Few topics get dismissed from conversation as easily these days as the concepts of good and evil. These are considered the puerile stuff of silver-age DC comic books or of Dhar Mann videos. Adults in the real world know that real life isn’t really good or evil at all; that almost everyone and everything from lawyers to money to guns to the police or military can be good, evil, or both; and anyway, what difference does it make? This isn’t a video game with a morality meter.
Whether you’re an elite East Coast editorial pundit, evangelical megachurch pastor, or politician of either side, you’ve long ago moved on from good and evil — as absolutes, anyway. Sure, you’re ready to call the bastards voting for the other guy evil… but then, you’re not really calling them “evil.” You’re just going back to a separate and equally ancient tribal concept of the “other tribe.” In reality, one does not become evil just for being of the tribe across the hill.
But what if there really are such things as good and evil, as morality? And not even in a relative way… but in an absolute way?
This also does not mean morality in terms of your religious faith, because that’s kind of relative as well. Being gung-ho for Jesus might seem good in your megachurch, sure; but might not sit as well for the mosque down the street. What if there are certain rules of life and behavior that apply to us all, Christian or Muslim or atheist, American or Chinese or Botswanan, old or young, rich or poor, male or female?
Examples make this kind of discussion easier, so let me introduce you to a man named Dan Snyder, owner of the Washington Commanders.
Now, NFL owners as a group are not exactly known for being shining avatars of virtue. Jerry Jones, the greatest among their number, is a notorious skirt-chaser with a history of racism. Jimmy Haslam got rich by ripping off truckers at his chain of truck stops, and he had no qualms in trading for notorious serial sexual abuser Deshaun Watson. Stan Kroenke tried, and failed, to screw over the city of St. Louis and his loyal fans to move the Rams to a more fashionable city; and when he lost the resulting lawsuit, he left it to the league as a whole to bail him out. And all of them conspire to protect each other from the consequences of their various scandals and crimes — when they aren’t conspiring against each other.
This is not a choir of angels we’re talking about.
Yet even they are forced to recoil in horror and disgust when someone wholly given over to absolute, elemental evil like Dan Snyder has infiltrated their group.
Jones and the boys probably thought Snyder was no different than any other pro-sports owner when he bought the then-Redskins in the ’90s; but then, the allegations began piling up. The sexual assault of Washington cheerleaders. The shaving off every dollar possible from Fedex field’s maintenance budget. The confiscatory concession prices at said field, and otherwise shaking down his miserable fan base as much as possible. The threats of blackmail against his fellow owners. The time he attempted to stiff the winner of a raffle contest for what is a completely trivial amount of money for him.
And, lately: he screwed over visiting NFL teams to Fedex field by cooking the books and cheating them of their NFL-mandated share of ticket sales. Seeing as how the man who had been his biggest rabbi in the league, Jerry Jones, visits every year with his team as a division rival, this took some particular gall.
That is just a small sampling of his outrages over the years. I could spend the rest of this post calling him adjectives like grasping, avaricious, venal, corrupt, foul, vile, degenerate. But none of this is about who he *is*, not really. It’s about what he does… and what he will do in the future.
But to get into the why of Snyder does his evil little plots is to accept something almost strange about moral character.
Snyder does these things because he has to.
Snyder cooked the books because there is literally no scenario where he doesn’t cook the books. He cannot *not* commit fraud, even against his fellow owners, any more than a grifter named Shaun King cannot *not* criminally exploit his various businesses and PACs to enrich himself short-term. They can’t even conceive of it.
You’d sooner ask a lifelong drunk to ignore the unopened fifth of Jack Daniels in their cabinet.
How much money did Snyder really get from this? Was screwing over Jerruh and the Giants’ Maras of a few tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per game really ever going to affect his estimated $4.9 billion net worth? Was that really worth the risk of losing everything — remember, in the NFL, all crimes are forgiven *except* for messing with the money?
When considering behaviors that apply to all of humanity across the globe, one often has to return to our tribal routes. Racism, for instance, is a descendant of that rivalry with, and hatred of, the other tribe across the hill. And good and evil are, ultimately, about one’s relationship with their *own* tribe.
How much will you sacrifice your own health and happiness for the tribe? Or, on the flip side… how much will you steal or exploit to benefit yourself at the expense of the tribe?
