Evil Versus Dehumanization

2/16/2021

This is interesting.

The first Google graph below depicts the use over time "mentions" trend line for the word evil.

The second one shows the same for the word dehumanization.

The search above was partly inspired by comments someone called "Unknown" recently left on William Wildblood's blog in response to another comment (errors and typos edited by me):

"The bifurcation of humanity continues apace, ultimately leading to the separation of the good and the evil portions into two distinct races - the latter far more numerous."

That kind of dehumanizing us vs them mentality has the potential to lead to great evil - I would be cautious there.

I much prefer the Buddhist view that bad people are merely ignorant and deluded - this keeps us compassionate towards them.

I understand Christianity is the great religion of dualism and inheritor of Zoroastrianism - of the ultimate fight between good and evil, the belief that evil is completely real, and the ultimate separation of total good from evil.

I understand Christianity cannot accept the Buddhist idea that there are no evil men just deluded and mind-fettered men, and I respect that.

But latent in Christianity and all dualistic philosophies is the potential to utterly dehumanize those who disagree with you and become the evil you fear.

Just a word of caution.

Talk among yourselves.

12 Comments

CRC

2/16/2021 21:27:31

There's this popular idea in the West - one reflected in the comment you post here - that Buddhist societies are inherently more tolerant and less violent than Christian ones. This is false. Monocultures tend to be less violent, and where Buddhism reigns supreme, there is in fact a great deal of social harmony. But as soon as you introduce ethnic and religious minorities, you get conflict like anywhere else.

Thailand and Burma/Myanmar are both military dictatorships with an ongoing record of violent suppression of ethnic and religious minorities. See the Burmese persecution and expulsion of the Rohinga Muslims, the ongoing low grade Islamic terrorist insurrection in the southern Thai provinces in the Malay peninsula which is being very forcibly suppressed.

The Vietnam war was essentially a civil war between the urban Catholic ruling minority and the Buddhist rural majority. The animist Hmong ethnic minority was persecuted by everybody, including Buddhists.The wars in Cambodia and Laos were fought amongst Buddhists.

The Sinhalese Buddhists in Sri Lanka have fought a long civil war against the Tamil Hindu minority, whom they have politically persecuted and suppressed with extreme violence.

In Tibet itself there is a long history of violence, of "warrior monks" and discrimination against outsiders and minorities. If they could successfully expel the Han Chinese with violence - some of whom are Buddhist like themselves - they most certainly would.

The Japanese Shinto Buddhist warrior tradition was the fascist ideology behind Japanese imperialism, responsible for the genocidal wars fought all across Asia in the 1930's and 40's by Imperial Japan. The rape of Nanking was perpetuated by Japanese Buddhists. Many of the people they subjugated and murdered were also Buddhist.

The idea that Buddhism and Buddhists are inherently pacifistic and non violent is a fantasy, easily falsified by reading the least bit of history.

Francis Berger

2/16/2021 21:55:28

@ CRC - Great comment. "Unknown" is under the illusion that Chinese Buddhists who were dehumanized by Japanese Buddhists via Japanese imperialism were wary of calling their tormentors evil because to do so would open up the potential for dramatic dualist
dehumanization . . . or something to that effect.

William James Tychonievich link

2/17/2021 02:01:50

Which is more "dehumanizing"? The belief that others are ignorant and deluded, like animals? Or the belief that they make meaningful moral choices, like men?

As for the former being more "compassionate," no set of factual beliefs about a person is any more inherently compassionate than any other. Real compassion wants to know the <i>truth</i> about others, whatever it may be, so that kindness can be shown. You can't help a patient who has been misdiagnosed.

"John is a heroin addict? What a horrible, dehumanizing thing to say about a person! I would never say that!" But if John is, in fact, a heroin addict, no one can help him until that fact is acknowledged.

2/17/2021 08:12:05

@ Wm - Agreed. To dehumanize is to deprive of positive human qualities. In this sense, the most positive quality a human being has is his or her innate spiritual quality. Thus, any humanizing belief that denies the existence of this spiritual quality is already a grave form of dehumanization.

Evil is the recognition and understanding of a supernatural force that is opposed to God; a supernatural force that humans access when they purposefully align against God or choose to reject God altogether. This supernatural force dehumanizes people by persuading them that humanity does not possess a spiritual dimension - that no such spiritual dimension exists.

Without God, evil is reduced to temporal and material concepts of right and wrong, good and bad - all of which are relative and, ultimately, meaningless. In such a milieu, the very act of discerning evil is regarded as a great evil because it hinders relativist and positivist interpretations of material right and wrong (which are constantly in flux; forever changing).

Non-dualists and atheists believe any discernment of evil leads to potential dehumanization - that the discernment of evil is the same as labeling evil-doers as sub-human monsters that must be eliminated/destroyed. But in my mind, a discernment of evil is a validation of an evil-doers full humanity - of his free will and agency - of his latent spiritual dimension. It also nurtures the hope that the evil-doer will repent and change his course. Discernment of evil is the recognition of spiritual motivation, but also the hope that this spiritual motivation can change. As such, what happens in this world, though important, is not the do-all and end-all when it comes to evil. Evil spiritual motivation has after death consequences as well.

One potential way to read the charts above is to draw a link between the decline in the mentions of evil with the rise in the mentions of dehumanization. As an awareness of the spiritual motivation behind evil begins to decline, the awareness of temporal/material dehumanization begins to increase.

