I haven’t pointed to James Carroll in quite a while, but he has a good article, much on the same theme as my previous post, about the hideous force of evil and how craftily sneaky it is in seeping into our culture via fear, greed, and the hubris of those such as the neocons.
Dance of the Demons
by James Carroll
there is another way to think of evil, finding it in the juncture between individual freedom and social context. The story of Genesis posits the malevolent serpent, but what ruined Paradise was not the serpent but the option made in its favor by Adam and Eve. What follows such choice is always unforeseen, but its dynamic is inevitable: Choice leads to consequence, which leads to new and graver choice, which leads in turn to yet graver consequence, and so on. A train of action-reaction is set in motion that quickly outpaces the ability of any one person to slow it.
This phenomenon can take the form of the ”grooved thinking” of a bureaucracy or of the ”institutional culture” that trumps even the good intentions of those who operate within it. Every human choice is made inside a rushing current of prior choices, and the pressure is not good.
Saint Paul spoke of the ”wiles of the devil,” but his defining metaphor for evil was systemic, not personal. ”For we are not contending against flesh and blood,” he wrote, ”but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness.” For Paul, the enemy was not fallen angels, but ”sovereignties” which are hostile to humanity. He was talking about Roman tyrants and an uncaring imperial bureaucracy. He was talking about politics.
The clearest instance of this phenomenon today is unfolding in Iraq. ”Wars generate their own momentum,” Robert McNamara once wrote, ”and follow the law of unintended consequences.” George W. Bush must be held accountable for the consequences of his fateful decisions, from the 2,000 dead Americans to the American embrace of torture to the igniting of a clash of civilizations. But the ease with which the United States embarked on Bush’s unnecessary and illegal war — with huge popular, political, and pundit support — was evidence of an already established momentum that predated Bush, and even his father.
This is only a portion, read it at Common Dreams News Center