The above is starting to approach the absolute (or global, if you prefer) nature of good and evil in humanity. But it is an incomplete definition.
Because “good” and “evil” are less descriptors of one’s immortal soul, and more predictors of one’s behavior.
It’s the same as any behavior. The more you throw your spear overhand instead of sidehand, say, the more you will in the future. The more you cook a deer in a certain way, the more you will in the future. And the more you steal from your neighbors or slack off during the tribal hunt, the more you will in the future.
Do it enough, and you will correctly be considered evil by your fellow tribesmen. Do it enough, and you will eventually do evil while forgetting the entire point.
The point of evil, after all, is to benefit yourself at the expense of the rest of the tribe. To steal food and firewood that you didn’t work for, to help ensure your own survival over the coming winter.
But when you are *pure* evil, your actions begin to not even help yourself. You become self-defeating. You are now doing evil for the sake of evil; the marginal benefit to yourself of some of your actions approaches zero, and the risk to yourself grows ever greater. No longer are you just filching berries and water from your neighbor’s hut; you destroyed the rest that you could not carry. No longer are you just skimming the occasional c-note from the till. Now you’ve got a wifi camera in the women’s changing room. Never mind how much greater risk you now run of getting caught; you just can’t help yourself.
And because Dan Snyder is such an unredeemable rat fink, he couldn’t help himself but skim negligible money from his fellow owners at perilous risk of his own position as owner. He did it just because he could. No, wait, that’s not accurate. He did so because *he had no choice.*
Fundamentally good people also can be railroaded into their moral choices, and fortunately, this latter is easier to grasp. Some people have to run into the burning building to save a kid they don’t even know, not because they choose to… but because they *have to,* and that’s something everyone but the Snyders of the world can grasp. Regular people might pause outside the burning building, do some mental calculations first, maybe wait and see if the fire engines are on their way yet… but other people are literally *forced* to run in to do good.
Think of some hero who jumps on a live grenade that has landed among his squadmates. In that situation, there is no time to think through your actions. You only have time to reflexively act via instinct, the way you have lived your life up to that point. Good often means sacrificing yourself or your happiness for the benefit of the tribe just like evil means the reverse. If that’s how you’re wired, you automatically jump on the grenade. You do not have time to make a rational choice; you have no choice at all. This is as predictable as a shark headed towards blood or a squirrel storing nuts for the winter; it is not reasoned but is guided by something far deeper. A regular neutral person would try to run or hide from the grenade without hurting anyone else. An evil person would either throw someone else on top of the grenade, or throw it into an occupied foxhole next door to save himself. It would be as raw and instinctual as the good person falling on the grenade.
None of this, by the by, has anything to do with your race or religion.
Or imagine turning a corner and happening upon a man bloody and unconscious on the street in a rough neighborhood. Next to them is their wallet, with multiple hundred dollar bills visible. They were getting mugged; but your sudden appearance startled the mugger, causing him to fumble the wallet while running away, at least for the moment. He may still be out there; you have no idea. Let’s also stipulate there are no cellphone cameras, street cameras, or other witnesses of any kind. What would be your instant reaction?
A fundamentally good person — think Dolly Parton, or Keanu Reeves — would instantly attempt to render aid to the victim, despite exposing themselves to the possibly-armed criminal still out there. There would be no thinking involved. This also has absolutely nothing to do with politics; most of us can think of both liberals and conservatives who would do this.
Your average person, or even your average semi-bastard like a typical NFL owner, would hang back and call 911. They’d leave the bleeding victim for the paramedics, remaining on alert for, and scared of, the vicious mugger. They’d want to help the victim, sure; but they’re also thinking of themselves.
Dan Snyder would grab the wallet and run.
In all of the above cases, each person is reacting only on how they’ve been conditioned all their lives, including by themselves. Each act of self-sacrifice and each act of selfishness up until the grenade or the bleeding victim or the burning building appears, contributes to their response to the point where, if we know the person, we can make reasonable predictions.
Take the old estimation of a person’s character: “Would you have them watch your kids?” This, again, is asking to make a prediction. Estimations of good or evil in a person is not asking about what they are. It is asking what they will do.
(I’ve went with uncontroversially evil people like Dan Snyder and Shaun King, and uncontroversially good people like Dolly Parton and Keanu Reeves, because there’s no debate as to their ways. This is because the second entry… will not be uncontroversial.)
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