
THE *DON* JONES INDEX…	GAINS POSTED in GREEN LOSSES POSTED in RED
	5/21/14… 15,168.55
	5/14/14… 15,164.80


	6/27/13… 15,000.00

(THE DOW JONES INDEX: 5/14… 16,608.58; 5/7… 16,518.54; 11/19/12… 12,592.22)

LESSON for MAY 14, 2014

The purpose of these next three lessons is to determine this: Who is the most evil person in the United States?

Admittedly it is a vast and subjective question. Before one may proceed to the “who” of the matter, it is imperative to have answered the root inquiries… the “how” (as in how does evil take place?) and, prior to that, the “what” (as in the simple but treacherous question: “What is evil?”)

Of the other germinal qualities, we have settled the “where” and the “when”… the United States of the present time, including near-present and near-future. As to the “why” of specific evils, this most elusive mystery first requires an inquiry of the who, from which an answer may be elicited (and deemed to be truth or lie) or refused. Thus, only this first shall be the topic of today’s lesson.

The nature, definition and the profile of evil and of evil persons has fascinated and vexed honest artists, theologians, professionals and ordinary souls for centuries; perhaps the sole certitude in today’s climate of hyper-partisanship without serious cause is that any definition of evil is more definitive of the definer than the defined. Simple disagreements beget demonization… Republican polemicist Anne Coulter actually wrote a book that literally demonizes Democrats. In turn, the Move-On crowd hurls Satanic insinuations back. Christians hate Muslims, and vice versa… finding unity only when accusing Jews of deviltry. The rich and poor, black and white (not forgetting tribal conflicts like north and south Nigerians or Russians and Ukrainians), the feminazis and evil patriarchs… every human being’s curse and birthright is to have been born with an identity and membership in circles of race, class, nationhood, religion, sex, culture and on and on - with those outside one’s circle to be suspected (at a minimum) or, at worst, judged, juried and, all too frequently, executed.

So – in the beginning was the Word.

Evil! Most impartial etymologists (word doctors, as opposed to entomologist… the bugmen) and lexicographers (dictionary-makers) ascribe the word to the Old High German “Übel“ as translated to the Olde English “Yfel” eight or nine centuries ago. Wikipedia dates the term further back to the Hittite “huwapp”… references also abound (from Aesop, Aristotle, Hesiod, Plato, Plutarch, Seneca and many, many more) in the Classic cultures of Greece and Rome, Asia (Buddha, the Bhagavad Gita, the Zoroastrian Ahriman… often named as father to the Judeo-Christian Satan) as well as Egypt, the more southern regions of Africa, and even the vanished cultures of pre-Colombian America - all having terms for the sort of wrongdoing implied.

America, being essentially a Judeo-Christian construct (as recently supported by the Supreme Court ratification of prayer in local public meetings) often sees questions of good and evil in partisan, Manichean terms, but oftener proceeds to marshal centuries of scholasticism to categorize definitions into sub-categories numerous as in the natural sciences where, for example, the rattlesnakes that righteous Christians are charged to handle may be defined as reptiles belonging to the family Crotalidae; the diamondback being of genus Crotalis, species Adamanteus. “As a prerequisite for any discussion of evil,” Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary allows, “moral evil must be distinguished from physical or natural evil.” The sub-classifications of moral evil, like those of venomous snakes, are divided into social or ethical offenses (murder, theft) and cultic sins (offenses aimed directly against the reigning Deity (blasphemy, idolatry) which are addressed in the first four of the Ten Commandments and by the first of Jesus' "Great Commandments"; ethics are considered in the last six of the Ten Commandments and by the second "Great Commandment" (often called the “Golden Rule”). What is morally good is not what human society decides is in its best interest, Baker decrees, but what the revealed will of its reigning Deity (God, as set forth in the Bible) has declared.

Physical evil may have human, divine or random origins. “Very many times the evil is a corrective, to cause men to forsake the wrong and accept the right,” asserts Baker. “The flood was sent upon the earth because "all flesh had corrupted their way" (Genesis 6:12). This evil was to serve as a warning to those who were to live after.” Some persons of faith still contend that the sinful residents of New Orleans and New Jersey were chastised by hurricanes; those of the West by wildfires. Human beings not of the Book, (Egyptians and Babylonians, for example) were and remain soulless automatons permitted to oppress the chosen people as punishment for their sins, not the gratification of the conquerors for material or sadistic psychological gain.

