{"id":1110,"date":"2015-05-25T11:26:56","date_gmt":"2015-05-25T16:26:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=1110"},"modified":"2015-05-29T04:53:20","modified_gmt":"2015-05-29T09:53:20","slug":"a-vaccine-for-evil-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2015\/05\/25\/a-vaccine-for-evil-2\/","title":{"rendered":"A Vaccine for Evil, Ctd"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our Arts Editor has some objections to Mr. Brodsky’s viewpoints<\/a>.<\/p>\n

OK, where to start?<\/p>\n

    \n\tIn his commencement address, Brodsky seems to infer that:<\/li>\n
  1. One’s self is wholly good, and one’s own opinions and attitudes are, of course, correct and right.<\/li>\n
  2. Since I am wholly good, my “enemy” must, by definition, be evil, and (therefore??) all his opinions are wrong.<\/li>\n
  3. If my enemy seems good or right in any respect, then we can assume he’s just faking.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    WTF?\u00a0 Is Brodsky so full of hubris that he can’t conceive of a situation where he might be wrong, or his motives might not be totally pure?\u00a0 If I’m reading him correctly, he seems to be saying that you need to continually assess your opinions, and that if you see that your “enemy” agrees with you on any point, you need to either change your opinion, or find out why he’s lying about agreeing with you.\u00a0 Apparently, Brodsky’s world is painted in such a chiaroscuro of black and white that there’s no room for people to be neutral.\u00a0 If you’re not for good, you must be evil.\n<\/ol>\n

    Just because someone is an extreme individualist does not mean he is, by definition, good.\u00a0 It just means he doesn’t give a rip what the larger community thinks of him.\u00a0 That can be good.\u00a0 That can be extremely bad.\u00a0 I’d say more likely than not, serial murderers are a very individualistic lot, just to give one example.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In my observation, people in large groups tend to settle for a middle ground:\u00a0 gravitating to those opinions that most of the group agrees to believe are correct.\u00a0 Some dissenters are pushed out of the group if their dissent is too forceful.\u00a0 Some fanatics in the group make it their mission to prove that their beliefs are right and all others are wrong.\u00a0 But the vast majority of the group’s members really don’t much care about abstract ideology; they’re just trying to live their lives as comfortably as they can manage, and being part of a herd is generally safer than being alone, even if being a part of the herd requires one to espouse certain beliefs.\n<\/ol>\n

    I would assert that there’s no such thing as good and evil, at least in the sense that Brodsky seems to be using the terms.\u00a0 Yes, some creatures are mean.\u00a0 They do unpleasant things to other creatures, sometimes just because it makes them feel good to do so, or purely for their own gain.\u00a0 And some creatures are kind.\u00a0 They strive to make the lives of other creatures more comfortable, simply because that’s the best way for everyone to live.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    But most creatures are neutral.\u00a0 They’re just trying to eat, sleep and reproduce in the easiest way they can find.\u00a0 If that means living in a herd where there are certain rules, then maybe complying with the rules of the herd and espousing the beliefs of the herd is an acceptable price for gaining the security of living in a herd.\u00a0 And when the rules of the herd become too burdensome, the creature may choose another herd, or no herd at all.\u00a0 That\u2019s not good.\u00a0 That\u2019s not evil.\u00a0 That\u2019s just the way it is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    I wonder if Mr. Brodsky would have distinguished between evil institutions and serial killers on a quantitative or qualitative basis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Our Arts Editor has some objections to Mr. Brodsky’s viewpoints. OK, where to start? In his commencement address, Brodsky seems to infer that: One’s self is wholly good, and one’s own opinions and attitudes are, of course, correct and right. Since I am wholly good, my “enemy” must, by definition, \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1110"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1149,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1110\/revisions\/1149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}