On the nature of evil

Here is the question: are sins of omission as venal as sins of commission?

I've travelled all over the United States and talked to a number of Americans as well as a number of Israelis. Most of them would never personally torture someone. Most of them would never personally shoot their neighbor in order to steal his water or his oil. Yet for the most part, they turn their head and refuse to see when someone else does it in their name to someone who "isn't one of us".

In the case of America, the addiction is oil. In the case of Israel, the addiction is water -- the average Israeli citizen uses ten times as much water as the average citizen of Jordan or Lebanon, for example. The very fact that a satellite photo of the suburbs of Tel Aviv shows thousands of sparkling swimming pools -- in the middle of a parched desert -- should show you just how deep their addiction really is.

Both Israel and America are democracies. Thus I have to believe that the majority of people in those countries support the actions of their governments, whether it consists of torturing 78 year old blind men, or stealing water from their neighbors. Not directly, of course. But, rather, through their apathy, willful ignorance, and refusal to think about issues that might require them to change their unsustainable lifestyle.

My reluctant conclusion is that the majority of Israelis, the majority of Americans, are, to put it bluntly, evil. If you allow evil to exist without acknowledging it, if you willfully turn your head so you do not have to see the evil being done in your name, if you refuse to think because it might require you to take some action that would upset your little monkey life of mastication and defecation and fornication and accumulating shiny baubles of no import -- if, through your willful ignorance and apathy you allow evil to persist -- you are as guilty, in my opinion, as if you yourself had personally done these evil things.

Germans were quick to state that "we didn't know that Jews were being killed in extermination camps!" after the war. But they did not want to know. Just like the average American does not *want* to know that his government tortures 78 year old blind men, and indeed will become very upset with you if you force him to acknowledge this fact, because now you require him to explicitly do something. Which he will bitterly resent, I know this truth from personal experience, unfortunately.

The knowledge that the majority of my fellow countrymen are, to put it bluntly, evil, is not something that rests easily upon my soul. But if our sins of omission are as venal as our sins of commission, would not I, myself, be participating in that very same evil if I refused to acknowledge it?

-- Badtux the Uneasy Penguin