Essays Toward an Anthropology of Evil

Essays Toward an Anthropology of Evil Stephen Kennamer TABLE OF CONTENTS I. CHARACTER, MORALITY, AND EVIL The search for evil The virtues The unpardonable sin Sociopathic evil Psychopathic evil Narcissism in high places Careerism in high places Abstractions and ideals – sick minds in sound bodies Character, morality, and evil in "The Permanent Washington" Principled evil on the Supreme Court Adolf Hitler II. CRITIQUE OF PURE VIRTUE The universe according to William Bennett Joe DiMaggio and the simulacrum of character The advice of Polonius to Laertes Character versus morality The social virtue of duty: Robert E. Lee's character and morality The solipsism of character In praise of lying A meditation in praise of cowardice The social virtue of modesty The tragedy of discipline The unpardonable virtue Lutheran morality Calvinist morality Institutionalized obedience The psychology of obedience III. THEOLOGICAL EVIL The narcissism of religion Milton's dystopia, or Paradise well lost John Bunyan Superstar: self-flagellation as performance art Clive Staples Lewis and the psychology of true belief Transubstantiation The riddle of apostasy I CHARACTER, MORALITY, AND EVIL The search for evil On June 4, 1995, The New York Times Magazine bit off more than it customarily chewed: no less than what theologians call The Problem of Evil. In a tabloid sense, of course, the topic of Evil! is a perennial favorite. But this was an attempt to give the subject a breadth, and especially a depth, of treatment that was altogether exceptional in American journalism before the September 11, 2001 attack. From the beginning, author Ron Rosenbaum lets us know that he is dealing with the real thing. No sociological excuse-making, no therapeutic New Age doo-dah. His topic is unadulterated evil – deep, ineradicable, inexplicable, his Satanic Majesty in human form. The bad mother And what has set the (male) writer of The New York Times to contemplating the horror at the heart of the human species? – it is 23-year-old Susan Smith's murder of her two infant boys. So incomprehensible, so monstrous. This deed has sent our author, brooding, to the edge of the very lake where she strapped her sons into their seat belts, released the brake and watched the car roll into the water and sink. Rosenbaum walked the shore trying, trying, trying to make sense of it all. But not even The Shadow knows what evil lurks in the minds of . women! And did Susan Smith not say, after her story of an abduction by a black bogeyman broke down, and she had confessed, that her boys were now in a better place? Was that what the devil whispered to her that night? In order to make her his very own and claim her soul for evil? Please. Susan Smith was an ordinary overwrought young woman who fell into a disastrous funk on a particular night and came apart like pick-up-sticks. She committed an evil act in an evil hour – who would deny it? But there is not a shred of evidence to indicate that it was the grand finale to a series of evil acts, or that it was a deed, to paraphrase Shakespearean critic A. C. Bradley, "thoroughly characteristic of the doer." Her remorse began even with the confession, or really before it – since she had essentially beaten the rap and had only to stick to her story. Her line about "a better place" was a pathetic attempt to console herself. The reason she killed her kids could not be simpler. A wealthy young man with whom she had been intimate, and on whom she had fixed her hopes, had broken off the relationship by letter, citing as one of the reasons his unwillingness to take on the responsibility of her children. In a culture that bombards both sexes, but especially women, about one thousand times per day, with the message that the chief good and satisfaction in life is romantic love forever, is there anything to wonder at here? But if you prefer something more rococo, like "life imitating art," well, the plot can be found in a novel by Richard Adams, The Girl on a Swing. But was this not, as the ghost of Hamlet's father says: Murder most foul, as in the best it is, But this most foul, strange, and unnatural. The search for evil - 6 Well, several hundred children are killed each year by adults – some by predatory abductors; many more by parents who are known and respected in their communities. Twice within ten days in the Washington metro area, an aggrieved husband murdered his two children to punish a wife who wished to separate. Not far from my house, a man stabbed his wife to death in front of their children. In the next town, a man punished his son by ordering him to do so many calisthenics that the boy died. In the next county, a man was sentenced to life in prison for having beaten, raped, starved, and finally murdered his step-daughter: for years he had been locking her