Patrick O'brien in his book, Master and Commander, now a film, once asked, "What is the worst of three evils?" I take the liberty of referring to the verbal art of finding evil in everything as weevilling. I do it sometimes myself. The weevil is a tiny creature that loves sea biscuits and enjoyed the life at sea during much of the period when huge-tall masted sailing boats were the norm.
What is really evil is ignorance. The most common failure of modern society is unfortunately ignorance. It's not that we don't have enough information nor knowledge, its that we have now to process the information in meaningful ways to derive conclusions.
One of the mysteries of the modern age is how Hitler was able to write his book Mein Kampf with all its hate as a resident of the German state in jail. The moral of this story is not to put people in jail so that their hate ferments. As the TV series OZ so apply demonstrates, more jails and jail time are not the solution to the growth of violent crime. A real solution has yet to be found, but it is not jail time. In jails, criminals continue to commit crimes, take drugs, and do all the things they do out on the streets.
How does one fight real evil?
Fighting evil is what mythology is all about. Weevilling is when we create the mythology that we know how to deal with evil, we weevil. In some societies the knowledge gap about how to deal with evil is so great that they go bankrupt with mythological ideas of a solution that continues to fail. The building of jails is just such a weevilling. Hitlers are created in jails, not outside of them. Our struggle against terrorism is a story about weevilling. We put those thought to be terrorists with terrorists and create new terrorists. We weevil about the solution, the mythology that jailing people actually works. In the end we will have more than 10 percent of the population in jails! No jails are not the solution to evil, jails are just weevilling, a mythology designed to make us feel good. A mythology that backfires in our faces as serious crime continues to grow and jails are the schools of criminals teaching crime.
What is really evil is ignorance. The most common failure of modern society is unfortunately ignorance. It's not that we don't have enough information nor knowledge, its that we have now to process the information in meaningful ways to derive conclusions.
One of the mysteries of the modern age is how Hitler was able to write his book Mein Kampf with all its hate as a resident of the German state in jail. The moral of this story is not to put people in jail so that their hate ferments. As the TV series OZ so apply demonstrates, more jails and jail time are not the solution to the growth of violent crime. A real solution has yet to be found, but it is not jail time. In jails, criminals continue to commit crimes, take drugs, and do all the things they do out on the streets.
How does one fight real evil?
Fighting evil is what mythology is all about. Weevilling is when we create the mythology that we know how to deal with evil, we weevil. In some societies the knowledge gap about how to deal with evil is so great that they go bankrupt with mythological ideas of a solution that continues to fail. The building of jails is just such a weevilling. Hitlers are created in jails, not outside of them. Our struggle against terrorism is a story about weevilling. We put those thought to be terrorists with terrorists and create new terrorists. We weevil about the solution, the mythology that jailing people actually works. In the end we will have more than 10 percent of the population in jails! No jails are not the solution to evil, jails are just weevilling, a mythology designed to make us feel good. A mythology that backfires in our faces as serious crime continues to grow and jails are the schools of criminals teaching crime.