The Catholic Dictionary, on the other hand, adds the element of “metaphysical evil” to the physical and moral offenses in Baker… which evil is defined as “the limitation by one another of various component parts of the natural world” which are the cause of suffering... not only among humans, but in the animal and vegetable kingdom, as well. While noting dissenters such as Schopenhauer (who admonished that conclusions reached upon “the hidden and underlying cause which has made these manifestations of evil possible or even necessary” must, for the most part, “be of a provisional and tentative character”), orthodoxy considers pain, “which is the test or criterion of physical evil”, to have, perhaps, a positive, though purely subjective existence as a sensation or emotion. (Anyone may test this premise by grasping a hot potato… the pain compels even the most obstinate to put the damn thing down, and thus be saved from further injury .) Evil’s quality, so say the Catholics, lies in its disturbing effect on the sufferer.

Thus the ancient conundrum: If God is all-benevolent, why did He cause or permit suffering? If He is All-Powerful, He can be under no necessity of creating or permitting it. St. Augustine, holding evil to be permitted for the punishment of the wicked and the trial of the good, shows that it has, under this aspect, the nature of good, and is pleasing to God, not because of what it is, but because of where it is; i.e. as the penal and just consequence of sin.

Others have proposed alternate explanations for the where, which shall be considered and judge in next week’s Lesson.

“God has not made the world primarily for man's good,” is presented as keystone of Catholic dogma, “but for His own pleasure; good for man lies in conforming himself to the supreme purpose of creation, and evil in departing from it. It may further be understood from St. Thomas, that in the diversity of metaphysical evil, in which the perfection of the universe as a whole is embodied, God may see a certain similitude of His own threefold unity; and again, that by permitting moral evil to exist He has provided a sphere for the manifestation of one aspect of His essential justice.

“In the light of Catholic doctrine, any theory that may be held concerning evil must include certain points bearing on the question that have been authoritatively defined. These points are

the omnipotence, omniscience, and absolute goodness of the Creator;
the freedom of the will; and
that suffering is the penal consequence of willful disobedience to the law of God.”

There are believers, nonbelievers and alternative realists among Merriam-Webster commentators; one T.W., seemingly of the latter, choosing a neo-Zoroastrian, neo-Lucasian concept of evil as a force, contending with its opposite force, the good. “Evil is the lack of God,” disagreed B.A. who considers it an absence of the force, rather than a competitive power. (Perhaps the reinstitution of the “Star Wars” movies will spawn the sort of “religious” movements that sprang up after the first trilogy, then fizzled.) “Evil is not a force. Evil is a vacuum. It is what there is left when God's presence or influence has been withdrawn. So if someone lacks God's influence then he is a force for evil. Why is that so complicated to highly educated people?

“An evil person is simply someone who lacks the influence of God in their life since evil’s true definition is the lack of God or God's influence. But that definition has been perverted to what you now read above about a cosmic force or some other suffering force, blah blah blah....”

To which T.W. replied: “Your blatant sarcasm and attempts to belittle those whose ideas are a shade different from yours can be like veils in front of your eyes that prevent you from seeing what is real and what is not. Perhaps you resent my suggestions. Well, I forgive you for hanging onto your resentments!”

And a student, R.S., posting before the 2012 election, added that Evil is “having a deliberate lack of empathy for other people. Hitler was evil. Sen. Mitch McConnell is evil. Mitt Romney will be evil.”

“I was looking (through the M-W site) for synonyms of evil to describe brutal, racist, Zionist policies,” added K.B., an Anger Management counselor…

Taking the above a step further, Quran-Bible at Wordpress.com asked why Americans loved Bush, but hated Iranian President Ahmadinejad? “Two reasons Israel and Jews. Bush is EVIL, Bush is Hitler, Bush is dictator, Bush must go to HELL.”

Not much sympathy for local Devils, there! Wonder what Muslims… in and of themselves evil, according to many, or even non-human “vacuums” who pray to Allah, not God… think of President Obama, who has been accused of Muslim-ism, himself?

