Oct 27, 2022·edited Oct 27, 2022Liked by Erik Hoel
“The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
(but I do wonder if the Karen in your story was acting out of misplaced concern for your dog, or if, instead, she likes confontation for its own sake, and was just looking for a pretext to justify her strange hobby)
This essay reminded me of a quote from CS Lewis, who also talks a lot about evil as the result of "disordered loves": "But in reality we have no experience of anyone liking badness just because it is bad. The nearest we can get to it is in cruelty. But in real life people are cruel for one of two reasons - either because they are sadists, that is, because they have a sexual perversion which makes cruelty a cause of sensual pleasure to them, or else for the sake of something they are going to get out of it - money, or power, or safety. But pleasure, money, power and safety are all, as far as they go, good things. The badness consists in pursuing them by the wrong method, or in the wrong way, or too much. i do not mean, of course, that the people who do this are not desperately wicked. I do mean that wickedness, when you examine it, turns out to be the pursuit of some good in the wrong way. You can be good for the mere sake of goodness : you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness."
Great quote, and also clairvoyant noticing that it relates to EA. I had a couple sentences making that exact connection, discussing once again why I personally am not really in EA (although I like the majority of their causes, methods, and activity). But I removed them, figuring that (a) everyone had heard enough about that from me already, and (b) it ended up feeling like an unnecessary digression.
I would characterize this woman’s moralism as deranged and suggestive of her own personal alienation. Hitler’s moralism was also deranged in that it was entirely other-directed. Most moral systems are inner-directed focused on restraining the individual’s tendency for anti-social behavior and aiding the common good. Deranged people focus only on expunging minority groups or castigating random strangers they are not really connected to at all.
Over-developed moralism can be an interesting topic but the Karen meme is so clearly just a way to make misogyny acceptable (they're white women, fuck them!) that I don't see the sense in playing into it. Blue collar, middle-aged white women don't actually have an inordinate amount of power in the world, aren't there some other groups more worthy of our ire? The over-educated East Coast elite SJW who employ the meme come more readily to mind for me as an example of a sickening level of righteousness.
Agreed. I reckon that most "Karens" are daughters of women who had little agency. As a mother of teens I have of course been called a Karen, but daughter does concede that I don't actually fit the bill. I see"Karens" as high on the novelty of having a voice that can cause a meaningful reaction. Delightfully expanded in this piece!
I completely agree that the greatest evil tends to be done out of moral motivations. But once we acknowledge this we have to confront a follow-up question: how do we avoid doing evil ourselves? We cannot simply appeal to the purity of our moral convictions.
I think part of the antidote is a good-faith effort to understand other people's moral convictions, and the origins of their ethical frameworks. I like to think I'm not evil, but I certainly used to do and say things I would now consider unkind or even bigoted, out of dedication to specific moral teachings of the religion I was raised in. Considering other moral frameworks allowed me to see the negative effects those unkind things were having, and to understand that there is no universal morality.
👏. Love this. I once started writing a novel called Karen, about a frustrated Karen with a half-Black GenZ trans daughter, set outside Charlottesville, VA, and she starts a movement to designate “Karen” as hate speech and a racial slur, and of course meets with shame and backlash... Then I realized mid way that no one would ever publish it, cause it was so intense and edgy, and so I stopped working on it.
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Since March 2020, the abyss has been working overtime.
Great piece, Erik. One of humanity's biggest faults is we don't know where the limit of "good" is, before our moralism turns into dogmatism.
Solzhenitsyn's "both good and evil cut through the heart of every human" quote fits here, too.
I do my best not to watch the Karen memes but end up looking at some of them. And I sometimes see the Karens having a a clear mental illness breakdown, perhaps a temporary one or possibly as a part of a chronic illness. Also, I think our definitions of Karens is very limited. It occurs to me that road ragers are also moralistic Karens driven by narcissism and a warped sense of injustice. And I'd say that at least 90% of the people who've road raged me have been men.
I submit that a lot of road rage is in response to “Karens” (male and female) who appoint themselves the enforcers of traffic rules (e.g. parking themselves in the passing lane and going 50 mph because they disapprove of speeding.)
That's certainly something that happens. But I think road rage happens most often when one driver makes a mistake. I've been road-raged when I accidentally cut someone off. Rather than accept my mistake as part of life on the road, the road rager will seek to disproportionally punish me by driving dangerously close to me. I've been chased by road ragers. I'd bet that is the most common form of road rage: an angry person, usually male, who treats driving as a competition. I've also been dangerously tailgated simply because I was following the speed of the surrounding traffic.
