Dance of the demons

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Tue, 1 Nov 2005 11:12 -0500

Dance of the demons

 

 

 

 

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/10/31/danc\

e_of_the_demons/

 

 

Dance of the demons

 

By James Carroll | October 31, 2005

 

TONIGHT THE children will be out, pretending to be demons. The

whimsical traditions of trick or treat, masked mischief, and

ritualized mayhem are a way of dealing with a dark mystery.

 

The delightful fright of the haunted house and its spooks initiates

youngsters into the macabre realm of mortality. Costumes teach that

deception is part of life. The threat at the door implicates even the

innocent, who happily enact the abandonment of morality. The figure of

the witch is emblematic because this holiday makes a joke of

scapegoating murder. Play is never more serious than on Halloween

because what the mockery confronts is nothing less than evil.

 

What is evil anyway? The myths of the devil, a snare-layer existing

apart from humans, are well established, from Lucifer to Satan to

Cruella. Their legends promote the notion that we descendants of Eve

are at the mercy of a wicked enemy whose attacks are from outside.

When we personalize that enemy and identify it, we can launch a

counter-attack. The battle is what our children enact tonight.

Smashing pumpkins is a version of witch-burning; if we like such

violence it is because it leaves us feeling purified. Nothing

sanctifies the self like condemnation of the other.

 

But there is another way to think of evil, finding it in the juncture

between individual freedom and social context. The story of Genesis

posits the malevolent serpent, but what ruined Paradise was not the

serpent but the option made in its favor by Adam and Eve. What follows

such choice is always unforeseen, but its dynamic is inevitable:

Choice leads to consequence, which leads to new and graver choice,

which leads in turn to yet graver consequence, and so on. A train of

action-reaction is set in motion that quickly outpaces the ability of

any one person to slow it.

 

This phenomenon can take the form of the ''grooved thinking " of a

bureaucracy or of the ''institutional culture " that trumps even the

good intentions of those who operate within it. Every human choice is

made inside a rushing current of prior choices, and the pressure is

not good.

 

Saint Paul spoke of the ''wiles of the devil, " but his defining

metaphor for evil was systemic, not personal. ''For we are not

contending against flesh and blood, " he wrote, ''but against the

principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this

present darkness. " For Paul, the enemy was not fallen angels, but

''sovereignties " which are hostile to humanity. He was talking about

Roman tyrants and an uncaring imperial bureaucracy. He was talking

about politics.

 

The clearest instance of this phenomenon today is unfolding in Iraq.

''Wars generate their own momentum, " Robert McNamara once wrote, ''and

follow the law of unintended consequences. " George W. Bush must be

held accountable for the consequences of his fateful decisions, from

the 2,000 dead Americans to the American embrace of torture to the

igniting of a clash of civilizations. But the ease with which the

United States embarked on Bush's unnecessary and illegal war -- with

huge popular, political, and pundit support -- was evidence of an

already established momentum that predated Bush, and even his father.

 

Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and

Clinton all kept the malevolent current flowing, if despite

themselves. Bush simply stepped into it. An unprecedented American

momentum toward war was unleashed in the 20th century, its destructive

energy fueled by the heat of an unchecked nuclear arsenal. That

momentum defines the nation now, and, for the first time in history,

threatens the very earth. The principalities and powers are us. In the

name of the fight against evil, good people established the

''sovereignty " of a militarized culture, laying bare the darkest

mystery of all: What we construct to oppose evil involves us in it.

Having armed evil with the nuclear bomb, we have made evil more

sovereign than ever.

 

If only there were a devil to exorcise or a witch to burn. If only

there were an axis of evil to oppose. Well, there is Saddam -- never

mind that the crimes for which he is being tried drew winks from

Washington. There is Iran with its blood curdling anti-Semitism --

never mind that its nuclear agenda is set by US policy. Like children

reading costumes, we know the wicked from the good. We make our

threats, seize our booty, and name the enemy, not thinking that we

ourselves have become the world's. For America's children, this is

play. For their nation, it is war. Trick or treat.

 

James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe.

© Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company.