The Problem of Evil

Karen Albert

8/30/09

Human biology makes us social creatures, social life requires morality and altruistic behavior, and yet we are perennially beset by the problem of evil. Humans are not well adapted to surviving as isolated individuals. Biologically, we are social creatures, that is, our brains are normally hard-wired for interdependence. Our brains and sensory apparatus give predispose us to empathize and form emotional bonds with one another, to pay attention to each others' needs, and to respond. For example, human young are defenseless, and depend upon their mothers for elaborate long-term care. Alone and without the advantages of technology, human adults would still be relatively defenseless compared to other predators in nature, and it is only through cooperation that we prevail against them. As social creatures we cooperate: that is, individuals are predisposed to give up some immediate selfish advantages for the benefit of our group. We are ready to act on behalf of others because we expect to share the benefits of belonging to a strong group. This is known as Reciprocal altruism. Cooperation requires trust and reciprocity--we must risk that the advantages we give up will be compensated by others sacrifices on our behalf. When members of a group cooperate consistently and creatively, they have a great collective advantage over other less cooperative groups. Our biological nature imbues us with moral instincts and with amoral impulses, and both have survival value. Survival in nature requires all creatures to pursue what is good for them and to do whatever it takes to overcome danger, resistance and opposition. Selfish impulses (to seize food and other goods, to breed, to dominate) favor the survival of the strong individual. Rapport, moral instincts, and the ability to cooperate and act collectively favor the survival of the group.

Empathy as one pillar of morality

Psychological research in recent years demonstrates that the human capacity for moral behavior is indeed based on inborn faculties and instinct: we unconsciously monitor cues that indicate the internal states of people around us, those cues in their behavior resonate in our own neural systems, causing us to feel their feelings, vicariously. Neurological studies show that the same part of the brain that is activated when we feel pain, for example, is also activated when we see another person in pain. Thus our normal responseto be helpful and to alleviate sufferingactually preserves our own sense of well-being and spares us from vicarious suffering. This vicarious experience of others feelings is usually referred to as empathy, and it is the basis for moral behavior. The capacity for empathy is based in a relatively primitive part of the brain that we share with all mammals: the limbic system. However, infants reared without an emotional bond to a caretaker may fail to develop the ability to empathize, and may reach adulthood without developing normal moral instincts. In addition to our basic moral instincts, we learn our societys special and elaborate moral code that specifies what particular behaviors are required, permitted and forbidden. Moral codes encourage cooperation and punish non-cooperation, and require individuals to restrain and channel their selfish impulses into socially acceptable forms. When we satisfy our selfish impulses within the guidelines imposed by our societys moral code, we are viewed as good people; when our selfish behavior violates the moral code, endangers the group, or hurts another individual, it is viewed as wrong, perhaps even evil. It is morality that keeps society healthy, but, paradoxically, it is the habit of cooperation that makes us vulnerable to betrayal. Damage to the frontal cortex of the brain can render a person unable to understand or follow a moral code. Lack of emotional bonding in infancy can prevent an individual from developing morality or conscience. Cognitive deficits, then, account for some incidence of

criminal and anti-social behavior that we call evil. Genetic traits have been observed that make some males more aggressive and more likely than others to use excessive force and violence.

Acculturation and Morality

Most evil-doers, however, do not suffer from genetic or brain defects. The morality of normal, healthy people is all too often distorted by an environment in which abusive and a-moral behavior is the norm. In addition, some emergencies may override the moral instincts, and some ordinarily moral people consider that moral precepts do not apply to some detested individuals, groups, and situations. Acculturation and conceptualization play a great role in the operation of empathy. Military trainers find it necessary and effective to subject recruits to vigorous indoctrination aimed to counteract their normal tendency to empathize. Such training is required in order to condition soldiers to kill the enemy on sight without hesitation. We are also able to choose not to empathize. People commonly empathize with people they recognize as one of us, and commonly refuse to empathize with people they classify as not human, or not one of us. Empathy is normally suspended, also, in the act of punishing a wrong-doer. People generally perceive that an individual who has violated the moral code has endangered the community and should be punished. Watching another suffer actually elicits activity in the pleasure centers of the brains of observers who believe they are watching the punishment of a wrong-doer.

