All entries for Monday 10 July 2006

best of all evils

It is becoming a cliche to say that something is the "best of all evils". People usually say it without any sense of guilt. They often lay their emphasis on the word "best" and tend to forget the "evil" half.
A more appalling term is "the necessary best of all evils", which leaves no room for argument at all. When something is defined as necessary, we are immediately deprived of our autonomy to choose. For example, we can say food is necessary to life. By confirming the necessity of food to life, we acknowledged that it is meaningless to discuss the evil or good nature of food, because to eat or not to eat is simply not a choice that we can make. If there is no free choice involved, how can we use moral terms like evil or good? Morality fundamentally depends on the autonomous agent's free/rational choice, rather than conformity or any extrinsic considerations. If the act of eating is not actually something we can choose, then we can only say eating is necessary to life, without referring it as necessary evil, or good. The way we eat, or what we eat, however, is something that is open for choice. That is why we start to make moral judgments like: You should eat this way, or you should not eat that.
In the same way, if we reflect the most common usage of "democracy as the necessary best of all evils", we start to realize that the politicians are playing this word game of "naturalist fallacy" with us. If there is anything that can be regarded as evil or good, it is not the implication or nature of democracy itself, but rather the way in which democracy is carried out. In fact I seriously doubt that any country in the plant will admit that it is ruled against the majority will of its people. Even the regime under the cruelest dictatorship will attempt to explain their government is trying to do the best for its People——i.e. carrying out the same dream as that of democracy: decision making in the name of the majority.
Therefore, the only thing I can say is: if you are doing something evil, admit it. Don't use self contradictory terms like "best" "necessary" to make your conscience feel better. If you are doing something necessary, well, do it, and don't even bother to think if it is right or wrong. But only before you claim that this something is necessary, ask your conscience: is it really truly indeed NECESSARY?

Xiu Wang : 10 Jul 2006 23:29 |  Tags: Politics |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem