"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
"Where there is no political alternative, there remains only the moral alternative – non-participation." - Hannah Arendt
Tonight at the Cosford Cinema at the University of Miami a powerful movie about a brilliant thinker was screened. The film is HANNAH ARENDT that dramatizes an important chapter in the life of the political theorist Hannah Arendt. The film covers Arendt's reporting of the trial in Jerusalem of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann for The New Yorker and the events surrounding the publication of her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1963. She also wrote a series of articles for The New York Review of Books.
It was during this period that Hannah Arendt coined the term "the banality of evil." The film also engages in a nuanced analysis of the difference between what is radical and what is extreme and raises the question of what falls between resistance and cooperation.
"Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." - Rom. xii. 21.
"Yet is it far better to light the candle than to curse the darkness." W.L. Watkins (1907)
Amnesty International on its "Key Facts" website explains the origin of its logo as being inspired by "an ancient Chinese proverb" that inspired its founder Peter Benenson in 1961, but when searching for the context found that in the English language the phrase was first spoken in "The Invincible Strategy", a public sermon, and published by William L. Watkinson, a Methodist Minister, in 1907.
Apparently, the second time the phrase was used publicly was by Peter Benenson on December 10, 1961 at an International Human Rights Day ceremony. It served as the inspiration for the Amnesty International logo, a candle wrapped in barbed wire.
Whether or not there is a Chinese proverb with a similar sentiment haven't been able to find it searching through the internet and welcome anyone providing the source and the Chinese characters.
However, the source in English bears a closer reading along with taking it in context because it is far more powerful. The full sermon is available online or you can purchase a copy but either way it is a must read.
Evil is not overcome by denunciation. It is surprising how much efficacy is supposed to go with denunciation. Real, constructive, aggressive good is of far greater significance than eloquent invective; such invective has its place, but it must be accompanied by active practical effort, or it effects little more than summer lightning. Carlyle, in his review of Elliott the Corn-Law Rhymer, has a most instructive passage.
"We could truly wish to see such a mind as his engaged rather in considering what, in his own sphere, could be done, than what, in his own or other spheres,ought to be destroyed; rather in producing or preserving the True, than in mangling and slashing asunder the False." But denunciatory rhetoric is so much easier and cheaper than good works, and proves a popular temptation. Yet is it far better to light the candle than to curse the darkness.
What this world awaits is personal, positive, constructive goodness. Not by law, legislation, and rhetoric shall we prevail, but by practical righteousness, noble philanthropy, intellectual and spiritual education; by the positive remedy of superior character,action, and institutions do we make it difficult for evil to survive.
The early years of the 20th Century, prior to the catastrophe of World War I, was a culminating point for Western Civilization and the ideas that were circulating in that first decade of the 20th Century reverberate for good or ill to the present day. This essay will focus on the idea that the best manner to confront and defeat evil is not denouncing or destroying one's adversary but producing and preserving that which is true and having a constructive program. On September 11, 1906 in South Africa, as part of a contest, Mohandas Gandhi coined the term Satyagraha which translates into English literally as "holding firmly to truth."
Less than a year later a Methodist minister is embracing an outlook that is profoundly Christian and complements Gandhi's teachings on the relationship between truth, nonviolence and resisting evil with a constructive program, and 54 years later a phrase from that same sermon may have inspired the founding of Amnesty International which has done much good.
"But by their fruit you will know them. Do they gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles?" -Matthew 7:16
"Evil is an anti-life force and if we start going out to kill it, exterminate it we then become contaminated by it because we become killers." - M. Scott Peck , The Open Mind, PBS 1983
July 22, 2011 Terrorist attacks in Oslo and on Utøya island claim 76 lives with 96 injured.
On Friday July 22, 2011 Norway suffered two brutal terror attacks that claimed at least 76 lives and injured at least another 96 in downtown Oslo and a nearby island Utøya where Labor Party youth were gathered.
Today in Cuba is a public holiday that is celebrated with parades and speeches. On this day in 1953 a group of armed men organized by Fidel Castro led an assault on the Moncada barracks in Cuba. It was a disaster most of the men were killed and the rest captured. Fidel Castro went on trial and used it to spread his propaganda and later become a national figure in Cuba. During the revolutionary struggle between 1953 through 1959 acts of terrorism and bombing were common in Cuba. Following the Castro regime's consolidation of power state terrorism became a part of the revolutionary government's policy.
“I began the revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I would do it with 10 or 15 individuals with absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and a plan of action.”
The adjectives this terrorist used in describing Castro condemn but the quote is part of what inspired this mass murderer to action. What is troubling is that this Castro quote is presented in popular literature as an inspirational message.
