Good and Evil Part 3

Previous parts may be found here.

I felt far more connection with Wretchard’s other point, which was about evil. As opposed to Laer‘s response, which was concerning banning guns as opposed to not banning guns, as a way to safeguard people.

It may be just be possible that bloodlust, the exhortation to cruelty, the legitimization of barbarous violence eventually corrodes and then corrupts completely.

The reason why that is true (in my view) is because Evil is weak, and because Evil uses entropy, entropy will eventually destroy Evil itself. This is why you see the Islamic Jihad fighting against Sunnis in Iraq, when the Sunnis had just got done shooting at Americans. When you are weak, and all you do is attempt to accelerate entropy, then when entropy starts eating you away, you have not the strength to resist it. That is why people who let evil into their hearts, are less able to resist corruption and corrosion. The decay of souls is a physical process, measurable by the amount of entropy in a system composed of people. Measurable by the amount of entropy caused by a person’s actions.

Malevolence lives in the mind much more than it does in inamate things.

Entropy is like any tool, it is only as good or as evil as its user, as the will that controls it. Entropy is an equal opportunity killer. It will kill the good or the evil, it matters not to entropy. But malevolence specifically sets out to destroy what is good, and that is why malevolence is associated with evil. Evil specifically sets out to destroy the good, it has a purpose, in some ways.

This comment by Purple Avenger is intriguing.

Be even more evil. The difference is civilized people can turn it off when the job is done and recognize it only as an expedient. For them its a way of life that can’t be turned off.

If only because it more or less agrees with some of the principles I outlined in my Chaos and Order series on Evil and Entropy.

The only good that humans can achieve is to side with the light against the darkness. Not to destroy the darkness, but to keep it at bay, to resist it, to remain ever vigilant.

The Islamic Jihad and the Left will waste countless numbers of resources. There will be no paradise. They are the very agents of chaos and stagnancy. Their human slavery methods will destroy countless geniuses, ingenuities, and discoveries. They will set back human progress for centuries if not millenia should they succede.

That is evil. Our side is not evil, because we hurt people, our side is not evil, because we use air and resources. Our side is not all of those things because everyone hurts people, everyone uses air and resources. No, what makes the US different is that we resist the temptation of power, we resist the lure of time and decay, we resist as Leonidas resisted the force of destruction he sought to defeat.

The United States is good because we do not give in. And if you look back historically, giving in by the US usually meant a lot of evil unleashed in the world.

Ah, by now people might be wondering if entropy is such a powerful force, doesn’t this mean that the power of the US means the US is an agent of evil? That’s a good question, and therefore it should be addressed.

It is a truth that the Islamic Jihad uses chaos, disorder, killing and wasting of resources, in their eternal struggle. Doesn’t this mean that as agents of chaos, they become empowered by entropy? Hell No. They are cowards, they do not even understand the true meaning of hatred.

Remember, entropy isn’t power as we think of power. It isn’t the ability to “do things” and “extract energy out of matter and resources”. Entropy is the ABSENCE of energy and life. That’s why chaos is not even a good synonym for entropy, because maximum entropy is where even chaos is absent. True power comes from fighting to preserve people, fighting to preserve the potential of children, instead of wasting them in war.

The United States has achieved the military power it has right now because the US has understood the true wisdom of power, its true source (the people), and how to best organize and preserve its forces. The greater your ability to fight entropy and resist it, the more powerful you become, if only because you cannot resist something like entropy without power.

While entropy is a function and a process, it makes a lot more sense when thinking in human terms, to think of entropy as an entity that we fight against. An idea even.

In a sense, entropy is death. That is why the Islamic Jihad said they loved death while we loved life. We know the Islamic JIhad is a barbarian culture of failures and criminals. We know that they are evil. But knowing why they are evil and what evil really is… is even more beneficial.

Quoting myself here of course.

