The President: “For Make No Mistake…”
In his Nobel speech President Obama says this: “For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world.”
These words, of course, won him plaudits from the Right. And mostly silence from the Left, at least to the extent that I’m aware of the Left’s reactions to the President’s address.
But doesn’t one have to qualify the President’s statement, because taken at face value we would have to say that since evil does exist we ought to be able to find it, confront it, isolate it, and take the necessary steps to rid the world of it, as we’ve done, say, with the small-pox bacillus.
But we can’t do that. We’re not even able to find and confront Bin Laden, for many the embodiment of evil in this world.
In fact man has never had that kind of power over evil. Evil, if the President is right and evil does exist, always lies a bit beyond our ability to confront it and vanquish it. We speak of it but even if up close to it, as in a police line-up, we probably wouldn’t be able to recognize and identify it.
So the President’s words need qualification or explanatory notes. Otherwise the statement that evil does exist in the world is without real substance or meaning.
The actual situation in the world is something else. Mostly, and this is probably true for Obama, as well as for those on his Right and Left, one can’t assume that the the good will prevail, that people will always do the right thing.
To the extent that we are realists, as the President I’m sure would have us believe of him, we know through experience that a good number of people will not do the right thing, but rather what may be, or at least appear to be, some very bad (evil) things.
Furthermore, while we may say that evil exists in the world, we find it much harder to say that this or that person is evil. In fact, Obama doesn’t say this. He is careful to say only that evil exists, a safe enough statement and one that probably pleased his listeners at the Nobel ceremony. In addition, I’m sure that no one in attendance thought that the evil of which the President spoke was in the room with them.
It may very well be that the President only used the word evil in his ceremonial talk because he needed, there before the Nobel Committee of Peace, their support for him and what’s fast becoming his own war in Afghanistan. For one can and should fight evil.
An interesting question, — do you think that if Obama felt that evil didn’t exist he would have ordered the additional troupes to Afghanistan? I would say yes. Because whatever his reasons for sending the troupes, it couldn’t have been to combat the putative evil in the world.
For me the President would have done better not to have mentioned evil. This kind of language, as George Bush showed us, doesn’t help to improve relations between and among peoples. In my own lifetime I have never encountered evil. I would have to admit that I don’t know whether it exists, and I suspect that Obama doesn’t either.
Cruelty, horrible actions that seem “evil,” yes, but these are not “in the world” but only in the world of men. The world out there includes much more, and most, if not all of it, lies outside man’s good or evil designation.
Animals that prey on other animals, trap them, and eat them while they’re still alive, — do we call these acts evil? I don’t think so. And yet these acts are as horrible as any done by man to man, or woman.
Why is that? Why is there no evil in the world other than that of just one animal, man? Well we’re told by those who pretend to know that man, different from all other creatures, should know better. The polar bear dining on the walrus cub shouldn’t.
So by not knowing better than to do something, when we should know better, that makes us evil? No, I find that explanation unsatisfactory.
Actually the only thing that gives some reality to the concept of evil is the fact that man, throughout recorded history, has made use of it, or something like it, to describe behavior that he doesn’t understand, let alone approve. In that sense the idea of evil has been around a long time. We’ve talked and written about it forever, but does it exist?
Again, no. It doesn’t. I much prefer Plato’s substitution of ignorance for evil. Ignorance I know. I’ve encountered it many times, and I know that to do something about it is within our means. If he had given it more thought the President wouldn’t, couldn’t have said or meant what he said.
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