a fence with two evil sides, The Mechanics of Virtue, Matt Berry, aphorism 179

179


Good can be a fence with two evil sides.  There is a need to discharge and a need to remove any obstacle to the discharge.  As for what we discharge, we will here outline only a few perspectives.  We need (1) to have our enemy, (2) to vent our aggression, (3) to maintain our herd’s unity, (4) to maintain the inherited social hierarchy, regardless of our rank, (5) to preserve or return to old habits, (6) and to achieve all of the above with a good conscience ... through a denial of the mechanical causes of “Good” and “Evil.”  And so with this last element (6) we see how the one who provokes the causal explanation into the foreground of consciousness is an Evil accomplice.  He is evil by (not “of”) removing the justification for that conduit through which another must discharge.  Thus, on one side of the fence, the Good have the Evil they need and on another side, they have the Evil which threatens the satisfaction of this need.  To explain Evil – even in the very attempt to cure it – is to become its accomplice.  And if a man were truly good, he wouldn’t be.



A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism



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