Environmentalism!
Christianity!
On this point Christianity is more right as anyone can ever be : evil merely demands one little thing and will give anything in return for ultimate control over your future. Of course this is the modus operandi of quite a few political parties of a specific orientation.
But what you're seeing in our current world is simply an upscaling of a previously existing phenomenon : evolution.
ANY gene that gets introduced into a population will do one of three things. This is a constant, whether we're talking about "artificial genes" or "modified genes" or natural genetic variation.
The one thing, the thing that nearly always happens is that after a relatively small initial expansion the gene gets replaced by a better one, whithers and "dies" (dies in the same way a computer program dies when it's erased : the storage space allocated to the gene is reallocated to other information, resulting in the (eventual) eradication of all traces of the gene from the real world). The reason this happens is that the spreading speed of the gene is too slow, and it's unable to "infect" (genes are best compared to viruses in spreading patterns) faster than it disappears.
A gene might also expand fast, and represent a genuine improvement for the living being containing the gene : it is a successfull adaptation. It will spread to the entire species in a time that is related to the total number of individuals alive, but if you look up concrete examples of how fast genes infect 100% of a species you'll find the speed astonishing. It is measured in mere decades for the human race. This spreading speed is not well accounted for, since obviously sexual reproduction cannot explain the speed at which it happens.
There is a third option : a gene spreads extremely fast, and is not an adaptation : it results in less offspring. So what happens to these genes ? Well worst case : look up "Spanish flew". The technical term for what happens is "pandemic". It spreads like the fire in the hindenburg, everything blows up badly, and immediately afterward, after the destruction occurs, not a single trace of the gene will be left. This, needless to say, leaves a mess beyond imagining for the survivers to clean up.
Religions, ideologies, all behave like these genes. There isn't a single long-term stable period in the history of islam, or for that matter in the history of socialism. By contrast the stable periods in Christian history lasted more than a millenium. Neither islam or socialism have been totally eradicated, despite the disease-like spreading patterns of these ideologies.
That merely means one thing : islam will die, and so will socialism. It will, however, take some event (a war ? the UN becoming a real govt ? ...) that does more, much more damage than WWI and WWII combined to rid us of these.
Near the end of the life of a gene, the pattern speeds up. Infections of large populations come and go, and the period between the massive growth and massive shrinkage of the ideology lessens. Bigger disasters (for the population) occur ever more regularly, and out of nowhere, after a particularly big mass-dieoff, these ideologies will have left the world, off to rot in hell.
Isn't evolution grand ? Sucks if you're part of this "population", of course. Oh wait ...
Evil you say? Last nite, on television appeared Joe Jackson, father of the now late Michael Jackson, for a little interview prior to the commencement of the BET Awards show.
You want to see a "face" for evil? Watch that interview and listen closely.
It doesn't get any better!
Theory: Evil is woven into the fabric of the physical universe, and is inseparable from it. The yin-yang symbol of the light and dark chasing each other - the 'dragon swallowing its tail' - illustrates the principle. The light side has a small spot of dark, and dark has a small spot of light; around and around they go eternally. Good comes from evil and evil comes from good in this transient universe. But this is not reality. God is outside of our world and is pure goodness, and the earth is only an arena, a stage, where psychodramas are played out for the sake of learning. There are many higher worlds beyond ours that are infinitely more pleasant.
Over eternity goodness triumphs, knowledge is gained, and finally the material universe is forgotten.
When you think of Oh-Gods-I-Want-To-Suppress-All-Memory-Of-Wearing-
That 1980's. When you think of when the shoulder pads were the biggest, the hair the highest, the music most unforgettably lame, the 80's trends taken to their most ridiculous extremes.......
You are thinking of the years 1988-1992. In other words, the tail end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. The short years before they tossed it all out the window.
I'm interested in knowing what this sentence was supposed to say: "... which is to enslave the human mind, and by doing so to to destroy humanity and."
