Philosopher Susan Neiman has written a succinct but powerful and needed book on Evil. Needed because we are wrestling today with profound evil. I summarize it as the “triple dark night of our souls, democracy and Mother Earth” in my new book on John of the Cross that comes out next month, as well as in the new version of my book on Trump & the MAGA Movement as Antichrist: Recognizing the Archetype of Evil in Our Times coming out this month.
She calls her book, Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era. Her book explores richly this sign of the times we are all living through, a chaos that needs to be named in order to be defeated.
She begins this way: How to describe these days of nightmare, when each morning brings another infamy that, not long ago, could have shocked us senseless? Some days they come too fast to count, let alone analyze, or even remember. Donald Trump is not the cause but the oversize expression of an international inclination.
Citing his “ability to govern with impunity,” she calls on his ex-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, who called him “a fascist to the core.” But the press politely employs the word “authoritarian” for fascism, in an attempt to “subdue our alarm.”
Trump’s body of work is “destructive enough to warrant the word evil” while also alerting us to the power of that word. It’s a dangerous word, easy to abuse, hard to withdraw, upping every ante and provoking responses that sail beyond the bounds of reason. Dare we use it “to describe the state we’re in, a state that’s already inflamed?”
I made the same point in my large book on Evil, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society, where I point out that religion has so often focused on the word “sin” that our culture has little grasp or even language for the word Evil—which is a far bigger word than sin. Sin allows evil in. Lakota teacher Buck Ghosthorse says, “fear is the door in the heart that lets evil spirits in.”
Neiman continues: Evil is the most explosive word we have. Used indiscriminately, it can serve to stir up evil itself. What’s the good of it? Evil is a word that marks a limit. Crimes and evil are different—we have procedures for punishing crime. But evil action threatens the trust in the world that we need to navigate….Evil is what you say when your jaw begins to drop if you sense that a line has been crossed. The Holocaust is the “gold standard of evil.”
Part of the bigness of evil is that it is an idea that arises whenever the gap between the way the world is and the way the world ought to be becomes too big to bear alone. She asks: Doesn’t that suggest a grandeur that the present does not approach? Our public sphere is relentlessly petty, malicious, vindictive, and vulgar. Is it large enough to carry the weight of a word like evil?
I say something similar when I say the opposite of evil is not the good—bad is the opposite of the good. The opposite of evil is the Sacred. That suggests the “grandeur” that Susan is talking about that accompanies evil.
Susan reminds us why she wrote the book—to understand why so many Americans voted to reelect a man whose actions had already changed history for the worse. So much cruelty and corruption can only be called evil…..Evil isn’t cruelty but something much worse: the ideas that allow cruelty to become ordinary.
Since few Americans “favor bombing fishermen, shooting protesters, or invading foreign countries, why aren’t more of us in the streets?”*
(To be continued next week.)
* Susan Neiman, Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era, pp. 1-8, 142, 203-205.
Banner Image: An evil empire that eats people alive, as depicted in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). Photo by Horst von Harbou. Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you agree that the word “Evil” is a “dangerous word” and the “most explosive word we have” and indicates a “line has been crossed” and is “too big to bear alone”? And a question arises whether our “public sphere is large enough to carry its weight”?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
The Beloved Will Guide You: St. John of the Cross and the Triple Dark Night of Our Times.
Trump and the MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: Recognizing the Archetype of Evil in Our Time.
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society.
The Pope’s War: Why Ratzinger’ s Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved.
The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors To Awaken the Sacred Masculine.
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings and Meditations.
The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance.
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth.
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice.
Charles Burack, ed., Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality.
Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation.
.jpg){kind=link}
5 thoughts on “Susan Neiman on Bringing Back the “E” Word”
YES! YES! Is Our answer Matthew to your questions in today’s prophetic and Truthful DM! We are not alone in facing evil in Our personal and communal lives with one another. God’s Spirit of LOVE~Wisdom~Truth~Peace~Justice~Strength~Healing~Transformation~Creativity~
Beauty~Joy~Compassion~Loving Diverse ONENESS… Is Always within and among Us, in All physical/nonphysical spiritual dimensions/Beings, in Our Living Loving Evolving Co-Creation
Cosmos in the Sacred Process of the Eternal Present Moment….
