Thought for the Week: The structure of evil
Barrie Rowson considers the structure of evil
It may be that everyday evil is just an absence of the good, as a Friend recently wrote in the Friend. However, when we are faced with industrialised genocide or the carpet-bombing of civilian populations my intuition screams out that there is more to it than that. I am not enough of a theologian to be able to say what God may or may not want. I am, rather, a practical scientist who asks if Darwinian evolution may be able to help us in this matter. It is quite an achievement that Augustine of Hippo with his privatio boni managed to largely foreclose the study of evil for a thousand years.
Our neighbour once had a cat, and we liked to watch wild birds in our back garden. We discussed this potential conflict with our neighbour and she assured us that her cat would not hunt birds because she was careful to keep it well fed on meat. Yet, we could see that it continued to hunt, though it was usually too slow to catch anything. This showed that the cat had an instinct to eat meat and a separate instinct to hunt. In the wild animal these two instincts work well together to enable it to survive. Knock one out artificially and the other will linger on.
Looking at the human condition through the lens of Carl Jung I am tempted to identify instinct with archetype. If the archetypes are well integrated into ‘the Self’ the person lives a well-balanced and fruitful life. If an archetype is not integrated it lingers in the unconscious attracting energy to itself and waits until an unfortunate situation occurs, and then it can erupt with disastrous effects. We sometimes see this in football crowds, which are well-behaved most of the time. Yet, just occasionally, there is an outburst of racial hate or tribal violence.
I had a wartime childhood and I could see that so much of what was going on around me was evil. But some good did come out of the situation. In particular I noticed the increased speed of technological development. Back in the Stone Age there must have been conflict between neighbouring tribes. The better organised tribe with better weaponry would probably have prevailed. Such tribes would have prospered and divided, while others would have done their best to copy some of their techniques. This led on through the Bronze and Iron Ages to the civilisation that we have now.
Not only have we inherited the culture, but we have also inherited the archetype for conflict which was once so valuable.
Just as a plant is only a weed if it is growing in the wrong place or time, so is this archetype now evil? (Reverting to theology, can we say that it is a fallen angel?) We must not deny it, but learn how to handle it, perhaps with the help of sport, or the arts, or some form of mysticism.
You need to login to read subscriber-only content and/or comment on articles.