Reciprocity as the second pillar of morality

Reciprocity is the psychological principle that demands a favor be returned by a favor, a blow by a blow. The demand for reciprocity, along with empathy, forms the underpinnings of instinctive morality. While empathy for our neighbors is the active and positive motivation for moral behavior, dread of punishment is necessary to discourage pursuit of the selfish advantages to be gained through immoral behavior. Punishment for wrong-doing is an essential component of a moral regime, and retribution is pursued for the sake of reciprocity. In complex and affluent societies in which people enjoy a great degree of liberty, the justice system has many options for fitting punishments to crimes: Jail time, fines, hard labor, and public humiliation may be effective punishments and deterrents. But when people who have nothing to loseneither property, dignity nor freedomcommit crimes, punishment becomes problematic. For punishment to be worse than the daily experience of a field slave or a medieval serf, it had to be brutal, savage, and corporal: whipping, mutilation, torture. Such people might actually welcome a quick death by hanging.

Ideology and Evil

One problem that arises with the administration of punishments to wrong-doers is that punishment itself can very easily become wrong-doing. The tendency for evil acts to be committed in the name of punishing evil-doers is amplified when people subscribe to religious beliefs or political ideologies that that teach them that any other belief is not only defective, but wrong, evil, and dangerous. Neither paganism nor the religions of the Far East, such as Buddhism and Hinduism, require their followers to persecute infidels, but Hebrew, Christian and Muslims leaders have at various times required the faithful to commit acts of genocide aggravated by atrocity. Political ideology has a track record that is equally bad. The French Revolution and the Dirty War in Argentina are just a two occasions in which political passions fueled orgies of death and torture on a monstrous scale. In all times and places, leaders of tribes, religions, nations and mobs have persuaded their followers that some other groups are their enemies, are wrongdoers who threaten the continued existence of everything good and godlyand thus deserve punishment. People have often been

punished as wrong-doers when their only offense was being somehow not like us. If individuals or categories of people are labeled as enemies, infidels, witches, trash, barbarians, monsters, sub-human or inhuman, empathy will be denied to them. The prohibition against causing harm to them will be suspended, and the infliction of maximum harm upon them may be celebrated as an act of virtue. Empathy is denied, and the psychology of punishment runs wild. Long conflicts, in which cycles of atrocities and revenge have raised hostilities to a murderous passion, have often spawned collective acts of monstrous savagery.

When the psychopath seizes the advantage

In general, morality promotes collective survival, but there are activities and circumstances in which an active conscience is a disadvantage. Fighting and trading stocks are two examples. In warfare, business and ruling, lack of conscience frees a leader to pursue self-interest without a flicker of inhibition. It allows one to act quickly, decisively, and ruthlessly. Public affairs, especially in large and complex societies, are full of moral dilemmas and paradoxes that can reduce a conscientious moralist to a dithering standstill. Human relations are bewilderingly multi-dimensional, and justice can only be approximate, hardly ever perfect. In some social crises, there is no possible course of action that will not have some unfortunate side effects. Although a leader may regret the unavoidable negative consequences, he will have to overcome his scruples in order to accomplish a greater good. A psychopath, on the other hand, has no scruples or regrets to overcome: he can focus his egotism like a laser, calculate like a machine, and act without hesitation. Lack of scruples is not the psychopaths only advantage in conflicts: Direct confrontation with ruthless violence usually reduces a normal person to a state of terror-induced paralysis. The ability to strike terror is a very impressive weapon, like a natural stun-gun. Because such terror is so debilitating, and because it results partly from perceptions registered beneath the level of conscious awareness, the psychopath is often credited with supernatural power. Leaders that display confidence, decisiveness and ability to dominate are perceived as winners. Those who oppose them on moral or rational grounds are typically derided and discredited as effete wimps. Followers are all too often willfully blind to their leaders moral shortcomings; they may even rejoice in them, thinking they will work to their own advantage. It is not only individuals who fail to exercise morality, but whole societies sink into moral degeneration. In such societies, moral behavior no longer has survival value. The suffering imposed by social degeneration is not merely lack of necessities, but systematic betrayal, abuse and exploitation: violence, intimidation, cheating, robbery, fraud, embezzlement, exploitation, parasitism. In a morally depraved milieu such as Nazi Germany (dare we mention the corporate mafia of the USA?) an individual cannot seek promotion and recognition without actively contributing to evil. The desire for public honor is not a vice in itself; but in a regime dominated by vicious thugs, a brilliant career will almost inevitably become a tool of evil. The Chinese classics were written in just such circumstances, and they counseled the superior man, the moral individual, to withdraw from public life and take refuge in obscurity.