Why can “civilized people” turn off the “evil” (entropy, destruction, killing, death, decay) after it is no longer necessary? Because good men and women have the strength to tell entropy to stop and are able to enforce their will upon decay, in order to slow it down to a manageable rate. We cannot stop it, anymore than we can stop death. If folks recall back to the Faustian bargain, the Devil promised something like immortality did he not if you gave into Evil? But how does Evil give someone immortality, when Evil itself is too weak to prevent its own destruction? It takes power and strength to even slowdown entropy, the amount of power required to stop entropy might be impossible to achieve. And Evil simply promises this “paradise”, this “eternal life of rewards”, just on a dime? Anyone spell a con game here?

The reason why the way of life for evil is to destroy everything and never build anything of lasting worth (this includes Pol Pot, Revolutions akin to Robbespiere, Stalin, and so forth), is because Evil wishes to maximize entropy. Faster, that is. How does human beings build things? We build things by making things stronger, so that they can resist the forces of nature, decay, and so forth better. Stainless steel resists rust. Buildings resist earthquakes, if designed with that object in mind. But building and creating things of lasting worth is harder than simply blowing stuff up. It takes strength to do what is hard, it only takes weakness to do what is easy. And Evil is very easy. You don’t have to build or protect anything, just kill, just blow up, just overthrow. Spout some anarchist creed or justifications for murder, and you’re on your way. Do a Chou or an Islamic suicide bombing run. You don’t even have to make sure you live through it. How easy is that, eh?

Evil seeks to destroy everything. But it also ends up destroying itself, either intentionally or unintentionally. We know that is true. When people say “you’re going to become what you fight, the more you use the tools that evil uses”, what do they actually mean? I think they mean that we are weak, like evil, and that this means if we try to fight, we will fall to the Evil and become Evil. It was in fact, this ethical dilemma that motivated me into writing about Good and Evil, in an attempt to more clearly understand what is Good and what is Evil, and the difference between them.

My answer is simple. Yes, we will use what evil uses, we will seek to control entropy and we will destroy people and things, just as evil does. But we will not become evil. Why? Because evil is weak, we are not. They cannot control the tools of destruction, they cannot harness and resist entropy, and they cannot prevent their own destruction. We can. We have. And we will. Why would the Good be better than Evil, if good people were not fundamentally better than evil folks? But are good people better than evil folks just morally, some kind of “purity” that is spiritual in origin but never applicable on the ground? No. For Good to be… well good and better than Evil, Good has to be fundamentally and practically better than Evil. And good people are better than evil because the United States Marine Corps is not only stronger, wiser, faster, and hardier than the terrorists they fight, but the USMC is also able to wield more destructive forces without falling to corruption, infighting, jealousies, factionalism, abuse, and temptation. Sure, every human can choose good over evil, but people who are good are able to resist weakness far better than evil folks who have given into their weaknesses.

What is most commonly believed about evil folks like Saddam and Zarqawi? As events have shown, it is that evil people find it easy to terrorize and kill the weak, but when fighting against vast odds, they will crumple just like Saddam surrendered and Z-Man run like a chicken from Fallujah 1 after he had promised that they were going to fight. Why? Why is it that folks like Saddam care about their own lives, but effortlessly sacrifice the lives of others? Cause they’re weak, and they are weak because all that matters to them is their lives, their status, and their goals.

America is strong because we know how to work as a team. One for all, and All for one. Never leave a man behind. Give me liberty or give me death. These almost contradictory values, strong individuals combined with self-sacrifice for the team, is best expressed by taking a look at the United States Marine Corps. Why is it that the USMC focuses so much on individual prowess, strength, and the value of each soldier, yet their goal is supposedly that of an army, which works together as a team, as something that follows orders, a sort of machine collective? If Saddam’s evil caused him to look after himself and value himself, then doesn’t the USMC fall to the same temptations when they value the individual over the greater good, such as contributing huge amounts of resources to bring back one of their own (ala Blackhawk Down or just CSAR)? No.