Since when Muslim Brotherhood is peaceful?
They are peaceful only if you accept their jihad war against Israel, as long as they don't bother you personally.
Dave--I've fixed it. Somehow the end of the sentence got accidentally deleted.
River,
Evil is not a property of the universe at large. The universe simply exists. Good and evil ONLY applies to creatures who have a choice to think or not to think - ie man. Evil comes from the choice to not think. If there is no choice, it may be unfortunate but its outside the realm of good or evil.
Clearly, think here means far more than simply having some fleeting image, feeling, whim, wish, fantasy and the like. Those are mental processes but they have little or nothing to do with actually thinking.
To think MEANS to process mentally the evidence of your senses in as full context as possible without evasion or contradiction. To the degree this is not done is the measure of the evil involved.
If one thinks and makes a mistake, the result is not good but it also is not evil. However, if the mistake is evaded and no attempt is made to discover and correct it, that constitutes a choice not to thing and is evil.
"not to thing" -> "not to think"
The Washington Post author is engaged in more muddled leftist thinking. The events in Iran don't delegitimize the government, because Islam itself makes coercive government legitimate. It is well-settle Islamic doctrine that no matter how cruel and barbaric the leader's rule, so long as he promotes and defends Islam the devout Muslim must support him. The author is also seriously ignorant if he believes that Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia don't already support the global jihad against the West.
Great posting, Dr. Sanity. Evil "recycling" itself in the world is an insightful way of putting it.
Here's my suggestion for the next cycle of evil: "The New Fairness Morality." The core concept of Obama's liberalism is "fairness." It's the American way of stating "redistribution of wealth." We Americans have always prized "fairness." I suggest that Obama and the Democratic party are investing this concept with all kinds of new attributes:
(a) Class warfare--take from the rich and give to the poor. What this actually means is divest the people who work and make money (entrepreneurs and the middle class) from their earnings and give it to the underclass whose members have never worked and never intend to.
(b) Be kind to the oppressed nations. What this actually means is support thugs like Chavez, Castro and the president of Honduras who has just tried to undo his country's constitution. That's being "fair" to the thugs.
(c) Be nonjudgmental, that's the "fair" approach to international relations. What this actually means is utter words of condolence and concern to people who are fighting for democracy in foreign countries, but do absolutely nothing to help them.
These are just three components of the new Fairness Morality. I am sure there must be more.
Wretchard's Orwell videos are a must- see. Brilliant. The courage of the man is what stands out the most, for me. He cared not a bit if people thought he was eccentric. He had important work to do as a prophet, and lives were in the balance.
We need someone like him now. Try to imagine what he would think of our world.
A good point about Evil. One I'd nearly forgot.
It's been clear to me for years that so-called global warming was a complete and utter lie - from start to finish, inside and out, top to bottom. The only people who didn't know this were small children, the clinically insane, and, of course, the terminally stupid.
All liberals fit into one of the two latter categories. None fall into the first.
And yet....for something so obviously evil as that 'theory' and its knowing perpetrators, the pwoer to do harm it has is huge! It has already done incalculable damage, and it is just beginning!
Evil is so strong! It has its day of devestation and destruction....and that day seems always like it will be the end of days.
But it isn't. Evil lacks the main ingredient of endurance - the truth.
It is a lie. Its father is the father of lies. Those who believe this Global Warming totalitarion putsch are, at least materially, evil people, or in cooperation with it.
This is true for all of them, since there is not even one left on planet earth who can ratinally defend the 'theory' any more. It is demonstrably false and everyone knows this.
"The purpose of ECI is a very practical one. It is an attempt to rally evangelicals around the very real need to solve global warming and a call on Congress to pass legislation accomplishing this."
That's concentrated evil. One drop of that could turn you all into hermit crabs.
