The Cynic Express(ed) 1.17: On Evil

     Two events in recent weeks have called many people to question their definitions of good and evil. Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, pled guilty, so now we can all drop the "alleged" from his title. His brother David, the man who summoned the FBI to investigate his brother as the Unabomber, told National Public Radio that his brother was not the Pure evil that Ted was cast as by the public, the prosecutors, and/or the media. And in Texas, Karla Faye Tucker was executed for her starring role in a 1983 double homicide featuring a pickax. Since her incarceration on death row, Tucker has become a born-again Christian and served as a role model for other prisoners. Unfortunately for Tucker, Texas grants no clemency to people who plant a pickax into someone beaten to near senselessness with a hammer, even if they are a member of the female gender and are supposed to be exempt from that brute lex talionus.

     Both Ted and Karla, their supporters would posit, are not so different from the rest of us. Which leads this particular cynic to his favorite particular snort of disgust. Sure, Karla and Ted are only one step over the line between good and evil. The problem is that the line between good and evil is rather wide,

     It never does to start bantering about heavy philosophical terms, especially moral ones, without a couple of thumbnail definitions to go by. I use good to mean moral decisions which benefit the maker not at the expense of others; evil actions are taken specifically, with malice, toward others with the intent to deceive or to harm. In between, in an area more black than grey, are bad moral decisions which may unintentionally harm others. Not all decisions are moral, either, for those of you capital O Objectivists out there; it hardly matters on a great ethical scale what you eat for breakfast, unless you stole it or it is a neighbor.

     A campaign of terror that lasts over a decade that kills a few and maims more falls easily into the class of evil. The intentions obvious, his devices precise and deadly, Ted Kaczynski did evil. As the sum of his evil actions handily outweigh his better actions--perhaps helping an undergrad or two with calc sometime--the Unabomber is evil. Not pure evil, which is some mythological construct or another, but evil nevertheless.

     No matter how intoxicated I might get on my upcoming birthday, I doubt that I will finish off the binge with the bright idea of attempting to steal a motorcycle (so don't suggest it), nor will I repeatedly plunge a sharp mining implement into the reluctant owner and the reluctant owner's bed partner. That takes a certain intent to harm that I don't bear toward the populace at large (no matter how I score on personality tests). Heck, I don't even dislike motorcycle owners that much. Karla Faye Tucker did bear that much malice or, more chillingly, that much apathy to humanity. Even if it was mitigated by the downslide of a three day drug binge.

     Certain segments of the population, though, would play upon collective guilt and nudge persons capable of such atrocities closer towards the rest of us in the great family portrait of society. After all, we have all born certain resentments, certain flarings of rage at the guy riding our bumper or the supervisor who just doesn't get it. Most of us deal with it without needing to call the coroner. Somewhere in our lives, we too may have committed acts that were bad and maybe even sometimes evil. In the greater sum of our individual good parts and bad parts, most of us are not that far in the abyss that we cannot break even and call ourselves decent, which is a little more good than bad, but good by default in many cases.

     Trying to get the decent people of the country to hold hands and have sympathy for the mass murderers is trying to narrow that line between good and evil. Somewhere, by making murderers just a degree or two away from us, it's almost condoning their actions as a part of regular human experience and not treating them like anecdotes from a way, way abnormal psychology textbook. What's it do for society? Try telling a child that he's no good for most of his life and see where he ends up. Now translate that into telling members of society than they are not much better. Workplaces become skeet shoots. Smaller evils like lying, adultery, and thievery abound. The Supreme Court or a stray governor stays a deserved execution. A domestic terrorist sells his drooling, raving journals to Harper-Collins for six figures, and the public buys it hardbound.

     Fortunately the Texas state government and the federal court system have proven that we are not there yet.