The Unwritten Rule

Apparently, societal entropy works holistically. Not only do the positive elements of the πόλις degrade; even the pox of society seem to fall to a lower level of formidability. I’d call it banality, but the term as applied to evil is already in use, and my meaning is somewhat different than the Arendtian version. Rather than the agents of evil being banal, I think that we’ve hit a point where the subject matter of evil is banal. At least evil of the home-brewed variety.

It would obviously be inapropos to make the claim that all of modern evil is rooted in banality. Even excluding the terroristic, planes-flown-into-buildings flavor of evil from the equation, it might be seen as bad taste to call things like abortion evil rooted in banality. Still, if you think about it, banal causation is, statistically speaking, precisely what lies at the root of most abortion. Some might try to pooh-pooh that assertion by saying that even if the vast majority of abortions are not for “hard causes” (rape, incest, etc.) that they are nonetheless valid – after all, they sometimes say, a child can be the difference between life above or life below the poverty line. A nice justification, and also a crappy one. “Quality of life” is nowhere near as categorical as poverty and not-poverty. Sometimes, it’s merely the difference between only being able to afford the mortgage on a $200k house versus the $300k one; between the Toyota Camry and the Lexus; between an iPod or some less sexy non-Apple player. Selfish? Yes. Real? Sure. Also? Banal.

Abortion isn’t the only bad thing that revolves around a chewy center of lameness. There are other things, far more subtle. Take environmentalism. There’s nothing ground-breaking about suggesting that as a society we just might have a god complex regarding the environment – i.e., that we can single-handedly destroy it – and that this collective neurosis comes with a side of fried messiah complex as a bonus – i.e., that we can single-handedly save the environment, or somehow preserve species of our own selection from some inevitable extinction. I think I’ve made my thoughts on global warming perfectly clear already – so you can imagine how I feel about Al Gore’s latest plan to save the world through by going all fascist on the world’s collective ass. Sure, maybe not the most clear-cut example I could cook up, but from where I sit, definitely banal.

How about a better example for dessert? This banal little root ball nourishes the social evil that I consider a special pet of mine…you guessed it: pluralism. What could be more fundamentally banal than a fundamental social policy neurotically obsessed with forcing everyone to believe that the other guy is just as right, good, entitled, etc., as you are? And what could be more fundamentally evil than to violate the fundamental rights of two separate groups all to enforce tolerance and diversity? I speak of an episode in “Merrie England,” where things seem to be breaking down a little bit sooner than in the New World (at least the part of it that preemptively decided participation in the Empire was undesirable). For a good commentary on a different angle, go here. Ironically, in the same country, discriminatory practices – not even a real one, but an antique one – have barred a boy from joining the Cub Scouts. All ephemeral, meaningless motivation – the “B” word, in other words.

The moral of all this? It’s not the Pol Pots, Stalins, and Hitlers of the world that merit watchfulness. They’re flamboyant, large-scale, and easy to see. It’s the unassuming ones, the “concerned” ones, that will limp halfheartedly to destruction – dragging society along with them. As Thomas More said in A Man for All Seasons of the nobility’s silent complicity in Henry VIII’s plans, “for fellowship.”