The Danger in Cherry-Picking Moral Imperatives: Evildoer. From Description to Judgment. Who Is The Evildoer?

In Reverse in Moral Thinking.  

Getting to "Evildoer". In modern times, a step backwards.

There is a Danger in Cherry-Picking Morals: Hit one and not others.

Move from Description of an act, to Self-Appointed Enforcement against.

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Who is the Evildoer?  What are the criteria.

What does that idea give you license to do.

The Downward Slide from Observation and MYOB; to Judgment

I. Background.

How do people address morality.  All cultures have a concept of it, is that so?

The classics focused on the origins of ideas, like morality, the nature of the human beast. See Plato on moral responsibility at ://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-responsibility/. The inquiry was objective, pragmatic. What evidence is for, what evidence against, a viewpoint. Analyze.  Think.

Our idea of "moral" began similarly - in a decidedly secular, and individualistic way. 

We went to the dictionary.  See "Moral" in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary at ://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?moral/ Middle English, Anglo-French, Latin/.  

The stem concept for "moral" means 

• "custom." or 
• "practice." 
• A standard of right behavior, "sanctioned by or operative on one's conscience or ethical judgment." 
• A moral certainty - probable but unproven. 
• The concept of "moral" as it began carried with it no judgments on others. 
• It is descriptive.

So how did we move from that, a description while you went about your own business;  to morality as judgmental - your job is to interfere with others. We have arrived at the precarious point where one person's view is used to batter another. 

Enter the era of the Evildoer. President Bush used it a lot.  Evildoers justify our invasion, killing. Who on earth started that.

II. Definition of Evildoer: Applies to folks from the community

Look at the history of the concept of evildoer.  It began, apparently, as a mild community matter, and descriptive. This is what evildoers do. This is how you know them:  Look at religious sources first, because early texts use it. 

A.  This is how you know an evildoer:   

Which of these justify an invasion of another country that has not attacked you?

• Evildoers speak evil against you. I Peter 2: That must mean that Evildoers include malicious gossips.

• Evildoers listen to wicked lips. Proverbs 17:4 - (This means that evildoers include teenage girls listening to their evil boyfriends?

• Evildoers "mutilate." Philippians 3:2. (I believe the reference is to circumcision?  do we invade for that?)

• Evildoers trust riches and lie. Psalm 52, see V7.  Oops.  This means that Evildoers are everybody with a bank account, and utters factoids. See Factoid.  You lie! 

• Evildoers are criminals. See II Timothy 2:10. See comparative translations at Gist: though I am in chains as an evildoer, the word of God is not in chains.  This means they get tried as criminals.  Correct?

B.  With criteria, easy enough. 

Do the crime, do the time (were the identification procedures followed?). 

If all agree on the criteria, the community at one time just shunned the evildoers.  Later, cultures developed their enforcers ready to attach punishments and controls as the community or its leaders ordained.  Do those things and you are an EVILDOER.

III. Evolution of Evildoer concept - Apply Your Definition To Outsiders:

A.  Watch the evildoer process. It is a process of externalizing.  

People took their labels (or, rather, their religious and political institutions did) and affixed them to outsiders. The idea seems to be that: the individual says -- that my point of view now controls your future, you on the outside. It is "in your face" to all who disagree.

Then the next step is easy. Once someone is labeled, attach punishments and controls, just as though these people were in your own community.  They are not in your community; they are outside;  but the drive to punish those outside your "community" drives with a powerful force.

How to address this issue, this change in frame of reference.

B.  But how to externalize when we are indeed in a global community. 

Problems become more complex when people label others both inside and outside their immediate community; and attach their own punishments and controls; and proceed to legitimize them in their own eyes. 

In a global community, should not the identification, punishment and control, also be global. Is that the reason for the UN and the International Court. Probably. But the US ignores an International Court.  Update: see ://www0.un.org/News/facts/iccfact.htm/.  Now that the US judicial department has said no actionable problem against the torture memos "justifying" the Bush torture years, can the Criminal Court now proceed?  Why not.

C.  Issues of morality creating even mroe complexity:

• One group's permission to proceed on its own sets consequences in motion against many, without recourse by the ones who are targeted. Just because one group says someone committed a crime, that does not necessarily make it so. 
• Look at the horrors of the labor and concentration camps. The killings of the Orthodox Christians, Gypsies, other "undesirables" according to the Ustach om WWII , died at Jasenovac concentration camp in Croatia (see Croatia Road Ways, Jasenovac.  Were they the only "criminals" in the minds of the persecutors. How do you control the definitions of the persecutors?   Why did the Catholic Christian Church not take a stand.  Did they benefit?  Did they label the orthodox and gypsies and Jews as "evildoers" and then feel free to let the killings go on, under their very noses.

• One group labels, as evil, or immoral,or heretic, or gay, another group.  That  in effect grants a license for others to take steps against them.

D.  The labeling disease

• Take animals, for example.  By labeling them as un-souled, non-human, we can do with them as we like.

Define an advanced mammal or any creature as non-human, and a profit-making inventory, and you are allowed to have your way with it until it is dead. Groups more likely to foster this approach.  But is that so?  All living beings have souls, according to earliest transliterations, see ://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/OTpdf/gen1.pdf/.  Scroll down to verses 20-21 --- souls to every living creature, flying, swimming, all that.  

Go ahead. Read.  Souls.  Ye gods and little fishes, we were not taught that.  Who left it out?

E.  Morality:  What is severable, in a lasting, sustainable way.  

We need to ask about our "morality."

Individuals, in a give-and-take mutuality, probably not. Do we have mutuality.  The health and well-being of one affects the other. Is that so?
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Rural Romania. Creation care? Decent treatment. Relationship, if you will. 

Stewardship. Creation care. Dominion without domination.

These cows peel off a long line coming affably down from the upper pasture at the end of the day, they meander up their own roads, and stand by their own gate until fetched. Dan was taking a picture of something else when this one headed his way.  He just stepped aside and enjoyed the peace of it all. Then the owner came out.

Now:  Leap from the original concept of what is moral, a matter describing some interpersonal acts against the receiver; to the huge consequence of using "evildoer" to serve shady political and religious indoctrination goals. 

Look at the effect of our adding "evil" to describe others' moral choices. We like to think we are against clearly defined "evildoers" FN 1

Back to the cow.  But then we misuse other sentient beings.  Just for profit. They are not evildoers. FN3.

There are alternative ways to treat sentient beings.  Moral ones. Is that so?