I have a new theory that I recently concocted; it goes like this: Almost
all evil stems from the basic elements of fear
and patriotism. A little explanation is needed
here; I use the term patriotism in a strange
way. What I mean is the tendency of people to group together and work
for the accumulation of wealth and benefits for only the members of that
group, to the exclusion and possibly the detriment of others. As I explain
elsewhere,
Greed can be thought of as the "n=1" case of patriotism; the group size
is usually one person.
It's ironic, but patriotism can happen on
many scales. Consider the example of a high school senior living in
Chicago who is an avid basketball fan and player. He wants his high school
basketball team to beat the rival high schools in the city. Even if they
don't, and another team in the city makes it to the state playoffs, he
wants his city's team to win the state tournament. Similarly, he wants the
Chicago Bulls to take the NBA championship for the 50th time, and he
probably wouldn't mind seeing the USA basketball team bring back the gold
from the Olympics. Now, this is a rather silly example, but it shows
the absurdity of patriotism at any scale. How does this 'patriotism'
cause evil? Same reasons that you'll find for
Greed.
Now fear is a different thing. Fear causes
people to behave selfishly (greedily) for need of security. Fear makes some
people actively lash out to hurt others. Think about the movie "Easy Rider".
Two bigoted white police officers murder two relatively harmless hippies
who were looking for some truth and a good time. Why did the cops kill
the hippies? The hippies were very 'different' people, and the two
policemen were afraid of them at some deep level; they were
ignorant of the two hippies' true nature and unwilling to see past
their prejudices. So they thought it would be fun to dispel the threat and
exterminate the hippies. Clearly an unjust situation.
Anyway, this is just a theory. It's probably full of holes, but I see
a lot of situations where it holds true. Email me with your thoughts and
ideas about this.