Modern people have lost the ability to discern evil. Evil, in turn, now hides behind the protective shield of dehumanization. "How dare you call me evil! That's dehumanizing! Where is your compassion?"

Meanwhile, evil continues its dehumanization campaign unopposed. Almost everything that has happened in the past year has been evil AND dehumanizing - yet modern people don't see either in play. At best, they see people of good motivation trying to save the world; at worst, misguided people and unfettered minds. Neither is correct and neither does justice to what is currently happening.

Anyway, I'm rambling . . .

William Wildblood

2/17/2021 10:56:49

A really good post, Frank, and really good comments from CRC and Wm Jas too. And your "rambling" (your word!) second comment sums the whole thing up superbly. The real dehumanisation of human beings is the rejection of the spiritual and that is something we do to ourselves. And the point is that this is not because of ignorance. Spiritual teachings, and in the West Christian teachings, are available to all. They are not hidden even in this day and age.

2/17/2021 11:33:05

@ William - "The real dehumanisation of human beings is the rejection of the spiritual and that is something we do to ourselves."

Yes, that's it precisely.

bruce charlton

2/17/2021 14:53:25

To amplify "John is a heroin addict? -

With the Alcoholic's Anonymous method: "My name is John, and I am a heroin addict".

As you know, I have been impressed by what I know of the AA approach, and how it has turned round the lives of some people - and it is based on the acknowledgement that the addiction is evil, confession and repentance. This discernment is shared by the addict and by the AA community.

More widely, this discussion shows why oneness teachings (including Western Buddhism) are popular is this age, why it is sponsored and subsidized by The System, and why its adherents are nearly all (very) Leftist (even when they self-identify otherwise).

Lady Mermaid link

2/18/2021 23:44:30

Alcoholics Anonymous demonstrates the beauty of Christian repentance. We will always stumble and fall but we can get back up if we admit we did wrong. The first step to solving a problem is admitting that there is a problem, which is something that modern people really struggle with.

Addressing the issue of "dehumanization", I think part of that may be an overreaction to legalistic views of Christianity. I don't ever want to see anything else like the wars between Catholics & Protestants during the 16th/17th centuries. However, CS Lewis brilliantly argues in "The Great Divorce" about the dangers of erring in the opposite direction. Harsh persecution is wrong. However, a refusal to call out sin for what it is can be just as deadly.

This is what I appreciate about this blog as well as Charlton and Wildblood's thoughts even though I have never commented before. Ya'll show the love of Christ while still being willing to call a spade a spade. It seems that most churches tend to fall into a legalism that condemns people based on abstract theology or the wishy washy oneness teachings.

John Smitty

2/23/2021 02:35:26

"I much prefer the Buddhist view that bad people are merely ignorant and deluded - this keeps us compassionate towards them."

I don't think its accurate to the Suttas of the Theravada canon when properly translated. The sentiment above is either Mahayanan or just the modern female sentimentalism that has taken over modern Buddhism.

For instance, you have the sutta where Buddha discusses a wicked man who died and went to hell, and the warders of hell dragged him to the king of hell who interrogated him. (I think this is in the book of 3s in the Anguttara Nikaya because it starts "There are 3 divine messengers, o monks; what 3?" Yeah here it is https://suttacentral.net/an3.36/en/bodhi I'm paraphrasing obviously. And then tells this story.) So the king of hell asks the man "did you not ever see the divine messengers?" The man says "no." The king of hell says "you never say an old man close to death?" "Well yeah I saw that." "Then why didn't you consider your own mortality, consider that there might be an afterlife, and straighten up your life?" The man can't say much. So he asks about the 2nd divine messenger, guy says he didn't see it, "You never saw anyone terminally ill?" Repetition of same. Then 3rd, "you never saw a corpse?" Same thing. (Another sutta somewhere adds a 4th, "You never saw a priest or monk?" "Yes." "Why didn't you consider your mortality, etc.?")

From this story it seems plain the idea is he has no excuse "I was ignorant; I didn't know I should live morally." He saw the "divine messengers" that everyone sees, so he should have considered his mortality, that there is probably an afterlife, and lived right. So this doesn't support the idea that evil people are just ignorant.

2/23/2021 08:15:14

@ John Smitty - Thanks for the insightful comment. I believe God is a loving father; as such, he permits his children the freedom to achieve the heaven (or non-heaven) they seek.

With this in mind, I have nothing against Buddhism per se, but you are correct to observe that much of what masquerades as Buddhism in the West today is a farce. Of course, the same holds true for Christianity.

Sentimentalism/non-judgement is the hallmark of most modern religious practices. There's this idea that discerning evil leads to the potential of dehumanization. At the same time, non-discernment grants evil free reign to dehumanize at will.

I don't buy the ignorant and misguided argument. Things have come to a point. Anyone who refuses to acknowledge or makes sentimental excuses for evil at this stage of the game has made a conscious choice against God.

john smitty

2/23/2021 03:50:07

Also with regard to dehumanizing, the "no soul, no self, everything is emptiness and there is no such thing as a person" version of Buddhism believed in by probably 98% of Buddhists is extremely dehumanizing.

2/23/2021 08:29:47

@ JS - "No soul, no self, and everything is emptiness and there is no such thing as a person . . . "

Sounds an awful lot like nihilism to me, and there's nothing more dehumanizing than nihilism.

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Evil Versus Dehumanization

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