I don't believe in God, but if I did, I suspect my answer would be "because of the fall."
Whether or not it would be because a snake made a woman eat an apple (or made her fuck him, as some of our resident theists believe) or not, it serves as a good mythic shorthand for the root of our imperfections, great and small (when I went to a Catholic High School, that was generally how they treated it). We are all imperfect, and even though most of us have been conditioned against it, we're all capable of becoming evil. Much has been written about the "banality of evil," as coined by Hannah Arendt during the trial of Adolph Eichmann.
Here's a powerful moment I discovered recently from the trial of a concentration camp survivor realising the essential truth of it:
As powerful as this video is, his "Planet Auschwitz" speech was meant to be the opening statement of a longer testimony really going into detail about what went on, but about six minutes into it, Yehiel De-Nur fainted. 21 years, 6 months, and 30 days later, he told 60 Minutes exactly why he fainted:
As distasteful as it may be to a lot of people to try and compare themselves to someone who willingly set themselves to the task of destroying an alarmingly large group of people, and managed to go a good portion of the way in the span of less than 3 1/2 years, to just treat it with a little "there but for the grace of God go I," but I've come to realise that, if you want to try and stop evil, othering it is the worst thing you can possibly do. A film released the same year De-Nur gave his testimony concluded "If he and all of the other defendants had been degraded perverts, if all of the leaders of the Third Reich had been sadistic monsters and maniacs, then these events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake, or any other natural catastrophe."
You dismiss that idea, you fail to understand evil. You fail to understand evil, it becomes a Hell of a lot harder to take it on.
Whether or not it would be because a snake made a woman eat an apple (or made her fuck him, as some of our resident theists believe) or not, it serves as a good mythic shorthand for the root of our imperfections, great and small (when I went to a Catholic High School, that was generally how they treated it). We are all imperfect, and even though most of us have been conditioned against it, we're all capable of becoming evil. Much has been written about the "banality of evil," as coined by Hannah Arendt during the trial of Adolph Eichmann.
Here's a powerful moment I discovered recently from the trial of a concentration camp survivor realising the essential truth of it:
As powerful as this video is, his "Planet Auschwitz" speech was meant to be the opening statement of a longer testimony really going into detail about what went on, but about six minutes into it, Yehiel De-Nur fainted. 21 years, 6 months, and 30 days later, he told 60 Minutes exactly why he fainted:
Yehiel De-Nur Wrote:Was Dinur overcome by hatred? Fear? Horrid memories? No; it was none of these. Rather, as Dinur explained to Wallace, all at once he realized Eichmann was not the god-like army officer who had sent so many to their deaths. This Eichmann was an ordinary man. "I was afraid about myself," said Dinur. "... I saw that I am capable to do this. I am ... exactly like he."
As distasteful as it may be to a lot of people to try and compare themselves to someone who willingly set themselves to the task of destroying an alarmingly large group of people, and managed to go a good portion of the way in the span of less than 3 1/2 years, to just treat it with a little "there but for the grace of God go I," but I've come to realise that, if you want to try and stop evil, othering it is the worst thing you can possibly do. A film released the same year De-Nur gave his testimony concluded "If he and all of the other defendants had been degraded perverts, if all of the leaders of the Third Reich had been sadistic monsters and maniacs, then these events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake, or any other natural catastrophe."
You dismiss that idea, you fail to understand evil. You fail to understand evil, it becomes a Hell of a lot harder to take it on.
Comparing the Universal Oneness of All Life to Yo Mama since 2010.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.