Concentration of Power
The main economic thrust of the Civilized world has always been centralization of power: to entice or force self-sufficient individuals into hierarchical organizations of specialized subordinates; from getting food and shelter to producing and marketing saleable commodities. Jeffersonian democracy gave refuge, for a generation or two, to the self-sufficient householder

who was neither a lord nor a peasant. See what a community of people can do in a generation or two, who enjoy the advantages of civilization without most of its abominations! I envisioned the Cradle of Civilization: how the first organized agriculturists became irresistible targets of raids, conquest, and exploitation; how the state-sponsored military protection racket spread agricultural deforestation, war and slavery across the face of the earth just as inexorably as the global capitalists now spread CocaCola, television, and corporate/industrial proletariats. Religion, the Arts opiates of the people, propaganda tools of the Order. The Rex Mundi has always claimed for itself what is good and lovely, and twisted those things to its inexorable ends. I see that Civilization has always gutted its cities and left them, after their brief seasons of glory, burnt-out sinkholes for millennia afterward (witness Egypt, Palestine, Central Asia, Greece, China and India). I contemplated how Classical Civilization over-extended itself and then collapsed when its exhausted cultural morale/vitality could not uphold a military bulwark against the Barbarians. I think I see where the USA is headed. The Western barbarians rejected the dead civic culture of Rome, but they took to the religion, and took over what was left of the economic order. They held them against the Huns and the Vikings, and called their kings Kaisers and Tsars: Caesars. Civilized economy extended itself farther beyond agriculture than the Caesars had ever known, until not even absolutist monarchies could manage it. The Capitalist Corporations emerged in full regalia, and Democracy was a convenient way of casting political power into forms openly agreeable to domination by oligarchies of corporations and financiers. The North American Democracy fell in line soon enough: how could it resist development by the Canal companies, the Railroad companies, the oil companies?

Hierarchy Erodes Community, Empathy and Morality

In a crowded world where humans contend over every scrap of land and every morsel of food, survival depends upon prevailing over enemiesthat is, winning wars. In order to survive against hostile outsiders, a social group must submit to leaders; military organization becomes a hierarchy, and extends to many other realms of social life. Social hierarchy works against the tendency to empathize, and against morality: What starts as an arrangement for mutual benefit inevitably degenerates into exploitation. People at the top of the chain of command take a disproportionate share of the benefits of the social order; those on lower levels are forced to sacrifice self-determination, balance, and wholeness (not to mention health and life itself) for the sake of their betters. People in different levels and branches of the hierarchy may begin to think of each other as them rather than us; divergent interests and goals erode the sense of having shared interests that are the basis of community and moral inclusiveness; the lively sympathy between members of a community is replaced by mechanical role-playing and social climbing. The unequal distribution of rewards in a hierarchy is inherently at odds with our expectations of reciprocity, and breeds envy and resentment. People on the bottom of the hierarchy judge that society treats them unjustly, and are motivated to punish society: You who rule Society and reap the benefits clearly do not care about my welfare. You trap me in a life of poverty, drudgery and boredom. You allow me no access to reward or dignitytherefore I will cease caring about your approvalbut I will show you what I can do! I will gain your attention and I will make you pay. You will be sorry! In practice, Justice is a form of reciprocity, and Justice can be maintained only among equals, that is, between people equal in their ability to reciprocate favors as well as offences. If one party is so weak that its goodwill counts for little, and so weak that it cannot punish the offences of the stronger, there cannot be a relationship of reciprocity between the two, and consequently, no justice. The stronger calculates that the weaker has nothing to contribute willingly, that he cannot get anything of value from the weaker except by brute force. Each party

