[Buddha-l] Evil

[Richard Hayes]

On Jul 30, 2009, at 9:49 AM, Jayarava wrote:

> But why is stupid the default setting? Why are we stupid at all? Is  
> there some advantage in being stupid?

I can only speak for my fellow Americans on this. In my home and  
native land, the survival of our cultural values and our way of life  
is entirely dependent on stupidity. Stupidity supports unregulated  
free trade, unrestricted ownership of firearms, round-the-clock access  
to the latest information about the life and death of Michael Jackson,  
maintenance of an arsenal of enough nuclear warheads to snuff out all  
life on the planet several times over, and a health-care system in  
which bureaucrats who work for for-profit insurance companies decide  
who can receive medical treatment. (Thank the merciful Lord that we  
don't let BIG GOVERNMENT encroach on the greed of monstrous  
corporations.)

> Or are we set to self-destruct?

The fact we have not self-destructed already could be used as evidence  
that there is a benevolent god who saves us from the natural  
consequences of our own greed, hatred and delusion. Of course, if that  
same god also created us to be prone to greed, hatred and delusion,  
there could be a problem in the minds of some Scottish philosophers.

> It is actually quite a bizarre thing for a social animal to make  
> such a big mistake. By rights we would simply die as a result of  
> pursuing this strategy over a lifetime, let alone successive  
> generations. So again the question arises: why are we stupid? Not  
> just a little stupid, but really incredibly stupid!

Human beings are social animals who have evolved to function well in  
social units of between ten and twenty people. If  the human  
population were only somewhere around 100,000 or so, we would all live  
in groups of ten to twenty people. If we came across another group, we  
would grimace at them and throw a few rocks, and eventually one of the  
groups would yield to the other. What makes us collectively really  
incredibly stupid is the simple fact that there are 6.774 billion of  
us. This uncontrolled population growth has happened so rapidly that  
we have not had time to evolve into a species capable of dealing  
effectively in social units larger than one or two dozen animals.

If you are a praying sort of dharmachari, pray for famines, pandemics,  
genocidal wars, global warming, earthquakes, floods, and collisions  
with large meteors, all of which will help reduce human population. If  
that seems too much to pray for all at once, just pray for  
Republicans. They'll support all the policies necessary to create the  
conditions needed to reduce the likelihood of large-scale human  
survival.

> If there is evil at all, and we seem to agree that there is evil,  
> then it must accord with reality at some level. Reality is  
> everything that is real. Evil is real. Reality must be evil (at  
> least to some extent). So where does that leave us?

I don't believe that evil is at all a useful concept. It has neither a  
descriptive nor an explanatory value. Belief in evil is itself just  
one of the many manifestations of the human incompetence that takes  
the forms of greed, hatred and delusion. Greed, hatred and delusion  
are counterproductive. Nothing much is gained by saying that they are  
evil, or that they cause evil. I move we ban the word "evil" from  
buddha-l (along with the word "hīnayāna").

> Unfortunately all of history argues against any movement towards the  
> Good as far as I can see.

You don't think we were right on the brink of Infinite Transcendental  
Goodness when Michael Jackson was King of Pop? Devadatta Bhikkhu, if  
you do not accept the fact that Jackson's moon-walking was a sign that  
our species was moving ineluctably toward the Good, I just don't know  
what kind of evidence you would need, Jayarava. You're a hard man to  
convince.

> Where is there any evidence of a coherent good, let alone a  
> sustainable good, in the world?

I can see you have never been to Disneyland.


Dayāmati Dharmacārī