I agree that the word “Evil” is dangerous, but not only for the despicable behaviors it usually applies to. I find it dangerous also because it is too often used as a convenient deflection and denial of what, in our own behavior, would deserve being called “Evil.” The “Evil” we so much focus on in this and other DMs, as Susan Neiman accurately writes, “is not the cause but the oversize expression of an international inclination.” Without denying and vigorously opposing the evil deeds of the current administration, it would be wise not to forget our individual and collective complicity in its rise to power, e.g. not voting in 2024 or voting thoughtlessly, putting one’s personal interests before the collective interest, etc.
Great Evil from little evil grows. Just as an abused body generates tumors, ulcers and other illnesses and an abused Earth generates climate upheavals, a social tissue abused by daily racism, prejudices, violence and selfishness generates the trumps, hegseths, millers and other such “public disservants” of our times.
In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, the monster wisely recognizes: “I am malicious because I am miserable.” This does not excuse that, but at least it explains it. Why do we elect miserable people?
The last question, “why aren’t more of us in the streets?” also deserves being reflected upon.
Just a guess from me: Many people are captivated with glamor, not the good looks of a woman or man. The movies and other media have glamorized gangsters, body builders, entertainers, athletes and the roughnecks who force their ways on enemies who can only threaten but lose. When George C. Scott strutted on screen as Gen. Patton with chromed helmet and pearl-handled pistol in front of of a giant Stars and Stripes, he created a sense of being larger than life, awesome. (Pete Hegseth recently tried likewise, mostly with brash language, before a giant flag.) We all know the new archetypal roughneck antihero. Not only pitiless toward the most vulnerable, coarse of mouth, greedy, ostentatious, pandering to the bully and misogynist in immature men, but also intimidating toward members of the U.S. Congress and maybe the Supreme Court and military leaders. He also fawns over foreign dictators who invade democracies, threaten and order violence against civilians and kidnap children in neighboring nations. A spoiled child, indulged younger adult, abuser of women and pal of pedophiles, he is the “id” run rampant, thrilling to many who like cheap thrills. To many, one term as 45 was not enough. How do dream makers like Hollywood make sequels so profitable? They intensify, grossify their product. Now, so much more is ruined and imperilled to such extents, disenchantment finally offers the choice to reject.
My own in-laws voted for Trump both times. They are “good Catholics” who are not evil people. However they are white and heterosexual and enjoy a great deal of privilege in American culture. They don’t acknowledge the effects of their choices on others – and if they see others at all they blame them for their own circumstances, assuming that the playing field is equal and level and that we all have the same opportunities.
I believe evil is baked right into the systems we live under. The playing field has never been level – America was founded by genocidal, misogynist slave owners. What’s more evil than thinking you can own another person?
Another factor that comes to mind is how concentrated our information is these days. We can immediately be aware of every “evil” thing happening around the entire world. It’s more than we can process. When we subject ourselves to this daily, it becomes toxic. Is it really worse than it’s always been?
Finally there’s the thesis that evil is necessary to counterbalance the sacred – like light and dark – and that one cannot exist without the other. It’s up to us to discern the difference and make our choices.
For most of my life, I’ve refrained from using the word “evil.” Words like “evil” need to be reserved so that when we ultimately use one of these words, it carries weight. I taught my kids not to use swear words, not because they were inherently harmful, but because they needed to be reserved for when they were really needed. Reserving a word like the “f” word for when it is really needed is a good idea. That way we can use it when we really need to blow off steam or allow the persons in whose presence it is used to really “get” that the strength of a person’s anger, sadness, or other feeling. If one of my kids used the “f” word, it said to me “pay attention”! The word “evil” is the same, and I think most of us have reserved it for times like these. ICE’s actions; tRump’s fascism; the administrations cancelling of USAID; Republican capitulation; and the world view of Peter Theil, Stephen Miller, Elon Musk, and others running rampant in Washington are evil, just as Hitler was evil. (Hegsdeath? He’s just a four-year-old boy running around in a ToysRUs combat uniform. I wouldn’t even use the word “evil” for him.) We’ve reserved this powerful word so that it carries weight, and now I am willing to use it to identify what I see coming out of Washington.