stops thinking of the other as "us," and assumes the license to treat the other as inferior, alien, inhuman, and unworthy of moral consideration. The prisonor the galleys, the concentration camp, or the refugee campis an essential pillar of the modern hierarchical state: It is the eloquent monument to coercive power, the necessary adjunct to the doctrine that If you are not with us, you are against us. Its existence proclaims, If you do not please us, you will be subject to a fate worse than death. People in upper levels of a hierarchy can inflict suffering on people below without ever having to see it, using their resources of reward and threat to manipulate their subordinates into doing the dirty work. Thus those who direct confiscations, massacres, torture, slave labor, and the like can avoid personal association with the crimes, and avoid the vicarious suffering that they might experience if they had to witness it. Those who carry out the orders are motivated to comply out of fear that they will be persecuted and made victims themselves, if they do not. What makes Society liable to moral breakdown? Large social scale Justice vs hierarchy Escalation of social inequity: the rich get richer . . . Abuse of power (they do what they can get away with) Tendency of the poor to live on the very edge of destitution Disregard for morality is a winning strategy in all-out conflicts (us vs them) immorality of an external war is carried into domestic affairs social trust breaks down, and all individuals regard one another as possible enemies Social conditions that favor moral behavior small scale, all know one another by sight homogeneity, shared values, culture, and morality all members share similar status, wealth, power and privileges long term relationships and repeated interactions are the norm stablility, outside influences subjected to "quarantine" explicit moral expectations, mutual monitoring of behavior strict and consistent penalties for violations awareness of human propensities to act selfishly suppression of competitiveness Social conditions that breed immoral behavior: large social scale, anonymity heterogeneity, many ethnicities, cultures and moralities in practice promulgation of ideologies that require vigorous persecution of the opposition wide disparities in wealth and power; privileged and exploited sub-groups Fewer long-term relationships; many opportunities for "hit-and run" interactions specialization of offices and skills change, instability, openness to outside influences that disrupt local community morality lack of explicitness or clarity in moral expectations lack of mutual oversight and policing lax and/or inconsistent penalties for defection gullibility (simple inexperience or inculcated naivet) culture of competitiveness specialization of roles, government secrecy that makes it difficult to monitor compliance or hold officials to account for their behavior

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

Behavioral experiments conducted in the 1970s show us that psychologically normal and well-adjusted college students placed in positions of unchecked power quickly started behaving like sadistic tyrants. In an experiment designed to find out about the impact of power on its holders, a professor of psychology created his own evil environment, a mock prison, in which college students were assigned their roles as guards and prisoners. After being given only a few brief guidelines the guards were given absolute power over their prisoners. As prisoners became increasingly resistant to guards, the guards devised novel ways of humiliating and dehumanizing them, and went on to physical mistreatment of the prisoners. Some of the guards positively enjoyed imposing such abuse, while other guards who did not actively participate stood by quietly and never challenged the abusive guards. At this point the professor called off the experiment ahead of schedule, in order to keep the abuse from escalating out of all control. The unmistakable conclusion is that absolute power does indeed corrupt absolutely. We are led to conclude that the atrocities committed by the infamous villains of history cannot be sufficiently explained by blaming pernicious ideologies or psychological illness. It would seem that monstrosity or psychological imbalance is less to blame than the lack of restraints upon the exercise of power.

Why do people do evil?

