Some people like to blame their state in life -- somewhat, but not
very much, lower than the top echelon in the richest country in the whole
world and in all time (see my "Das Kapital" essay)
-- on what they call "Systemic Evil" or sometimes "Systemic Racism" (or
sexism or whatever), but in reality there are no "evil" systems, only evil
people doing Bad Things to other people, either intentionally, or else
because they were told to do that, and they are either too lazy to think
about the moral consequences of what they are doing, or else too greedy
to give up the personal (selfish) benefits that come from doing those evil
things. The Nuremberg Trials 78 years ago established the equal guilt of
all three categories. When Bad Things Happen, if you did it willingly,
then you personally are Evil.
We all have done, and mostly continue to do, occasional Bad Things to other people. Some of us, we think about it, and we choose not to do those things. Mistakes happen, we can try to make amends, we can certainly choose not to do those Bad Things again, and the Cross of Jesus can and does erase the bad karma that comes from doing those Bad Things. But only if we want it. For the other people, we (the rest of us) try to make the consequences of doing Bad Things worse than the apparent benefits, but that's a mostly losing battle. God put in each of us an inherent desire for approval from other people, and sometimes that works, and far too often that approval is corrupted and fails at its purpose to make people want to earn that approval by doing Good Things rather than Bad Things. That's a topic for another day, another essay. Or not.
The best measure of what counts as "Good Things" (rather than Bad Things) is, What would you want happening to you in the same circumstance? It's called the Golden Rule (GR), and Jesus (and the Apostle Paul after him) quoted Moses in making it the bedrock of their respective religions. Most variants of Christianity have strayed from this core tenet, but at least the Protestants teach their adherents to read their Bible, and those who do read it, they mostly get the message. Following the GR makes everybody better off -- including those who don't follow it -- which is why our 500-year cultural tradition of finding the GR in the Bible (and doing it) made the USA the richest country in the whole world.
Somebody did some research on the sub-Saharan countries in Africa (see my blog post "God Is Good for You" ten years ago), some of them had Protestant missionaries and others Catholic, but a hundred years later the countries with Protestant missionaries, their people are better educated and more prosperous. The same thing happened in reverse in Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia (the richest country in Africa), it became the poorest in the world in one generation. What happened? The GR came off the school room walls, the kids were no longer taught Christian values, so now (as adults) they no longer try to do Good Things rather than Bad Things to other people. Guess what? The GR came off our (American) school room walls too some 40 years ago. We have farther to fall, but we're already on our way down. I, like the late Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, will die in my own bed, but he had no such hope for his immediate successors (see the full quote in my blog post "Religious Bigots and Civil Rights").
So what kinds of things would count as examples of "Systemic Evil" (if there were such a thing), but really are only Evil people doing Bad Things to other people that they would not want done to themselves?
Agency -- also known as autonomy -- is a social Good (most of the time), that is, allowing people to make their own choices and experience the consequences (good or bad) of their own choices, is generally better for everybody. Obviously we do not want people going out and raping, murdering and robbing other people, and we have established consequences for doing those Bad Things. One of those consequences is that you lose agency, other people tell you what to do and when, and you have no choice in the matter. Well, some choice: solitary confinement is still an option. When I was teaching high school computer programming, agency was one of the benefits of their new skill: they could tell the computer to do something, and it would do exactly what they told it to do (even if they didn't want to tell it to do that). It's a wonderful experience, well worth the effort it takes to learn how to do it.
I am the State-appointed Guardian for a young fellow in another state. One of the effects of Guardianship is that you lose the ability to define your own living conditions. You lose agency. My ward has expressed the desire to be out from under his Gueardian, and I sympathize with him. I wouldn't like it either. I didn't choose to put him there, I inherited the job from his previous Guardian. Every year I must file a form with the state, telling them what I did for him. One of the questions they ask is whether the Guardianship should be continued. It's a medical thing. I'm not a doctor, I'm not qualifed to answer that question. There are doctors in his state, and in his town, who ostensibly are qualified to answer that question, but they refuse to do so. Why is that? They won't tell me, but it's easy to guess: much -- perhaps most -- of their income comes from serving "disabled" persons paid by the Government (Medicaid), and if their diagnosis finds that this guy is no longer "disabled" then they lose that portion of their place at the public feeding trough. They are too greedy to give up the personal benefits that come from doing those evil things (in this case denying him agency in his own life). They have agency. They can choose to treat other people as they would like to be treated, or not. But there are no negative consequences to their oppressive (evil) behavior.