But, partisanship aside, resistance to the Catholic Dogma argues that blaming the victims for suffering and abuse directed upon them by other people (or by nature, in general) is a cruel and self-serving justification for evil, itself; a direct contradiction of the concept of the benevolent Deity which sows the seeds of ecclesiastical corruption (as evident in the ongoing pedophilia scandals that have plagued the Vatican for at least a generation and probably longer). C. S. Lewis… hardly a freethinker; rather, a bigoted Ulster Prod whose tormentings of Catholic rival J. R. R. Tolkein and perennial philosopher Aldous Huxley were legendary… nonetheless stated this: “Of all the bad men,” he once observed (see Entropy and Renaissance, Chap. 24), "religious bad men are the worst!"

So who, then, are evildoers… can they be defined solely by their quality? And, if so, we are back to the first of our questions: what, then, is evil? And, from where… what dark corner of the universe… does it arise? Sources like Wikipedia (“Evil, in its most general context, is taken as the absence or complete opposite of that which is ascribed as being good…”) often simply posit it as an antonym for virtue or righteousness or a synonym of other judgmental terms ( “Morally bad” says Merriam-Webster, “morally wrong” concurs the lead definition in Dictionary.com) as if to confirm B.A.’s argument that evil does not qualify as a quality but only as a vacuum, reflecting the absence of good and right. Elsewhere, “Evil” may be a quality ranging from the adjectival “unlucky” or, from the Seven Deadly Sins, “greedy”, “lusty”, “lazy” etc. to the objective (war, deceit, sexual practices, alcohol or tobacco) or… commingling with the qualifying term “evildoer”… ascribed to persons whom a stone-thrower despises (whether broad groupings… Jews, liberals, talk-radio hosts, the one-percent… dark political icons like Hitler, Ahmadinejad or Bush, dubious celebrities… a blogger, Sodahead, nominates Brittany Spears!… or even fictitious characters in books, movies or video games). Among some young hipsters, “evil” has even become a term of praise, like “wicked” in New England. “This wine is really e-e-e-evil!” is a typical Millenial remark. In the digital underground, hackers use the term to describe incomplete or inefficient software, hardware and programs. The Dictionary of Slang references it as that which “implies that some system, program, person, or institution is sufficiently maldesigned as to be not worth the bother of dealing with.”

But even if Don Jones considers the philosophical and historical underpinnings of evil not worthy of the bother of dealing with, when weighed against the ceaseless struggle against its outcropping in the self, or others, evil… in the traditional sense… has Don in mind, either individually or collectively.

And today, unlike Classical Greece and Rome, visible gods, angels and devils seldom, if ever, interfere directly in the great or petty affairs of men. Evil derives… as Sartre might have concluded from his inquiries into life and the afterlife… from other people. Therefore, as applicable to our worldly Inquisition, we may conclude that…

Evil must manifest in human-originated deeds that cause suffering. (God, or other Deities, may give consent to its practice as having a punitive or corrective effect upon its victims, or choose to abstain from direct intervention.)

Evil usually results in tangible, often monetary gain to the evildoer (unless he or she is tripped up by incompetence in violating the law or community standards). Now and again, evil is practiced to gratify the psychological aberrations of the wicked, whom decent people may accuse of mental illness. And, of course, there are instances where the cause of the evil done is both, which we regard with the greater denunciations.

Evil sometimes arises out of a human being’s ambitions to play God. In such cases, the evildoer may not even have knowledge of his or her victims; he may ascribe to them the sort of absence of humanity that Mr. B. A. named as a prerequisite for doing evil. He may even extend the prerogatives of a Deity in convincing himself that his victims are responsible for their own suffering and that he is following some grand design, while availing himself of their property, and, often, their lives.

Next week, we shall move on to the “how”. Meanwhile, on the topic of evil, Don Jones mostly declined to confront or create it, choosing instead to take a nice nap in the warm sunshine after last week’s trade and unemployment-fueled advances. Nothing up much, nothing down… most indices were taking the week off and the professional scare-lobby, being occupied by the ongoing political primaries and the necessity of positing one’s rivals as creatures of such Hollywood-cribbed evil as now mostly inspires voters to snicker, rather than gripping their seats in terror, was pretty much absent with the exception of some doctors who wrote a report saying that wine and chocolate, thought beneficial, are really lethal.