*The titles of the installments of this series are prefaced with “War College” as an indication that the picture of our world being presented here — A BETTER HUMAN STORY — provides an understanding that is a step back from our immediate battle against Trumpian Fascism, but can nonetheless help us understand that battle better, and fight it more effectively.]
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A Discernible Force
In a previous piece — “War College:* Understanding the Reality of a 'Force of Evil' in the Human World -- I showed that one can see a Force of Brokenness at work in the human world, showed that one can discern
“a coherent force that consistently makes the human world more broken” (or “makes the human world worse”).
Such a “coherent force” can be seen to operate much as “Evil” has been traditionally understood to act. And for that reason, it is eminently reasonable to call it by that name.
The shape and coherence of this force can be discerned in the dense network of cause and effect, where one asks, about this or that bit of brokenness (war, injustice, hatred, greed, etc. etc.) in the human world,
- first what in the prior situation in the human world caused this or that bit of brokenness, and
- what effects does this bit of brokenness have on how the world is thereafter.
What these connections reveal is that Brokenness Begets Brokenness.” And in those connections, we can discern a Force.
A “Force” is something that moves something. And through the operation of “Brokenness begets brokenness,” one can discern a Force that moving “a pattern of brokenness” through the human world over time in shape-shifting ways.
The piece concluded with the sentence,
We can “see” that Force the way we can “see” the wind in the swaying of the trees and the flapping of the clothes on the line.
The idea that “Brokenness Begets Brokenness” shows that once such a Force gets going in the system, it will tend to continue having a destructive impact on the human world.
So it keeps on going. But that leaves unanswered the question,
How does the whole thing get started? Why is there “Evil” at all?
The “Prime Mover” Problem
If each broken thing in the world is the product of prior embodiments of “the pattern of brokenness,” how did that “Force of Brokenness” emerge in the system in the first place?
To answer that, I have presented here previously in a video titled, “Embarking on the Path of Civilization Condemns a Creature to the Destructive Reign of Power,” a theory of social evolution that describes why the breakthrough into civilization inevitably unleashes a destructive force.
This destructive force emerges for reasons having nothing to do with the nature of the civilization-creating creature. It is, rather, an inevitable consequence of the unprecedented circumstance that results from the unprecedented step of a species breaking out of the niche in which it evolved biologically by inventing its own way of life.
It is the inevitable result of a creature breaking out of the natural order — which has evolved to be synergistic in ways required for its long-term viability — and, with that breakthrough, plunging into an inevitable disorder. It is a “disorder” called “Anarchy” which results from there being no existing order that governs how the actors in the system will interact with each other.
Which makes the system of interacting “civilized” (or “civilizing”) societies fundamentally different from the biologically-evolved order. And out of that Anarchy there inevitably arises a systemic force.
The inevitable rise of this systemic force, with the rise of civilization, is the missing “Prime Mover” that gets the whole operation of that “coherent force” that moves destructively through the human world and that is reasonable to call a “Force of Evil.”
That systemic force is a social evolutionary force— it is a selective force in that only those cultural options that are conducive to prevailing in a war of all against all can survive and spread.
Because the system — with its inevitable Anarchy, which inevitably gives power to Warlords and Gangsters — inevitably generates that selective force, the rise of that force is not a function of the inherent nature of the civilization-creating creature.
(Successful Warlords and Gangsters are not who you’d choose to have ruling the world. But that was the inevitable tendency of things as Civilization emerged into the inevitable anarchy.)
The inevitability of the Spirit of the Gangster being given by the system a disproportionate say in how the civilization will develop means that
The Ugliness We See in Human History is Not Human Nature Writ Large
The inevitability of the selection for the ways of power shows that no civilization-creating species could prevent the Spirit of the Gangster from getting a disproportionate say in shaping the civilized world.
Because of that inevitable social evolutionary process:
Any creature on any planet, anywhere in the cosmos, that steps onto the path of civilization will be condemned to a social-evolutionary process (thus its history) that’s as tormented and destructive as that which has characterized the history of human civilization these past millennia.
Where does evil originate? In a systemic dynamic that inevitably arises with the breakthrough into civilization, i.e. whenever any creature on any planet “extricates itself from the niche in which it evolved biologically by inventing its own way of life.”
(Which, I propose, is the most useful definition “Civilization.”)
[See Embarking on the Path of Civilization Condemns a Creature to the Destructive Reign of Power, and Why It was Inevitable that Civilization Would Evolve in Directions People Did Not Choose.”]
A Consequence Not of Human Evil
None of this picture of “Evil” requires there be anything “evil” inherent to the species. All it requires of a civilization-creating species is the creative intelligence necessary to break out of the natural order into the inevitable disorder.
Whatever our inborn nature is, it cannot be inferred from the Force of Evil that inevitably arose with civilization.
Whatever our nature is, we can be fortified by the knowledge that by nature we are better creatures than we have thought ourselves to be, not so evil as our civilization has taught us that we are.
The better we understand WHAT WE’RE UP AGAINST — in this “Evil,” or this “Force of Brokenness” — the better able we will be to defeat it.
And the sooner we can bring that Force under control, the more likely we will be able to meet the central challenge that we face as a civilization-creating species: to order our civilization well enough, soon enough, to avoid destroying ourselves as a civilization.
From the Trump regime now acting so destructively in the United States, and the Putin regime that’s brought such disorder to the European continent, to the Jewish fascists that have lately made such destructive decisions in Israel, to the Chinese regime with its threatening a potential superpower conflict— it is clear that we have not yet brought under control that Force that gives so much power to the Spirit of the Gangster.