Primary motives: In self-defensefrom fear To protect life and property To punish wrong-doers, as punishment or revenge To punish the world for the unhappiness of their own lives To eliminate misfits from the community To gain a position of power As an way to display and enjoy power and status To intimidate and eliminate would-be challengers To quell civil disorder For a good causeto make the world safe for democracy, for example To gain the territory, possessions, and/or labor of the victimsi.e., for profit Because it gives pleasure Out of boredom, for entertainment Instrumental factors that make it more likely, or easier, to do evil: war or some other extremity mob hysteria orders from superiors Community custom, where not to do it would attract the enmity of the community Position of unchecked power over victim Labor is so unpleasant that people wont do it unless coerced Distance: the atrocity may be directed from a distance, without having to see it or get dirty ones own handsout of sight, out of mind lack of anything to stop or punish the evil acts weapons and other means of doing evil are at hand

Characteristics of the victims Vulnerable expendable Different in nationality, race, ethnicity, religion, social class, lifestyle An enemy in war not perceived as not worthy of moral consideration Perceived as disgusting refuses to submit or obey under less harsh treatment already deprived of everything (as with prisoners or slaves), and the only way to punish them further is to impose torture Characteristics of the perpetrators paranoid overcome by anger commitment to religion or ideology that commands them to annihilate its enemies Indifferent to the sufferings of others (lack of capacity for empathy), habituated to cruelty Sense of grievance, self-pity driven by lust, a compulsion, or a mental illness lacking conscience, moral compass, or capacity for social bonding their appetites have been jaded and require the stimulant of the taboo in order to feel pleasure in a position of unchecked power, not subject to oversight or criticism Social conditions Breakdown of social order due to war or natural disaster Weakening of institutions that once supported moral behavior Economic duress Promulgation of religions or ideologies that demand annihilation of the opposition Unassimilated alien populations within the society Mass hysteria History of pathological leadership has deflected moral compass of the populace Social scale has gotten big and depersonalized Culture of extreme competitiveness: A cut-throat, dog-eat-dog milieu: imperial Rome, for example Extreme concentrations and inequities of wealth and power that raise the stakes of social competition and motivate extreme behavior: when some have everything to win and others have nothing to lose. Over-crowding and/or over-population Lack of checks on people in positions of power

What kind of God would create such a world?

Injustice, atrocity and suffering would seem to be inevitable. Why do we continue to submit ourselves to it, generation after generation? Why dont we just stop? What is the purpose of so much suffering? Whats going on here, anyway? Is it punishment, or spiritual boot camp, or spiritual placement-testing? The Judeo-Christian tradition contends that God is both all-powerful and benevolent. If so, how is it that God allows such a lot of suffering and evil to go on in His creation? If He loves us and wants only good for us, why did He put the lying snake and the poison apple into His creation? If lust, pride, greed and self-will are sinful, why did He make us so susceptible to these and other sins, which He blames for bringing our suffering upon us? The existence of evil is either a divine mistake, or it is divinely intended. If it is a mistake, it must be a flaw in divinity, or a flaw in divine execution. If evil is intended by divinity, it is usually explained as a means of testing the virtue of individuals, or as a spiritual school of hard knocks. Maybe its not Gods fault that Society is Hell; but Hell is inevitable enough that it might as well be Gods fault. Theological positions on Evil: Monotheistic rationales Evil and suffering is a consequence of human disobedience to God Evil results when humans aspire to know and to do what should be left to God. God has given free will to humans as part of our resemblance to Himself, and that involves the freedom to choose to do evil (but animals suffer, tooand they arent covered by these arguments) Evil and suffering serves Gods benevolent purposes (Just because we dont perceive this doesnt mean it isnt so, and He is not obliged to explain it to us) The benevolent God is not omnipotent, but opposed by a malevolent counterpart, Satan God is at least partly evil (as illustrated by his wrathful violence in the Old Testament) God is fallible, and struggles along with us to overcome the stupidities of the world He created God is absentGod has distanced Himself from our affairs God is dead Hindu / Buddhist rationales: Karma: the notion that the conditions and experiences of our present lives are the consequences of our behavior in past lives. Our virtuous and evil actions in past lives have favorable and unfavorable consequences, respectively, in our present lives. Those who do evil will suffer evil in future incarnations. Cause and effect operates between incarnations, as well as within them. (Presumably, the divine code of morals is the same as the human code of morals.) Those who live well will advance toward escaping the cycle of birth, suffering and death. Desires for worldly things are rooted in Delusion; satisfaction of the desires of the soul are only to be attained by focusing away from the World onto God; if one can die in the

