Ponerology: the Question of Evil

what is it and how does it affect politics?

In this video, I define good and evil, and apply the definition to theology /metaphysics, politics & candidates, ethics vs. issues, parenting & governance, and life choices. I examine whether judgment of people makes it harder to end evil actions.

As always, I like to start with definitions: to do good is to alleviate pain but to do better is to enable people to alleviate their own pain. To do bad is to inflict pain but to do evil is to cause other people to inflict pain. Evil is an action, not an attribute of a person. To do evil requires power over others.

Power over others can be political or economic. In my book, I distinguish between money vs. wealth. Money, in its current form, was designed to give those who issue it power over others. Wealth gives power over yourself. If our political system enabled communities and families to provide for themselves, it would do better than one that provided money. Our economic system could enable the increase of true wealth—power over ourselves—rather than power over others.

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Let's go back to theology. There are only three possibilities for Ultimate Reality:

1. God is Evil.

2. Evil is God.

3. Evil does not exist.

To examine possibility #1 that God is Evil, I’m defining God as the ultimate Creator and ultimate cause of everything. If the world is pain and death and suffering, and God is its ultimate cause, then God by definition has to be evil. Every person who inflicts pain was created by God, along with their nature and circumstances. God can’t take the credit without the blame.

Free will says that I choose to be good or evil—no matter what body or life circumstances I was born into, I would still choose the same. So who created that 'self' that chooses good despite nature or nurture? If I create the most important part of myself, my morality, it says that I'm my own God—I created myself. If I am as God created me, I can only be good or else God is not good. That's the paradox of free will: it makes us into God.

Then there’s possibility #2, that there is no ultimate cause and the world just evolved the way it is. In that case Evil is God because evil as the ability to inflict pain is the strongest thing that there is. That's what creates the winners in all the battles: how much pain you can inflict to make the other side surrender. Fear of torture is stronger than fear of death, pain is the empire’s trump card.

Now let's look at the third definition. It says that maybe the world that we see is not objective reality because we are not separate people. If we're looking at an object and you are seeing it and I'm seeing it, we say that that's objective because we think of ourselves as separate. But if we're not actually separate, if we are the same mind, then everything we see could be our common delusion.

In that case, what we're seeing is not reality. What causes me to see myself as different than you—one of the figures in the dream rather than the dreamer—is my desire to see myself as better, to see me as good and you as worse if not outright evil. So the belief in evil is what keeps us trapped in the dream. It’s the Tree of Judgment or ‘knowledge’ of good and evil that blinds us to the heaven we never left.

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Now let's look at evil in politics, which goes under the fancy name political ponerology and has become a big topic of discussion. This is the study of evil in positions of power. My belief is that as long as you have a system that rewards ruthlessness, the most ruthless are always going to rise to the top. It doesn't matter if you got rid of six levels down, the next would trickle back up because that's what the system does.

In my book How to Dismantle an Empire, I look at our money system as designed to give power over others and, most importantly, to cause others to inflict pain for the benefit of the person creating the money. 3500 years ago, money was not designed to simplify trade but to tax the population in the coin of the realm. These coins were distributed to the army so that citizens had to provide material support for the conquest of their neighbors in order to get them.

So money was created for the purpose of evil as a means of forcing or coercing others to inflict pain, directly or indirectly, and making it impossible to survive outside that system. It doesn't have to be that way. We can design money as something that doesn’t just do good but does better by giving people power over themselves.

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Is the concept of evil something that is useful in politics? I would argue no because it turns it into a team sport: “that person's on our side so don't criticize them even if you don't like what they're doing” and “that is a bad person, an evil person, so even though you might agree with this policy of theirs, you better go against it because we have to get the evil people out of office.”

This muddies the water and impedes us from thinking critically about what people do. Lately there's a lot of discussion about Bobby Kennedy. I think Bobby Kennedy is a good person. I like who he is in terms of how he thinks, how he listens, and how he treats other people.

But that doesn't mean that I agree with his policies. When I look at someone being in power over others, I have to ask whether they are going to use that power to cause others to inflict pain. That's a power that I don't think anyone should have. We need to think less about whether that person is good or bad and more about whether that power over others should exist.

Without power over others, we can step back from whether this a good or a bad person and ask if they have a good idea on how to empower other people.