The embrace of hatred to overcome ones own conscience so as to enable a person to engage in gruesome atrocities is an approach described by Che Guevara in the quote above. This self-dehumanization is what makes the sinking of the tugboat, the bombings in Buenos Aires and Oslo combined with the systematic slaughter of children and young people at a youth camp all in service of political agendas possible. Bomb making and terrorism crosses ideological lines. In outlining how to be an effective bomb maker Breivikcites Che Guevara as an authoritative source on the manufacture of explosives:
And according the Marxist terrorist and mass-murderer Che Guevara; half of the people he sent to manufacture explosives blew themselves up (probably due to them using lacking instructions, ignoring precautions and using open flames.
Is this a religious vision, and am I right in calling Breivik a Christian terrorist? It is true that Breivik—and McVeigh, for that matter—were much more concerned about politics, race, and history than about scripture and religious belief; with Breivik even going so far as to write that “It is enough that you are a Christian-agnostic or a Christian atheist (an atheist who wants to preserve at least the basics of the European Christian cultural legacy (Christian holidays, Christmas and Easter)).”
But much the same can be said about Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and many other Islamist activists. Bin Laden was a businessman and engineer, and Zawahiri was a medical doctor; neither were theologians or clergy. Their writings show that they were much more interested in Islamic history than theology or scripture, and imagined themselves as re-creating glorious moments in Islamic history in their own imagined wars. Tellingly, Breivik writes of al Qaeda with admiration, as if he would love to create a Christian version of their religious cadre.
It is not only the Norwegian bomber that has expressed admiration for Osama Bin Laden but also admirers of Che Guevara that have profiled the Al Qaeda leader as a revolutionary leader in the Argentine website Che Guevara.com .
In addition to Bin Laden, Castro and Guevara, the Norwegian terrorist while denying he is a Nazi extensively quotes and mentions Adolph Hitler throughout his 1,500 page rant. There are no links to the manifesto on this page because there is no desire to promote it because it doesn't offer answers as to why. At its root terrorism, whether carried out by individuals or a state, is an evil act. This requires taking a look at the inner workings of a human being.
C.S. Lewis in his 1952 book Mere Christianity made the following observation: “Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good - above all, that we are better than someone else - I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil. ...“For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.” One could add that it would also apply to those who have replaced a religious life with a secular/ideological substitute.
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung observed in the video below that "the only real danger that exists is man himself, he is the great danger....We are the origin of all coming evil."
Another and related perspective on the nature of evil is offered by the late American psychiatrist Morgan Scott Peck who wrote People of the Lie: The hope for healing human evil and in the 1983 video is interviewed about the book on PBS in the program The Open Mind. During the interview he states that "Evil is an anti-life force and if we start going out to kill it, exterminate it we then become contaminated by it because we become killers."
On the entry for Evil on Wikipedia there is a decent summary of M. Scott Peck's views on evil reproduced below:
Peck characterizes evil as a malignant type of self-righteousness which results in a projection of evil onto selected specific innocent victims (often children or other people in relatively powerless positions). Peck considers those he calls evil to be attempting to escape and hide from their own conscience (through self deception) and views this as being quite distinct from the apparent absence of conscience evident in sociopaths.
Is consistently self-deceiving, with the intent of avoiding guilt and maintaining a self-image of perfection
Deceives others as a consequence of their own self-deception
Projects his or her evils and sins onto very specific targets, scapegoating others while appearing normal with everyone else ("their insensitivity toward him was selective") [10]
Commonly hates with the pretense of love, for the purposes of self-deception as much as deception of others
Abuses political (emotional) power ("the imposition of one's will upon others by overt or covert coercion") [11]
Maintains a high level of respectability and lies incessantly in order to do so
Is consistent in his or her sins. Evil persons are characterized not so much by the magnitude of their sins, but by their consistency (of destructiveness)
Is unable to think from the viewpoint of their victim
Has a covert intolerance to criticism and other forms of narcissistic injury
He also considers certain institutions may be evil, as his discussion of the My Lai Massacre and its attempted cover up illustrate. By this definition, acts of criminal and state terrorism would also be considered evil.
In the end the man that called others terrorists and mass-murderers apparently as a critique became one himself and as M. Scott Peck would say crossed the line and slid into evil. There is a way to fight evil and that is to be able to spot it in yourself and struggle against it to be a better person and externally use nonviolence to combat it. Mohandas Gandhi issues a challenge when he says that "Nonviolence does not signify that man must not fight against the enemy, and by enemy is meant the evil which men do, not the human beings themselves." Norwegians demonstrated how to fight this enemy with their silent Rose March and rejection of hatred.
"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it." - Martin Luther King Jr.
A year ago Orlando Zapata Tamayo was dying. On a prolonged hunger strike Orlando's sadistic jailers were refusing him water in an effort to break his spirit they tortured him to death. The international press for the most part were not covering Orlando Zapata Tamayo's ordeal and was more interested in the political games the Cuban regime plays.