calm renunciation of the World, the soul will be released from the cycle of Samsara into a more direct spiritual communion with God. If you credit this possibility, conscious despair could be seen as a divine kick in the pants toward liberation of the soul. It seems to me that, in the context of human incarnation, the desire for simple material things (tasty food, sensory pleasure, and enjoyment of other physiological functions) in the consciousness that these are gifts of God are healthy and founded in the acceptance of Gods will that put us here for the moment. Friendship likewise. Such things are attainable, and can inoculate against Envy, Malice, Covetousness. Such socially transmitted obsessionsdesire for possessions, dominion, invulnerability, total control, admiration, prestige, success, immortality, etc.are insatiable and ultimately unattainable. If material reality is only maya, if it is delusion to perceive stone and flesh as solid and real, why doesnt it go away when we decide it is an empty side-show? Based on my own experience of this illusion, I would contend that illusions such as the solidity of matter and the serial nature of temporal events are divinely imposed and properly accepted as a contingency of incarnate life. The socially induced delusions - those that distract, distort and block our perception of phenomena, God, and ourselves - are the dangerous maya. And religion fosters some of the worst! Egotism causes suffering. Like all scriptures, the Vedas and the Buddhist sutras denounce egotism and exhort us to cultivate compassion for all. This is all very well -compassion is a priceless thing and intransigent ego is indeed a curse to oneself and ones fellows. At the same time, I could wish that organized religions gave their adherents a little more ideological equipment for resisting abuse of their good faith. If ego is bad for the faithful, must we live in fear of offending the tender unregenerate ego of the King or even of THE LORD? Peace, love and harmony are lovely ideals, but when harmony depends on someone else having their ego worshipped, must we meekly play along? If mortification of my own ego is the road to my salvation, is it not a sin to cultivate someone elses ego? It may be a mistake to think I am my body or my ego; but, as long as we are in this world, I am stuck with both, and have a legitimate interest in keeping them in good order. We dont have to eat all the physical, emotional, and mental junk-food that Society pushes at us; but we have to feed and exercise both body and ego in order to be spiritually healthy as human beings. The acceptance that this World is a vale of tears and the belief that the reward of a life well-lived is to be found only in the Hereafter are not, however, intrinsic to human nature: primitive cultures do not share it. Hunter/gatherers and the ancient Greeks all believed that the dead envied the living, and that the world of the dead was dreary and sad. Only when the pyramid of Civilization starts to crush the life out of its human base do people begin to believe God intends life to be more onerous than death. The doctrine that the sufferings in this life are tests from God, or the result of karma of past lives serves to keep the little people in their place, along with The Divine Right of Kings and other well-worn propaganda tools. Other theistic rationales There are a plurality of gods who contend among themselves, and their lack of harmony is the cause of evil in the world. (One may dispense with the notion of gods and keep the idea that the various forms of the Goodvarious forms of life, and various nations of

the worldconflict with one another. At least in contingent matters, what benefits one often damages another.) Our human perception and mentality is limited, and we cannot expect to comprehend this matter from Gods point of view.

