Our Editor posted that he had just visited the Nazi stadium, the Zeppelinfeld, in Nuremberg, and that he had felt creeped out by standing there. It isn't "history," - it's recent past.
Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Osama, etc. are just icons of evildoing. Scapegoats, in a way. The evil is not so importantly in them as it is in the effective unleashing of the evil in the hearts of their supporters. We eagerly forget that Hilter was elected. Some charisma helps, but does charisma come from popularity and power, or does it inspire popularity?
I will not reflect on my own potential for evil, or the dark side of my heart, on a website, but I know it exists and I know a bit about it. I am not making moral equivalences here, a la Pogo. There's a big difference between containing some darkness and acting on it. One thing I pray for is for God to always lighten my darkness.
Readers know that I accept the notion of evil, and refuse to medicalize or sociologize it. Readers also know my thoughts about utopianisms of all sorts, and especially what I term Psycho-utopianism. Anybody who has been analysed knows about the dark side of the Force, and does not need Hannah Arendt to inform us about it.
The "problem of evil" is a manufactured, trumped-up "problem" for and of the Enlightenment. Rousseau and all that noble savage stuff. Reason has its limits, and people are not "good." Most of us strive to be good, however, which is interesting and remarkable in itself, and evidence for many of the spark of the divine in humankind. Judaism and Christianity have no "problem of evil" because they accept the reality of man's fallen condition.
Our friend, the retired prison shrink Dr. Ted Dalrymple, who ought to know as much about the topic as anybody, takes on the subject.
Ed: I guess that is something of a Christian Rosh Hashanah post. Why not? Same roots. Reminds me of this (gotta love the fish fry):
