Day And Night And Evil
December 21st. The dark outside is palpable reminder. Today is the shortest day of the year. The tilt of the earth’s axis away from the sun is at an oblique angle in the northern hemisphere. Is the dark evil, the diminished light an omen? On the other hand might we celebrate this interlude, pause to recognize this opportunity to make our own light?
I will light a fire at the end of this day in our backyard fire pit. This will be a big fire, lots of wood, and our family will sit in a semicircle around the fire, to feel the warm that radiates outward and upward. We will know that it is good to be alive, to be here, now, together. All of the past is gathered into this moment, these few minutes around the fire. Generations who came before us warmed, gave thanks for a similar fire. My grandparents had an iron potbelly wood burning stove in their great room, and it is highly likely my great grandparents warmed by an open fireplace. Life is a burning that creates a future. We who live are the leading, the breaking edge of that wave.
Still if the dark of night is no evil, evil does exist. Evil is something human and paradoxically inhuman.
These words are timely:
A corporation has no heart, no soul, no morals, and feels no pain. You cannot argue with it. That’s because a corporation is not a living thing but a process — an efficient way of generating revenue. It takes energy from the outside (capital, labor, raw materials) and transforms it in various ways. In order to continue “living” it need meet only one condition: its income must equal its expenditures over the long term. As long as that happens it can exist indefinitely.
When a corporation hurts people or damages the environment, it will feel no sorrow or remorse because it is intrinsically unable to do so. (It may sometimes apologize, that but that’s not remorse — that’s public relations.) Buddhist scholar David Loy put it this way: “A corporation cannot laugh or cry; it cannot enjoy the world or suffer with it. Most of all a corporation cannot love.” That’s because corporations are legal fictions. Their “bodies” are just judicial constructs,
and that is why they are so dangerous. — Adbusters Magazine, #169, vol.31 No. 5
2 thoughts on “Day And Night And Evil”
A couple of notes on this post, though I’m late to the game on this one. I believe that it is in the book, Sapiens, by Yuval Harari where he discusses the myth of the corporation, where we have created a “life” out of nothing. As you mentioned, this entity is a human construct that only exists in our collective imaginations and we give it a semblance of something beyond what it can possibly be.
Second note: what is evil? To me, Evil is just another human construct that is rooted in our selective and subjective perception of the world around us. Just like the detritus that inundates our lives, (one man’s junk is another man’s treasure), so it is with evil. Without naming names, there have been autocrats throughout history who have destroyed countries, who have killed millions of people, who have ruled with an iron fist and tortured many, mostly for their own pleasure. It is easy for us to label them as evil for having a lack of empathy, no seeming moral compass, and a lust for power and control. Yet where is it written that this kind of behavior is not in the best interests of our species in the long run. Please understand that I am in no way justifying this type of behavior, but my personal sense of morality colors my view of these outliers. In good conscience I should not declare them evil, because I do not have the moral imperative to do so. I am not a god, nor should I be allowed to sit in judgement over the deeds of others. Of course societies make laws based on cultural mores, and do their best to enforce these standards of behavior. Those who do not adhere to these rules are either incarcerated, shunned, or put to death.
Think back of the history of the punishments and the rules that people have broken. 600 years ago if someone blasphemed the church by questioning its authority or worse, suggesting that perhaps God did not exist, they were obliterated but not before being subjected to massive amounts of pain. How is this moral or right? From our perch high atop our current culture we might view that as barbarian, but to those who instigated these punishments, they were only doing what was right for their community, or at least that’s what they espoused. So I go back to my original question: What is evil?
What is evil? I agree with you that no one has a standing from which to reply to the question. Your comments are a helpful addition to the contemplation of the question.