Concerning Malevolence

The demon of Idle Theory is a busy man, completely constrained in work. As such, without idle time, he never acts as he pleases, or as he chooses or wishes. He is not, therefore, malevolent. Neither, of course, is he benevolent. He has no will. Therefore he cannot be held culpable.

The demon of Idle Theory must be distinguished from the devil of popular mythology. This latter devil is a perfectly free agent who freely chooses to perform evil acts, to deliberately cause harm.

The god of Idle Theory is an idle man. All his time is idle time, which he disposes of as he freely chooses. Therefore he can be held culpable for acts that he performed, because he could have acted otherwise.

Human life is neither so constrained as to be demonic, nor so idle as to be divine. This raises the question of whether human part-time free agents can be held culpable. The answer here is that they cannot, because it can never be shown that acts which they have performed were in fact freely chosen.

Crimes without Malice.

In Idle Theory, human evil - murder, theft, and the entire litany of evil acts - is understood as arising from human lack of idleness. A thief steals in order to increase his idleness. He takes a knife or a bag, without paying, because it benefits him to do so, and transfers the cost to his victim, and to society. Theft of this sort is not tolerable in human society because if too many people acted in this way, society would disintegrate, and human idleness would collapse as trading and manufacture ceased.

A thief of this sort is not malevolent. He simply acts to further his own interests, disregarding the interests of others. He sets his own interests above those of the rest of society. His intention is to benefit himself, not to harm others, even though his actions do cause harm.

The same thief, while engaged in theft, might also injure or kill someone who interrupted him. But again, this thief - who has now become a murderer - is not essentially malevolent. He is solely concerned with his own well-being, and unconcerned with the well-being of others. He steals in order to benefit himself, and he murders in order to avoid punishment. He does not steal or murder because he wishes to harm others.

The majority of human crimes appear to fall into this category. Men act to benefit themeselves, in disregard of others. Every sort of fraud, embezzlement, piracy, larceny, robbery, mugging falls into this category of crime, in which one person gains (or does not lose) at the expense of others. The person who parks his car in such a way as to impede traffic flow, or who does not step aside to allow others to pass, engages in the same crime, but only on a far smaller scale. The state which invades another, and steals its land and property, and enslaves or murders its inhabitants, performs the same act on a much larger scale.

There are, of course, many other activities which may be classed as misdemeanours. Prostitution, drug dealing, gambling, and the like, while they cause no immediately discernible harm to anyone, may be held to pose a some kind of threat to society. But no-one supposes that prostitutes or their clients, drug dealers or drug users, bookmakers and gamblers, act out of malice.

The crimes so far discussed are devoid of malevolence. A thief is understood not to be malevolent, but self-interested, and even when he kills to escape capture, he acts out of self-interest. Human society, in Idle Theory, is always supposed to be less than perfectly idle, and the motive of theft - to increase idleness - is understandable, if still not condoned. Cold, starving, desperate men may be expected to steal food and clothing. It would be surprising if they did otherwise.

Perceived Malevolence.

But offenders, regardless of their real intent, may be perceived to be malevolent. If human society is taken to be perfectly idle, then a thief has no need to steal, and offences become explicable only as acts which are freely chosen, wanton, not driven by any necessity. The offender is then seen as someone who chooses, in full knowledge, to act not to benefit themselves, but to damage others. They are seen as malevolent.

When this happens, or is perceived to happen, the response is very often savage. Malevolence is met with malevolence. The malefactors become demonized, not in the sense of becoming the demons of Idle Theory (who are devoid of free will) but as those kinds of devils who act out of sheer malevolence.

The past persecution of witches in Europe is an example of such demonization. Witches were supposed to possess unnatural powers, which they used malevolently. Witches were supposed to be able to cause harm to people, animals, and crops. They were regarded as part of a malevolent subculture. Witches were tortured and burned in thousands. The practice has long since ceased. In the modern view, people are not believed to actually be able harm others by sticking pins in wax models, or blight crops by chanting spells. A few centuries ago, however, such a belief was widespread. In the modern view, therefore, the witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries are seen as the persecution of a lot of harmless old ladies, and that these women committed no crimes whatsoever, but that the self-righteous witchfinders' tortures and executions constituted the real crime. That is, the imaginary crimes of the witches resulted in the real crimes of their persecutors.

However, if witches are no longer demonized, the propensity to discover malevolence in others is still highly active. The Nazis demonized the Jews, and were themselves demonized in turn. Communists demonize capitalists. Capitalists demonize communists. Drug warriors demonize drug dealers, and in turn face demonizationn. And so on. There is a reciprocity of demonization at work. In all these cases, the demonized minority is ascribed malevolent intentions and powers. They are regarded as acting with the intention of causing suffering. But in every case, the resulting persecution actually does far more damage than the original imaginary offence.

There is, almost certainly, no such thing as real malevolence. What there most certainly is, however, is a conviction on the part of many people that there is such malevolence loose in the world. It is this conviction of the existence of evil which brings evil into the world, in the form of murderous witch-hunts. For once the malevolent individuals or subcultures have been identified, their imagined malevolence becomes sufficient justification for treating them with equal or even far greater malice.

And what underlies this conviction of the existence of malevolent evil is the belief that humans are perfectly free agents, and that whatever evil they do must therefore have been freely and deliberately chosen. In denying that human life is perfectly free, Idle Theory also denies that what humans do is entirely freely chosen. Human life is hampered and constrained. Perfect idleness, and the perfect freedom that comes with it, is an ideal, not an actual state.

Evil comes into the world when evil is perceived in the hearts of others. Nobody ever declares themselves to be evil, and yet each person is himself the best judge - and indeed the only judge - of his own motives. Evil intent is always ascribed to others. And in combatting this perceived evil, the witch-hunter invariably sees himself as a force of good, heroically driving evil from the world.

Any conviction of malevolence on the part of another must, anyway, has the nature of supposition. We have no real knowledge of the intentions of others, only of their actions. What intentions we ascribe to them have the nature of conjecture, however plausible and however supported by armies of facts. Justice, in dealing with misdeeds, is not about passing judgement upon the character of men, but upon their actions. It is not the business of magistrates to declare men to be evil, but only their acts.

The deep question underlying this discussion of evil is whether a wholly free moral agent would actually choose to do evil. Of course, such a free agent could so choose. But that he could does not mean that he would.