Good and Evil

President Bush has used the London terrorist bombings as another occasion to broadcast his analysis that we are the good guys and they are the bad guys. It is a deceptively simplistic argument, and it is damaging to our ability to focus on what needs to be done to prevent terrorist attacks.

How do you decide who is Good and who is Evil? Empirically? The Good guys don't blow up innocent civilians in London subways---they blow them up from airplanes over Iraq, or with artillery shot into houses, etc. How do you measure the relative evil?

Do you make a balance sheet of good deeds versus bad deeds? How do you weigh one against the other---in terms of numbers of people? Or dollars spent, or saved? What is the time frame---throughout history, in the past year, in the current administration?

Does the inability to come up with commonly agreed upon criteria mean that good and evil are empty concepts, without meaning? No. Not at all.

Good is something we strive to be. Good is something we try to do. There is nothing exact about it. We know that we have good and evil in our natures. We know that there are people who are transcendentally good, though not everything they do is good, just as there are people who are operationally evil, though they may treat their pets very well.

The human problem is that if we think we've done something bad, we feel guilty, we don't want to own up to it, and we wish we hadn't done it. That helps us in trying to do good, to get better at it. But it also leaves us open to manipulation. People can guilt-trip each other, and they can also mollify each other, take away the guilt by denying the evil act.

This is politically potent. If you can make people feel they are Good, this is a Good country, you are likely to get elected and reelected. There are other underlying complexities here, some due to differences in fundamental beliefs about the human situation, which some people derive from their religious doctrines. Some people believe that because of their faith, they are Good. Other believe that good is a matter of deeds.

Put together politics, a certain studied simplemindedness, and perhaps a certain religious faith, and you've got the GW Bush view. The big problem with the Bush view is that he sees Us as Good in a way that means everything we do is good and nothing we do is evil.

That's not only morally devastating, it hinders practical efforts, for example in preventing terrorist attacks.

The act of killing innocents in London was evil. The thought of planning it for months, and then (if the claim of responsibility is to be believed) promoting it as some holy fulfillment, is sickening. But we will get nowhere on any level by taking the absolute view that being the Good Guys means we're pure and without responsibility for evil that sows the seeds of more evil.

Ignorance is no excuse either, especially when military and economic power is being wielded in our name. And when those who we charge to protect us are failing. Believing ourselves to be Good suggests we have nothing to learn. That's an error that invites tragedy.

I would define a Good country as one that relentlessly tries to do good, that admits its errors, makes those responsible accountable, and takes responsibility for correcting errors, correcting evils and doing better. A country that is always learning, and takes seriously what it learns, and acts on it. Then the idea has meaning: we can say we're a good country, without saying or implying that we're pure, that anything we do can be justified because we define ourselves as Good.