A Cogitative Countenance

     If I had to choose one person out of these eight who’s views on evil I agree with most, I would have to choose Kanan Makiya.  He believes that evil is something human.  It is beyond something “very bad,” and is hard to put into words.  I agree with this because evil is truly an unexplainable force.  We cannot define evil, because evil is different for every person.  Looking at the September 11^th events, Makiya says that the hijackers took evil to an extreme.  However, we can not say this, because for the hijackers, they did not see evil, they saw their acts full of righteousness.
     Makiya also describes evil as “something that, when you see it, when you know it, it’s intimate.  It’s almost sensual.”  I agree with this point, because I see evil as a force in the world.  Not a person such as Osama bin Laden or an object can be evil, and sometimes not even an “evil” action.  It is this force that is unique to each human on earth, which is our own sense of evil.

     Yes, I am a Christian, and therefore I was brought up to believe in the teachings of the Christian church.  However, the question that Wasserman posed in class in response to “The Bible and Our Public Debate,” got me thinking.  I am not striving to answer the question of whether or not the Bible should be used in schools to teach morals, but rather I am asking why must it be the Bible.
     The Bible is a religious text, and does include many of the morals and “commandments” that so many people believe in today.  Other such texts as the Constitution [etc.] set laws for people to abide by, in order to keep peace and keep people in line.  So we know of more than one source of these morals to live by, so why do we need to draw our new sense of evil, and not evil, out of the Bible?
     The Bible was written by man, and cannot be proven in any way, shape, or form.  That is where faith comes in (but that is a post for another day), and therefore people who do not have faith in Christianity, will probably not care about or listen to what the Bible says.
     Maybe we could institute a new source of morals and laws to live by.  Even if they are already existent in the Bible, we can recreate them, and make a system that works in today’s society, that is not linked directly to any religion or people.  Take a look around you, find something that is truly original.  The computer screen you are looking at, do you know who made the very first one?  Or even the concept of the computer, when you think of it, does it bring up a certain person or brand?  No, you probably think of a variety of computer manufactures, and so many other things that could be associated with computers.  So what I am trying to say is that we do not need the Bible as this supreme set or moral codes which every one should abide by.  It would be a million times more effective to institute a new and modern source for these concepts of good, bad, evil, and the right way to live; a source that could be accepted by everyone.

Lucy writes about some problems that exist within Puritan society, and she also provides an awesome visual of an excerpt from Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible.

Certain religions find opportunities every moment to blame it on the devil, and they were and still are firm believers in harsh punishment for ‘frivolous’ behavior such as dancing (god forbid! what are you thinking?) and forms of public affection (because it’s obviously more appropriate to ignore the feelings you have for somebody…but learning the Wasserman brush-off could keep you out of trouble!!!).

     She makes a very strong point about how evil resides in religion more than anything else.  And this idea is very apparent especially in the past, such as the puritan times.  Our concept of evil is rooted in our faiths, where we see the devil, and any act that is not “allowed” by God to be evil.  Lucy speaks about how people are beginning to realize that evil is a fabricated idea made up by the law keepers in societies to help keep people in line.

Just as people today grapple with all the negatives that the world seems to hand to us, this play highlights how important evil became in the Puritan society after the introduction of witchcraft. As stated above, evil has always been present, but it becomes more obvious sometimes than others.

     I agree completely with Lucy, how evil is always present in our world, but it changes to fit into our constantly changing society.  The Puritans found evil in their everyday lives with such things as witchcraft, whereas today, we have grown immune to our “everyday evils” and now only recognize evil in massive scale occurrences and examples of extreme hatred, destruction, pain and suffering.

     As I was flipping through the latest Time Magazine in my house as I watched TV, I came across a passage that cried out to my attention.

“As time passed, the Great Satan was no longer everybody’s whipping boy.  Americans looked back on 9/11 as an aberration” (Time, 43. 11 Sept. 2006).

     The article, written by Nancy Gibbs, is in response to the approaching fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on September 11th in 2001.  It states that September 11th was no doubt an act of war, and does not say that it was an act of evil.  It was just an interesting article, expressing a different perspective on this particular event.  She strays away from the traditional thoughts of evil, and focuses more on the concept of war, and how everything fits into modern society.
     Seeing this different perspective on something that so many other students in our class claimed was evil is interesting.  We might just agree to disagree, or maybe we should redefine evil, making it fit into our society today.  Or maybe we just need to analyze perspective, as we are doing in AH class, and see why some of us believe 9/11 to be solely an act of evil, while others, such as this author, instead see an act of war.

     How can we define evil in the world today?  For some people it is a force which drives all of the “bad” things in the world, while others believe it to be an actual entity controlling human nature to perform evil, and there are even examples of people not believing in evil at all.
    In order to asses this we should look back in time at what was once the ultimate evil; Satan.  It is so apparent in today’s society that evil, and the beliefs in Satan are fading away.  It was particularly interesting to me how in the article Delbanco said that once “The Devil, once he is visualized and given voice, tends to run away with the show.”  I completely agree and observe how the devil is viewed today; as a cartoonish character.  This image has been disconnected with “evil,” and therefore the devil is now vanishing.  We have to wonder, where has all the evil gone? 
     The answer is simple, evil is here on Earth with us today.  With such events as genocide and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, we are forced to either conceive a concept of evil, or strengthen our pessimism and embrace our knowledge of evil.  It is clear that all of the evil that people experience today is only caused by other people.  We can look at the acts of Hitler, the hate of the KKK, genocide, murder, death, and destruction - all which are caused by our own species.
     I guess the real question we should be asking, is why?