Bob @ 06.29.09 - 2:04 pm,
A government is not legitimized by mass pathological belief (ie Islam). A government is legitimate if and only if it respects individual rights. By rights I mean objective rights as defined by the nature of man and his relationship to reality. NOT artificial rights as defined by public poll, academic wannabe dictators, or governmental decrees.
An Islamic government, by its fundamental nature, cannot be legitimate because it does not recognize that individual rights exist. For that matter, individuals are not even a relevant concern for them.
If they keep their crap to themselves, they can be allowed to go to hell their own way. They will soon arrive. The instant they start spreading their crap around, they should be terminated with extreme prejudice. They do not have a right to violate the rights of their own people. They certainly don't have the right to violate the rights of anyone else.
Rational H. -
Isn't it what TO REASON means? To check anew the validity of your conclusions each and every time new facts come into light?
Stopping that is DOGMATISM - which is a sure-fire predictor for and symptom of the TOTALITARIAN EVIL - not to think, not to REASON for ourselves, but to rely instead on ... DOGMA, THE LEADER'S WILL, etc.
"a choice not to think is [ the root of all ] evil"
How true!
== ut servo Verum in totus res ==
(google-translated; someone who knows Latin please correct it)
"... even the peaceful ones, such as that espoused by Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, ...."
That phrase is a howler. Says that its author is either a terrorist or a madman. Also says that his thesis in this essay is unrelated to facts.
This post by Dr. Sanity deals with the phenomenon of Sin as distinguished from the phenomena of sins.
Christianity and Judaism -- and Hinduism -- recognize the phenomenon of Sin and the phenomena of sins.
Mohammedanism recognizes the phenomena of sins but not the phenomenon of Sin.
Elucidation of the distinction between Sin and sins requires an appreciation of the categories of ontological philosophy, which are expressed in myth and legend in the Bible, both Testaments, and the Vedas and Epic Poems of Hinduism.
Ontological discourse is rejected in "the West" and in the Mohammedan orbit and so the decisive distinction between Sin and sins must remain hidden and, therefore, an ever-present source of confusion and chaos in both of those realms.
.
Socialism---->Nazism---->Communism---->Islamism---->The Obama Nation
.
... you mean 0bamanation. 
ARH - I responded to your first message here, of course.
There was once a Sci-Fi author in USSR, Ivan Efremov, who came up with an idea of Great Ring of civilizations across space and time - with one main LAW that was the FREEDOM of INFORMATION.
Any civilization which limited its subjects access to free unlimited non-distorted information, had NO RIGHT TO EXIST and the others HAD to destroy it and free its subjects.
"Yet the lies that Melkor, the mighty and accursed, Morgoth Bauglir, the Power of Terror and of Hate, sowed in the hearts of Elves and Men are a seed that does not die and cannot be destroyed; and ever and anon it sprouts anew, and will bear dark fruit even unto the latest days." -- last lines of Quenta Silmarillion," J.R.R. Tolkien
Michael's comment on global warming spurred one other relevant Tolkien quote: "In nothing is the power of the Dark Lord more clearly shown than in the estrangement that divides all those who still oppose him."
Global warming encompasses two separate concepts: "global climate change," which is well-founded science, and "anthropogenic global warming," which is not. Not everyone who accepts the former also accepts the latter. Don't cast your rejection so wide that you wind up alienating people who could be useful allies.
Another aspect of the Sin-sins distinction is that because "the West" has rejected ontological discussion, it has rejected awareness of the phenomenon of Sin and the phenomena of sins, both.
This is why the distinction between Sin and sins is hidden and a source of chaos.
The concept of evil, comprising Sin and sins, has been rejected in "the West." Mention it and you will be regarded as a mental case -- and now a terrorist suspect.
So "the West" had gone Mohammedanism one better in its rejections. Mohammedanism rejects the phenomenon of Sin but acknowledges the phenomena of sins (though only as legally defined by scholars creating and administering shariah). But "the West" rejects Sin and sins completely, both sets of phenomena.