Non-theistic considerations: Living a good life requires achieving many different forms of the Good, and this makes demands upon us that conflict with one another. For example, the demands of a life of public service may make it difficult to spend enough time with family. The attempt to reconcile various forms of the Good may lead a person into evil, as when a man resorts to a life of crime in order to support his family. The world and its resources are finite, while our desires are infinite. The population living off a given set of resources will always be bigger than the population that can live off it comfortably. Only deprivation curbs the growth of population. Death and suffering are inherent in material, mortal and temporal existence (as opposed to existence as an idea or as a disembodied spirit): Life feeds upon life: herbivores eat plants, predators eat prey, parasites infest and torment their hoststhat is the way of all flesh. Pain serves us as a deterrent to dangerous behavior, and death terminates life when the physical vehicle has broken downthese are necessary and beneficial functions in Nature. (It is SOCIETY that inflicts and exploits pain and death for other purposes). Natural selection and survival of the fittest may involve suffering, while operating to perfect the adaptation of living things to their environments. The plurality of living beings is an unavoidable cause of evil: Death is an evil for the prey that dies, but it is good for the predator that must eat--Death is necessary to preserve life. What serves to benefit me may, at the same time, work against you. The failure of one provides an opportunity for the success of another. Evil (as opposed to suffering) is a creation of the intellect: the moment one begins mentally to divide up the whole fabric of reality and prefer the good parts, Evil automatically springs into existence as the symmetrical counterpart of Good.

Millenarianism and the Final Judgment

Life in civilized society is characterized by such persistent and glaring injustice that the only way many people can accept it is to believe that justice is restored in an afterlife: in Heaven or Hell, and/or by a global Apocalypse. Our moral sense tells us that the way of the world is vastly unjust, and that the restoration of justice we long for would involve turning the world upside down, and the end of life as we know it. Nicholas Campions The Great Year, a history of historiography and millenarianism, presents the succession of religious, astrological, political and scientific theories that have kept huge populations awaiting the Future Apocalypse or the New Age, from the dawn of civilization right up to the present moment. Expectation of the apocalypse has, incidentally, been instrumental in keeping us mired in gross exploitation since the times of Gilgamesh. It is enough to make me want to drop out of the human race. Against all reason, in our heart of hearts, we long for the Day of Destruction. We long to witness a gigantic act of God that will trump all the negative consequences of our individual and collective deeds. We long for this to happen because the mess we have made of our individual and collective lives just seems to get worse with every passing day, and because getting old and dying is so unattractive. The prospect of enduring the compounding problems of this mess

societal evils, ecological poisoning, grubby troubles, indignities of old ageis the prospect of a long torture. A huge global disaster would not be our fault, would seem to offer release, and the possibility of wiping the slate clean. Instead of dying with a whimper, our imagination prefers the scenario of going out in an Apocalypse. It is a common form of escapist wishful thinking. Most of us secretly believe that we are of the elect who would be taken to the Good Place; while those who have been our tormentors would finally be punished. This longing for the Apocalypse would seem to be part of the mindset of the monotheistic religions, as neither pantheists nor Buddhists indulge it. Hindus, however, do have their teaching about the succession of yugas, or ages. The prophets of Apocalypse connect with our hopes and fears, and support their predictions with signs of the Coming Big Event that are observable in present realities. The preachers often enjoin us to signal our readiness for the return of Divine Justice by renouncing our accustomed ways of life; and we have sometimes been called to undertake Holy Wars in order to clear the way for the Kingdom of God. The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, a millenarian sect that gathered in Kanungu, Uganda in the last years of the twentieth century, provides a succinct paradigm of apocalyptic madness: Sect leaders persuaded thousands of followers that the world would come to an end on December 31, 1999. In anticipation of this event, believers were induced to give up their money, property and belongings to the sect. When the Apocalypse failed to materialize, some members demanded the return of the property they had surrendered to the sect. Leaders responded by stabbing, strangling, and burning alive over 1000 people. Prophecies of apocalypse function as carrots and sticks, serving to intimidate and confuse people on a huge scale: as Campion puts it, to enchant entire populations, enrolling them mindlessly in the service of history and what is usually imagined to be the common good. The drama inevitably turns out to be a ritual sacrifice: The Maccabean rebellion, the Crusades, the Wars of Religion, the Empires, the Revolutions, the pogroms, jehads and ideological purges, the mass suicides associated with Jim Jones, the Comet Hale-Bop, and Waco, TX , The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God all rituals of death, hoping to defeat the Antichrist and/or usher in a New Paradise, but always stoking the fires of the same old Hell.

