Evil is like a song

At least in the ways people try to understand it.

I was reading an extract from a speech by Amos Oz and it triggered a few rambling thoughts. Consider two hypothetical people trying to understand the nature of song. Each has a very limited view, so please be patient with them.

The simple mystic asks: Is a song a spiritual gift? Was it waiting in the ether for its incarnation in human voice? Or, was it always part of its composer's heart, waiting to be expressed?

The simple mechanist claims: A song is a series of mathematically modelable pressure variations in the atmosphere. At the next level up, it's a broad pattern of smaller repeating and changing patterns of vibrations.

The mechanistic view can be used to analyse a song in great detail, but without studying how lyrics + music + personal memories + emotional state interact, we've fallen short of understanding the power of a song. It's an inadequate and extremely unsatisfying description, but that's no reason to throw away all that has been learned of the mechanical aspects of song and revert to the simple mystic's superstitious pondering.

So it is with our understanding of evil. The failure of modern social science to fully explain "evil" and understand the human condition is not a reason to reject all that has been gained. Discarding the findings of modern studies and reverting to superstitious stories that were formulated within a religious mind-set doesn't provide any enlightenment; it promotes ignorance. Blind romanticism may be more comfortable than the uncertainty and inadequacy of social science, but there is still a baby in the bath water (even if it's an ugly one).

Let's now return to Amos Oz. He states:

"Personally, I believe that every human being, in his or her heart of hearts, is capable of telling good from bad. Even when they pretend not to. We have all eaten from that tree of Eden whose full name is the tree of knowledge of good from evil.

The same distinction may apply to truth and lies: just as it is immensely difficult to define the truth, yet quite easy to smell a lie, it may sometimes be hard to define good; but evil has its unmistakable odour: every child knows what pain is. Therefore, each time we deliberately inflict pain on another, we know what we are doing. We are doing evil."

And later in his speech:

"Of course, we might occasionally take wrong turns. But even as we take a wrong turn, we still know what we are doing. We know the difference between good and evil, between inflicting pain and healing, between Goethe and Goebbels. Between Heine and Heydrich. Between Weimar and Buchenwald. Between individual responsibility and collective kitsch."

Oz hammers home his clear dichotomy of good and evil as if there were no such thing as a moral dilemma in this non-idealistic world. Sorry, Oz, it's not that easy in the real world. He also assumes each of us has not only a knowledge of the ramifications of our actions, but also perfect empathy. He claims that we all know what we are doing, deep down. These assumptions show that he hasn't learned the lessons learned by modern psychology. Time and time again we see the evil that arises when good natured people act on the sincerely held beliefs of their cultures. Some of the worst atrocities are committed by those who believe themselves to be doing the right thing for all the right reasons.

Fortunately the quoted excerpt ends with a sentiment with which I can agree:

"Imagining the other is not only an aesthetic tool. It is, in my view, also a major moral imperative. And finally, imagining the other - if you promise not to quote this little professional secret - imagining the other is also a deep and very subtle human pleasure."

Empathy is extremely important. In fact, I'd go so far as to define: Evil is the triumph of ignorance over empathy.