Six weeks ago, annoyed by some injustice or other, I was moved to prattle on and on about the idea of justice and what I didn't know about it. Now let's talk about another subject that I know nothing about, even though some people who claim to love me say I incarnate it: Evil.
One reason I don't know anything about Evil is that it doesn't exist. There, I said it. I'll say it plainer: evil (small e) exists, in the sense that there are things in the world that I must by my nature oppose. But no objective Evil exists.
Here is where I insert the "prattling on" part. Going back to six weeks ago, I then said some words to the effect that righteous outrage is a moral neutral like a 5 on the gray-scale, whereas all the different kinds of justice in the world put together would be a moral rainbow, or maybe a Jackson Pollock.
To at least one reader on our very own "editorial" committee, that discussion was reminiscent of the late Susan Sontag's comments on the 9-11 attackers. Sontag was not talking about righteous outrage; she spoke of the moral neutrality of courage. She said the attackers didn't lack courage and couldn't be called cowards. Our reader, let's call her L with one big L, thought that I might have even cribbed from Susan, but actually I cribbed from some old friends of mine who hadn't heard of her.
But I'm interrupting my own prattle. The point is that moral neutralities are a lot more common than most folks in these parts give them credit for. That's because most folks in these parts are dualists. They believe there's Good and there's Evil and everything lies on one side or t'other, as my mother would've put it.
So let's say we contemplate a thing, like a bag of rice. A bag of rice has got to be Good, or a bag of rice has got to be Evil. Or take a box of ribbed grape-flavored condoms. It's got to be Good or Evil. Or take Susan Sontag, before she died. Susan Sontag has got to be Good or Evil. Well, which is she?
Ed Koch, the former mayor of New York, decided a while ago that Susan Sontag was Evil, based on other unspecified but presumably similar statements she'd made concerning Israel. In fact he said that upon her death she would occupy the Ninth Circle of Hell for all eternity. That would be the innermost Dantean Circle of Hell reserved for traitors to family, country, guests, lords and benefactors, which is also the Circle occupied by Satan himself. I'm sure that Mr. Koch didn't change his mind when Sontag made her remarks about the 9-11 attackers.
What others identify as treason in Sontag's remarks was actually reason and the honesty to speak it. Courage IS morally neutral. A charging bull elephant doesn't earn a special place in heaven for disregarding the elephant gun. The 9-11 attackers were on a suicide mission. To deny the courage that their mission required is to forever deny a key ingredient in understanding them and understanding what happened.
Here are some prattling questions to round out the discussion. Would you think I was Evil if I said that peanuts kill people? How about if you were the head of Planters? What if I were an employee of Planters? To be a traitor you first have to be a loyal servant. But what if you serve an Evil master? What if you serve Satan? Does disloyalty to Satan get you into the Ninth Circle?
[No, I am not suggesting that Planters is Evil. There IS no Evil!]
Incidentally, this column should get me to the Seventh Circle of Hell, for violence to God, art, and nature. Two more Circles to go, and I'll make a bull's-eye – maybe next week.
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