the idea of original sin -- something intrinsic to humans that comes from Adam and Eve biting the apple. I reject that with everything that's in me and have from the first time I heard of the concept in religion class at my Catholic school.

At the same time, I was a Presbyterian being brought up to believe in predestination. That there is nothing that I can do that God doesn't already know is also something that I reject with every fiber of my being. Humans have choice. Oddly enough, this doctrine is also one that was originally proposed by St. Augustine.

So these are my tenets: Humans have choice, and they aren't born with any kind of psychic soul-sludge that they inherit from their parents.

From this, comes the question: is there anything that is evil?

I have stood in places that chilled my blood. I have felt a presence of something that made me want to vomit in a spot where too much horror had occurred.

The pictures from Abu Ghraib are appalling. But I don't think that the American soldiers that we see in those photographs are evil. That would be too easy. They are people who have done wrong. What's more the wrong that they've done is likely to perpetuate itself.

Some of it comes from the old saw "Don't judge a person until you've walked a mile in her shoes." I've always been able to walk in other people's shoes.

People choose the military as a way out of a dead-end place. The military will give them choices after they've served their hitch. The choices include college or training and preferential treatment in the job market.

I understand peer pressure. There have been times in my life when I've wanted nothing more than to fit in. Some of the horror that I feel at those pictures is recognition.

Terrible as they are, I get how those pictures came to be. I can use my mind to walk in those shoes, and I hate what I see of myself.

However, someone who was under the same pressure to conform chose to blow the whistle on Abu Ghraib. And, unlike the Department of Defense, the military chose to investigate it and prosecute those involved. The person who said, "No, I won't do this," had a sense of right and wrong and could not choose the wrong.

What balances evil? Good balances bad. Right balances wrong. Does virtue balance evil?

All I know, is that when I went to a school that had hazing, I said "No, I won't participate." It wasn't strong hazing -- no one's life or limb was ever in danger -- but I just couldn't and wouldn't be part of it.

That sounds like I'm tooting my own horn of virtue. I'm not. I've done bad things, and that's not counting the sins I've racked up by Biblical standards.

Is regret, expiation or atonement, and a renewed resolve not to fall into the trap again enough to keep a person on the right path?

So many questions. I know, have always known, that the death penalty is wrong. Neither candidate in next week's Presidential election is specifically anti-death penalty. Bush is for it, and Kerry is willing to bow to the will of the individual states. Does this mean that I can't or shouldn't vote?

What I keep coming back to is that the way I hear the word "evil" used is as an external and inhuman thing. The people who are referred to as evil -- Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Hitler -- saw themselves as men apart, and we seem to return the favor by seeing them as outside our humanity.

We do the same with saints.

I think it's wrong in both instances.