The difference is simple. Good people do not have to sacrifice personal strength to work as a team for the greater good, to build something of worth, and to protect women and children (the future). In point of fact, having weak people on your team decreases the power of your teamwork. So why doesn’t Saddam, with all his personal power, work in a team, relying upon others to cover his back? Because evil people are weak, their power lies in terror and intimidation, not protection and trust. They can’t work as a team, their members are too selfish and untrustworthy. The United States Marine Corps have hit upon the secret to strength. Personal strength and power is important, the warrior ethos, and it is promoted in the Marines. But what is more important is elan, spirit, and self-sacrifice. Duty in otherwords.

The Marines, like the Japanese samurai of old, are able to do what they do because they have de-prioritized saving their own lives. There is no hesitation when a grenade is thrown amongst a Marine’s friends, with no time to throw it back. One for all, and All for one. Or to use the American version. Our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. Saddam can’t do that. He can’t ever NOT think about saving himself.

That is the key to strength. Not suicide, not giving into death and entropy because it is “easy”. No, this strength derives from your will and your values. It is a choice, of putting everything you have into the service of what you believe, of the Good. Everything, without limits, without hesitations, without regrets. That is a concentrated force, that is hard to beat.

So think about this for a second. If the United States truly is “better” than the terrorists, as the Left keeps telling us, then isn’t it time we acted like we were better than terrorists instead of creeping around worrying about how we will become the terrorists? Since when has being stopped by fear, the path to greatness and glory? Or if someone cares not for greatness and glory, then how about duty. How will you fullfill your duty to your buddies, your friends, your children, your family, and your nation if you won’t release the limits because of your fears for yourself? US soldiers full of strength and vitality have thrown themselves upon grenades to save their fellows. People back here talking about how staining their hands with blood is to be avoided, should be ashamed of their weakness. For weakness invites Evil into the hearts of men.

On a similar note, here’s a comment by Alexis. At Belmont Club

Alexis said…

The principal reason why I detest al-Qaeda with such vehemence is not merely because of what they do to others, but the fantasies they unleash within me of what I would like to do to the terrorists.

I resent them not merely because they do evil, but because they seek to plunge the rest of us into their hell. It is less the evil they commit that infuriates me than their desire to impress others with how evil they are. Their exhibitionism unleashes two reactions within me. One dislikes the evil they do. The other is to feel offense against their exhibitionism, to be utterly unimpressed by the level of evil they are committing precisely because I suspect what I’m capable of if my mind goes in the wrong direction. I’m reminded of the Crocodile Dundee quote, “That’s not a knife. This is a knife.”

Sadly, actions regarded as atrocities early in war usually become standard practice as the war grinds on. And this leads to a paradox of tyranny — a tyrant uses torture to stop the laughter against him, and yet it is the free mind that is capable of greater cruelty precisely because his greater imagination and greater access to knowledge leaves him able to cook up horrors worse than the pedantic totalitarian can.

A free society can be more cruel and horrific than a despotic society precisely because the impulse toward cruelty has access to more information.

Alexis’ last point is very true. Compared to the ingenuity and creativity of good men and women, evil folks are amateurs in the Art of War and inflicting pain. The reason why good people don’t slaughter children like Chou all the time, is simple. We put up barriers and masks to protect ourselves from entropy and the desire to use entropy, death, and so forth. It is our self-restraint that is our bulwark and strength against the unimaginable power of entropy and Evil. (temptations as well) But these limitations sometimes must be taken off, if our survival is threatened. What use are limitations and protections, when the core being protected (women, children, freedoms, lives, security) are already being besieged and slaughtered? Then the limitations stop serving as a shield, and start serving as shackles. Every law abiding citizen voluntarily puts limits on himself when he goes about society. He doesn’t slaughter or attack anyone he wants to, because he wishes to be protected from murderers and attackers. But does this mean he should not use violence if another aggresses against him? Should a citizen operate under the rules of civilization ALL the time? No.

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