Others so focused on the persons committing evil fail to focus on denouncing and rejecting the evil that was being done. Mohandas Gandhi in his 1927 Autobiography made reference to a profoundly Christian concept and the failure of many to apply it: "'Hate the sin and not the sinner' is a precept which, though easy enough to understand, is rarely practiced, and that is why the poison of hatred spreads in the world."*
The phrase "love the sinner, hate the sin" is first found in St. Augustine's City of God:
For this reason, the man who lives by God's standards and not by man's, must needs be a lover of the good, and it follows that he must hate what is evil. Further, since no one is evil by nature, but anyone who is evil is evil because of a perversion of nature, the man who lives by God's standards has a duty of "perfect hatred" (Psalm 139:22) towards those who are evil; that is to say, he should not hate the person because of the fault, nor should he love the fault because of the person. He should hate the fault, but love the man. And when the fault has been cured there will remain only what he ought to love, nothing that he should hate. (14:6, Penguin ed., transl. Bettenson)
Yes, let us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness -- pray they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the Earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.
In other words communism is evil. It is "a perversion of nature" that harms and destroys the societies in which it has been applied and the persons forced to live in that system. For decades many so-called leaders in the West refused to recognize and opted for detente. They failed to denounce evil and looked the other way hoping it would go away. That is not how evil is defeated but rather how it expands. It was the same in the 1930s when world leaders refused, at first, to denounce Nazism as evil and looked the other way as this other "perversion of nature" expanded and took more lives and territory and did more damage. That is why it is so important at whatever place you find yourself to do what you can. Do what you can to raise awareness and possibly save a life.
Try not to be counterproductive when taking action on behalf of human rights and liberty but do something. The murder of Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, Mario De La Peña, and Armando Alejandre 15 years ago on February 24, 1996 blown to bits by air-to-air missiles fired by Cuban MiGs was an act of state terrorism carried on the orders of Fidel and Raul Castro and the murder of Orlando Zapata Tamayo through systematic physical and psychological torture are evil acts. These evil acts are also crimes that need to remembered and denounced so as not to be repeated and justice not revenge pursued. Google's corporate code of conduct is summed up with the phrase "Don't be evil." Now if one is to take seriously Martin Luther King Jr's claim that: "He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it" then to avoid being evil one must resist evil and denounce it wherever you find it.
For example, one of the survivors of the Brothers to the Rescue shoot down Jose Basulto claims that the United States stood by passively knowing with an idea of what was going to happen on that Saturday afternoon and did not follow standard protocol to protect American lives and property. This would be an example of the passive acceptance of evil that Martin Luther King Jr spoke about. Another was ignoring the plight of Orlando Zapata Tamayo which gave the regime a green light to finish him off believing there would be no consequences for his death.
Yes, let us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness -- pray they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the Earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.
It was C.S. Lewis who, in his unforgettable "Screwtape Letters," wrote: "The greatest evil is not done now in those sordid 'dens of crime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is not even done in concentration camps and labor camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried and minuted) in clear, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice."
Upon closer examination the above statement is a remarkable condemnation of totalitarianism and Communism but it offers a clear separation between the "sin" and the "sinner" and a call to prayer for those advocating Communism to be saved from the totalitarian darkness while at the same time recognizing the evil system they were trying to impose on the entire world. Mohandas Gandhi described this approach when he said that “real non-cooperation is non-cooperation with evil and not with the evil doer.”
As the years pass and memories grow hazy the siren call of appeasement rears its head. There are voices that speak of "constructive engagement" with totalitarian regimes. Nobel Laureate in Literature Mario Vargas Llosa in his December 7, 2010 Nobel Lecture spoke of the evil of dictatorship and the failings of democracies in confronting this evil:
[A] dictatorship represents absolute evil for a country, a source of brutality and corruption and profound wounds that take a long time to close, poison the nation’s future, and create pernicious habits and practices that endure for generations and delay democratic reconstruction. This is why dictatorships must be fought without hesitation, with all the means at our disposal, including economic sanctions. It is regrettable that democratic governments, instead of setting an example by making common cause with those, like the Damas de Blanco in Cuba, the Venezuelan opposition, or Aung San Suu Kyi and Liu Xiaobo, who courageously confront the dictatorships they endure, often show themselves complaisant not with them but with their tormenters. Those valiant people, struggling for their freedom, are also struggling for ours.
Resistance to evil, although it may appear as an act of rebellion when dealing with an unjust ruler, it is in reality engaging in one’s duty. In the same manner that battling your own vices and appetites may appear to be self-denial but in reality is an act of self-liberation. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a guideline that can help us on our path toward justice and truth but it is not the road itself.
Above all, clear and unequivocal solidarity with all those confronted by totalitarian or authoritarian regimes wherever they are in the world. And economic or other particular interests should not hinder such solidarity. Even a minor, discreet and well-intentioned compromise can have fatal consequences– even if only in the long term, or indirectly. One must not retreat in the face of evil, because it is in the nature of evil to take advantage of every concession. Besides, Europe has already had its own unfortunate experience of appeasement policies. Our support can help open-minded people or outspoken witnesses to the situation in North Korea, Burma, Iran, Tibet, Belarus, Cuba or anywhere else, much more than we think.
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