in a tool shed all night, after various forms of assault. In these rather commonplace cases – unlikely to make the national news – the murder is usually the culminating event in a pattern of bullying, beating, and psychological torture that has gone on for years. But suddenly we turn pale – we have looked into the very face of evil, and it is Susan Smith's. It is a caution to behold what spin can accomplish. Susan Smith is now a household name, and no article on evil in the mainstream press fails to mention her. Less familiar is the name of Tracy Thacker. He was a Marine Corps recruiter in Cleveland, Tennessee who had beaten and stalked his wife until she filed for divorce. On the morning of December 12, 2000, he pulled his nine-year-old daughter and five-year-old son out of their elementary school classes. When administrators asked him to provide a reason for the withdrawal on a sign-out sheet, he wrote the words "to pay back mom." He took the children home, stabbed them to death, and set fire to the house. He was brought down by police gunfire later in the day. But the news-as- entertainment industry was right to neglect this story: it was not news; there was nothing new in it; and it certainly was not entertaining. The search for evil - 7 And our sentimentality about the smallest children is surely suspect. Shouldn't we think that a child gains in value as he or she ages? In Chicago alone, several upstanding honor students in middle schools and high schools are killed each year in senseless bursts of gunfire – children who have been dear to their parents, relatives, teachers, and friends not just for two or three years, like the children of Susan Smith, but for twelve, fourteen, and sixteen years. And how about adults? How many grown women have been, and are being today, not merely "abused" – a bland, euphemistic word – but stalked, terrorized, brutalized, tormented, and raped for years on end by husbands who sometimes call them every hour to check up on them, pretend to go out and circle back to spy on them, systematically isolate them from their families and friends, and finally kill them when they try to leave? Out of fear of male violence, almost every female person of any age whatsoever who lives in an urban part of this country is, if not quite confined to quarters every night from sunset to sunrise, careful to venture out only in a group, or in a car with the assurance of a safe place to park at the other end of the drive. But the national symbol of corrosive evil was suddenly a 23- year-old woman without a rap sheet other than the one containing her single, heartsick, desperate act. As Hamlet said after the revelation of the ghost, "Would heart of man once think it?" Yes, Hamlet, would ever a man think it? In a century where militant military man has murdered over one hundred million people, often with the approval, if not downright enthusiastic support, of most of his countrymen – in this century, we have finally peered into the very heart of darkness, and found. a woman. who kills boys. The search for evil - 8 What's wrong with this picture? The good father Do you want evil? Do you want everything the public has read into the Susan Smith case, but this time, for real? How about a Pennsylvania man named Alan Gubernat, a pleasant-looking 34-year-old white man, a good worker, respected by all. He fathered a son but denied paternity; so the mother began raising the child alone, and meanwhile – obviously – bestowed upon the boy her own last name. But when Gubernat's paternity was proven by blood tests and he was ordered to pay child support, he suddenly took an intense interest in his son: he sued for custody and – of course! – demanded the right to give the boy his own last name. Father and mother came to terms on most issues: Gubernat was granted joint legal custody and visitation rights; the mother retained physical custody. But she also contested the matter of the last name and eventually prevailed in a unanimous decision by the state supreme court. Whereupon Gubernat decided to even the score a little bit. On Mother's Day, he shot his son in the head. And his lawyer had the effrontery to say, after the murder and Gubernat's subsequent suicide, that Gubernat's persistence in the case "had nothing to do with a father's right to assign a name or an extension of the male ego." Gubernat had insisted on his own last name, the lawyer said, only "in the best interests of the child, because of the relationship they had, the strong bond they'd made." Assuming we can take it as a general principle that shooting a child in the head is never in The search for evil - 9 his best interest, or the way to strengthen a bond, Gubernat stands exposed as having been motivated by nothing else except the extension of his male ego.

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