Personal wealth is often considered to be a social Good -- obviously not a moral absolute, because that would justify stealing wealth from other people -- but enough of a social Good that the Government (which has the God-given duty to punish evil and promote good) deems it appropriate to give wealth to people who are unable to earn their own income. The circumstances in which that happens tend to destroy wealth, so I personally think it is a Bad Thing to be doing, but nobody listens to my opinion. It is what it is, and my ward got onto the gravy train before I became Guardian. Maybe he can earn his own way, maybe not, I don't know. That's why I was trying to get a fresh medical opinion. The people administering the public benefits system are just doing their job, doing what they were told to do, just like the people condemned at Nuremberg. Could they do something about it? I don't know, and they are trying really hard not to tell me. Their job is paid by the Government, and they don't want to fall off the gravy train any more than the doctors they pay.
Personal wealth is often considered to be a social Good without respect to how much value you must create to earn it. I read the freebie magazines put out by the IEEE professional society I'm a member of. I'm a member because their statements of purpose and ethics seem to be worthy causes (on paper). But I (along with the Apostle Paul, and also God, Who created "work" before the Fall) believe you should do things that others are willing to pay for in order to earn whatever wealth you want to get from it. I know from personal experience that computer programming and mathematics and engineering (two or three of the letters in "STEM" = Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) are all very hard work. Not exactly the same as digging a hole in the ground with a pick and shovel, but still very tiring. There's an article in last month's issue of the IEEE ComputingEdge magazine by three authors with female Hispanic names. They want you to believe that racism and sexism are Systemic Evils resulting in a tiny minority of their own demographic in the STEM community, and they are trying to promote additional racist and sexist behaviors to counteract them. It is curious that they cite the overall ratio of females in STEM as 34%, which is almost exactly (within roundoff error) the same ratio as females among MBTI "Thinkers" who are the only people able to do the work in STEM jobs. In other words, the STEM jobs are fully staffed by people who are willing and able to do the work, without reference to gender. Gender is a far more obvious visible quality than (Hispanic) race, and much of the country is actively seeking to include other races -- and succeeding without trying, in the case of Asians -- so anybody who wants the job and is willing to work at it, can have the job. The reason it pays more is that nobody (not even most guys) wants the gruelling work. If more people wanted to do it, the wages would come down. The USA is the most egalitarian country in the whole world; that's why we are also the richest. It's simple economics, not racism, not sexism, and certainly not Systemic Evil.
Some employers are lazy or greedy -- given the cost of hiring and training STEM employees, they don't want to take a chance on low-probability job applicants -- but they themselves would not want to be excluded on the basis of a low probability (that's the GR again), we can call those few employers "evil," but that kind of stupidity tends to make the company less competitive, they're going to go under anyway, and who wants to work for a loser company? Don't worry about it. Concentrate on delivering to your prospective employer the best value for their money, and they will fall all over themselves to hire you, irrespective of race, gender, national origin or what you eat for breakfast. My father did that during the Great Depression, and he never was out of work.
The bottom line, the point of this essay, is that I do not have a high opinion of economic systems like Medicaid which force people into poverty and keep them there despite their ability and willingness by prudent behavior to improve their own lot in life and to make a positive cintribution to society. I do not have a high opinion of entrepeneurial leeches sucking resources from the public trough in the name of providing medical services to people who properly informed and motivated might otherwise live better on a much lower burden to society. In both cases, it's people who did (and do) these things, not any "system."
Tom Pittman
Rev. 2023 December 6