This differential between Mohammedanism and "the West" affords the former a pretext of moral superiority: it believes in the reality of sins whereas the immoral, decadent "West" condemnably rejects that reality. Therefore "the West" is a "beguiler," Satan, who must be expelled from the Muslim orbit which, in principle, is the entire universe.
Mohammedans sometimes use the word "evil" but when they do they do not reference the ontological basis of it that is thoroughly treated in classical philosophy and especially theology.
There is in fact a plenary technical language for dealing with the problem of evil. Condemned to disuse today as "superstitious raving" by, you guessed it, evil people with evil intentions.
The rest of us are perfectly happy to accept the reality of evil, comprising as it does both the phenomenon of Sin and the phenomena of sins, and we know how to talk about it. We also know how to recognize it and call it what it is.
Some years ago a US Army Combat Brigade Commander commented to me in email from Iraq that he had never before believed that there is such a thing as evil but that now he does because he has seen it up close and personal. He referred to AQ and JAM operators and their programs.
I am willing to surmise that there is not one person in the White House these days who believes in the reality of evil. I further surmise that one might walk for days through the halls of Congress and years through the halls of government bureaucracies and decades through academic faculties, law firms and courts to find one person who believes in the reality of evil.
After helping to defeat one evil, Nazism, Europe adopts another, Socialism? Yet, there it is.
After the collapse of one evil, the Soviet, the US electorate allows itself to be gulled and defrauded into setting up another, right on top of itself, an enormous incubus? Yet, there it is.
The face of evil is real and does indeed keep changing and, as the Bard observed, "hath power to assume a pleasing shape."
Not to harp on a point, but the only way to get a handle on this problem is with a lot of guns -- with an outcome unlikely to improve the beginning -- or a lot of ontological discussion -- with an outcome hinging on the depth of insight, the skill of handling that particular technical language and a large enough protected area in which to pursue the purpose.
In a word, the electorate cannot correct their mistakes outside the protection of their Army.
The name of the incubus on top of the US electorate is Afro/Mohammedan Imperialism.
> You are thinking of the years 1988-1992. In other words, the tail end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. The short years before they tossed it all out the window.
Trust me, that had nothing on the late 70s. One word: Disco.
It was the sixties bloomed to full-on narcissism, with Polyester, for that added kick!!
There's a reason it was called the "Me" decade.
Society was saved for the early 80s by Punk mutating to New-Wave, much as Grunge saved the 1990s.
> ... you mean 0bamanation.
Well, yes, but I was being more subtle.
> "global climate change," which is well-founded science,
wolf, if by this you mean that the global climate is constantly changing, yeah, that's established.
If you mean that it's even changing in a known direction, much less heading towards a particular goal, this is not established.
Through most of the tail end of the 1990s, there was an indication that it was getting warmer. All current indications, for the last 10 years, are that it's getting colder.
We don't have enough of a baseline of understanding of the longer-term processes, or of the underlying mechanisms, to say where it's going -- where the warming/cooling cycles -- are trending.
And that's the first problem we have to deal with -- the notion that we don't even know as much as arrogant lefties think they do.
OBloodyhell: How about Obamunism?
Although, as ARH suggested, "Environmentalism" works too. The hard-core environmental extremists have explicitly said that the human population is too big and needs to be "reduced".
The next great genocide will be the product of environmental ideology, and may already be underway.
When you say the world of 1984 can only be portrayed as steampunk you err. I thought one of the two most awful parts of the book (the other was the rats and the killing of love) was the changing of the past.
This is happening now and more and more all the time. "Bush lied and thousands died." Everybody involved in the news business knows that all the world's intelligence and much of the Iraq military thought he did have WMD's. But our own media has conspired to do a 1984-like number and change the past.
The other is the Obama administration. They have lied about everything they have done or are about to do.
You don't have to do steampunk to set 1984. 2009 would do just fine.
Commenting by HaloScan.com