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The difference between an ethical position and an issue position is proper nouns. Whether one candidate is for sending money to Israel, like Bobby, or another candidate is for sending arms to Ukraine, like Biden, those are positions on issues. The underlying ethical position is that someone should be able to force me to materially support others inflicting pain.

The power over others in the position of US President is evil by its very nature. Of course it is! It takes away our conscience and our ability to decide what we're willing to do. We don't even need to think through these issues because the ethical choice has already been taken from us. It doesn't matter who's in that position.

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If evil isn't a quality of people but an attribute of actions, can we ethically hold power over others in situations like parenting or governance?

In both of those, I think we all would agree that inflicting pain is bad. But is it the job of the parent or the government to take care of all needs? Or should their goal be to enable the person or the group to take responsibility for themselves?

A successful parent enables the child to take increasing responsibility for themselves. A successful community enables families to be self-reliant and take care of themselves. A successful federation enables the sovereignty of communities.

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To close, I'd like to mention a couple of Substacks I've been reading that seem apropos. One is Kathleen Devanney's post called The Zig-Zag and the Compromise of Compromise. She looks at the process of waking up as a dance step that she would call the zig-zag:

There are no steps we can practice with the Zig-Zag. It’s gonna look different for everyone, every time.

I’ve seen highly aware people who know lots and lots about this imposed, manufactured reality, still maintain a “sacred cow” belief that will simply not be sacrificed. Yes, yes all of these things were lies, but not that one thing. That one thing is true.

Have you noticed that?

In a time of undoing, beware your sacred cows.

I love that we’re in 'a time of undoing.’ She asks whether in politics we’re looking for a new captain like Bobby to steer a sinking ship … or do we admit the ship is sinking and figure out what we're going to do rather than worry about who's steering it.

Kathleen looks at every candidate as not only needing to compromise but also being compromised. As Whitney Webb shows in One Nation Under Blackmail, to get to that place you already have to be compromised. The whole article is glorious.

And Brad, who does Euphoric Recall, has posted 32 Ideas for 32 Years in honor of turning what he terms a very old 32. They start with the Friendship Recession:

1.) The Friendship Recession

Americans without any friends have increased 400% since 1990. The issue is especially prevalent among men. As society continues to atomize, it will only get worse.

Loneliness is arguably the number one risk factor for premature mortality. An analysis of 300,000 people in 148 studies found that loneliness is associated with a 50% increase in mortality from any cause, making it comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and much more dangerous than obesity.

Pertinent to my topic is #23:

23.) Noble Cause Corruption

A form of corruption that comes in the guise of virtue. When people are convinced of the nobility of their goals, they may think the ends justify the means. This makes it particularly sinister. It’s easier to justify and legitimize immoral actions if they come from a good place in our hearts.

I think this is something to keep in mind—whether the division into good and evil people is something that enables evil actions. If actions were judged to be good or evil without knowing who, historical atrocities from Crusades to Inquisitions, wars to bioterrorism, land theft to slavery would be impossible. The bad one person can do pales by comparison to the evil of authority.

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To follow up, here's What Do I Want From a President?:

Answer: Decentralize, and get out of the way. Mathew Crawford interviewed me on his Rounding the Earth podcast. In this video, I summarize some points and elaborate on others. We talked about geoengineering, the duodecimal system, cryptocurrencies, the Greater Reset, trust in the resistance movement, and telling the truth. I quote from Ellen Brown on How the War on Crypto Triggered a Banking Crisis and CJ Hopkins on The Great Divide. The 90-min interview is linked in the Substack.

And this is What's the Best That Can Happen?:

My daughter Cassandra has a new question, "what's the best that can happen?" I apply this to global events and the coup to take over our bodies, minds and world. I share some of the things that give me joy: Rob Brezsny's Love Bombs, Wendall Berry's The Power of Place, David Graeber and David Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything, and Caitlin Johnstone's Confused Species in an Awkward Transition Phase.

and here’s Spiritual Optimism and Political Realism on Marianne Williamson:

Explains A Course in Miracles, which Marianne has studied for 45 years and me for nearly 20. Looks at the rules for discerning whether any scripture, aka channeled text, could be considered as the word of God. Reads Caitlin Johnstone's poem, Sources Say, and the introduction to my book, A House for the Soul in the Land Beyond Faith. Asks what spiritual optimism is and why it's so important.