Thoughts in Conclusion
As I continue trying to understand why human beings imprison themselves in the hellish world of war and slavery, I am starting to get a feel for it: Human creativity gaining power over nature and social relationships, human productive enterprises inevitably requiring a military Protection Racket, the snow-balling of power: the strong getting stronger and the weak pushed forever just up to the verge of perishing; human ignorance growing in exact proportion to the development of specialized knowledge and skill; hierarchy and extension of power beyond the capacity to hold moral authority; replacement of social rapport and good faith by mechanistic formulae; projection of internal tensions outward onto an Enemy Other, institutionalized violence and exploitation; corruption and crime becoming the only way to survive. I begin to see the cause of evil is appallingly simple, integral to our humanness: we are creatures capable of great deeds; the behavior of individuals has a great potential for impact on other individuals, on groups of others, and on Nature, just because we have rich imaginations and great ambitions, increasingly empowered with intellect and technology. Even when we love each other and act with the best of intentions, we often hurt one another. When we do not love one another and think of others as Them rather than as We, and when we conceive of Nature as it rather than as Mother, murder, rape and pillage are inevitable.

From exercising what is creative and godlike in our natures, we work ourselves at length into Hell. I begin to see that Eating the Apple of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is indeed an apt allegory for the Fall From Grace. I can see why Judeo-Christians called it Original Sin; but the institutionalized religions misrepresent it because they are all up to their eyes in it. I begin to understand the rationale behind those esoteric traditions that seem to try to wean one off Life itself for the sake of attaining freedom from the tyranny of material and social life: It is our fundamental desire for More - food, comfort, security, goodies - that makes us susceptible to tyranny. If we have no desires and are ready to die, we can tell the tyrant to go to hell. But thatll be the day! I begin to see the engine of suffering is this: There is, ultimately, only one means of livelihood: extortion. In order to eat, we take the lives of plants and animals, we imprison livestock to take their milk, meat and wool, we destroy wildlife habitat in order to plant crops, we kill each other to rob and defend property, and on and on. Except in the human spirit, there is no Eden. Nature is red in tooth and claw. Society inevitably involves injustice. Original Sin is the Ground of Being. Whatever you call it, it is standard equipment in corporeal existence. Incitements to eradicate the Evil and return to Paradise go against Life itself. So, I conclude: I can stop racking my brains over what is the right way to live; there is no right way to live. Its bound to be wrong, one way or another. The observations of Thucydides, Montaigne, and Machiavelli make it clear to me that amorality is not an aberration, but a constant that has its perennial place and use in human social conduct. When its a matter of confronting the Other, whether barbarian infidels, the scum of ones own society, or a hostile sibling, people readily drop their moral scruples. The rule for survival given by the Games Theorists is: Dont be the first to break the rules, but once the rules have been dropped, return tit for tat. Morals and criminality would seem to function in society much as hormones function in the body: there are many of them, reinforcing, modulating, and opposing one another in an infinitely complex choreography. According to daily, monthly and annual rhythms, and in response to environmental conditions, various hormones make us alert or sleepy, aggressive or compliant, hungry or satiated, and on and on. According to changing social conditions and contexts we are more or less moral. For most of us, Machiavellian amorality must be learned. In some times and places pitiless selfishness is what preserves life, as survivors of Auschwitz and Hiroshima regretfully report. Good and evil, right and wrong can only be judged in the context of specific circumstances, from a particular point of view. Various participants in the same situation will be bound to see good and evil differently. Ultimately, in the gods-eye view, good and evil are both necessary, both inevitable, and both perhaps irrelevant. Although the philosophers may be on solid rational grounds when they explain away the problem of evil, human beings will always have a problem with it. It is not enough to declare that, rationally, evil does not exist, because almost all of us are born with a faculty of perception that continually sees it and nags us about it. The problem of evil may be a delusion, but it is a compelling delusion, one that is not dispelled by rational thought. The problem of evil is not a problem that can be solved once and for all. Human life inevitably involves us in a never-ending effort to achieve and reconcile various forms of goodness, while minimizing evil. Our moral dilemmas will continue to require of us all the good faith, worldly shrewdness, love, courage, fortitude and wisdom we can call forth from heaven and earth.

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