I hear you, and I’ve been in those situations, too. There is definitely a competitive or honor-upholding element to some angry road encounters where it seems like these drivers don’t grasp that almost nothing that happens on the road is personal. Most of us are just trying to mind our own business and get where we’re going.
Great essay. I agree with you. The more one studies the root of genocide, the more one sees how the twisted logic of “morality” played its part. For an article I wrote on the dangerous rise of the white replacement conspiracy theory, I interviewed Dr. Alexander Hinton, an anthropologist and the head of genocide studies at Rutgers University. Dr. Hinton said, “Demonization is key. In mass violence, blame is always displaced.” Thus, the twisted morality. The one area I disagree with you on is regarding the ones who are more likely to be the antidote. While I agree with you to an extent about those who don’t want to intervene, sometimes that turns into apathy and allows a mass atrocity to continue. Sometimes people HAVE to take a side. During WW2, the U.S. wanted to remain an isolationist nation until it was attacked by Japan. But it also refused to let many Jews in, including Otto Frank and his family, which included Anne Frank. There is so much nuance to this topic. How much morality is helpful, and how much can lead to evil? Finally, so sorry about your Karen experience. People have gone nuts lately.
agree with this, was going to write something similar. While there definitely lots of truth in most evil being rooted in twisted moralism, the 'grey' approach itself I think can also lead to inaction, appeasement and excuse making in the face of the reality of evil that the world will likely always contain. There's no easy answers or one approach here I fear
Super interesting read! tho it does make me wonder whether the source of evil is good and the knowledge of moralism or the fact that those people utilised moralism and leaned into the narrative of "i am actually the good guy" to justify their actions to themselves and others.
Oct 27, 2022·edited Oct 27, 2022Liked by Erik Hoel
Love the layout of this. Personal story → Bigger idea → relating idea to history/entertainment/social norms → bringing idea to modern day issues where each side thinks they sit on a moral high horse of some sort and how media/entertainment industries use these strongly held beliefs to make us feel divided. These words were definitely influential and fit into my brain like a puzzle piece. Being a Disney kid in the late 90's/early 00's and coming to appreciate Studio Ghibli just a few years ago definitely has me thinking deeper about the state of our shared reality. Well done, indeed!
This is the reason I dread leaving my dog alone in the car for even a second to go anywhere. We’re overrun with self-appointed police lately and for all their passion and righteousness they don’t seem to be making the world a better place. Quite the opposite. This is timely as I’m working on a piece involving animal abuse and the good (but misguided) intentions underlying “evil” outcomes. I do think there is plenty of plain old malice and cruelty in the world, but it generally announces itself openly. The worse evils are the ones that cloak themselves in the mantle of morality and benevolence.
I also think it’s an issue of seeking power by those who feel powerless in there every day lives which is why Karens escalate, it’s a challenge to the power they seek. I had a similar incident where I just ignored a Karen and walked away. She couldn’t accept being ignored and followed me screaming louder and louder. She was frustrated that I didn’t validate her power and the fact I didn’t even acknowledge her existence drove her crazy.
"For it is foolishness and endless trouble to cast a stone at every dog that barks at you." ---George Silver, c.1600 (quoted in Shakespeare's Rebel by C. C. Humphreys)
I do not see her behavior as one of moral choice. She has faced situations where she believes herself to be the victim of an injustice, but has received no recompense. Because this is out of her control, she must find what she believes is an injustice and become the justice she so deeply desires. It is not a question of right or wrong. This is why the appeal to authority (the police) because they are the purveyors of justice.
I am not excusing her behavior at all, but something that has stuck with me in my personal and professional life is to never attribute an action to maliciousness when ignorance is a more suitable cause. By ignorance I don't mean stupidity. I mean never being nurtured toward another course of action that can have a better result.
This requires a deeper conversation in many cases when it may not be possible (like this one). Something to chew on.
You're looking at the surface of what I said and what she did. Her behavior, which you seem to be saying is motivated by her desire to be right, I am saying is not. It goes deeper than that. I'm not saying justice can't be a matter of right and wrong. What I'm saying is that her behavior points to something deeper. Understanding that can help us better understand why people react irrationally and speak to it.
“The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
(but I do wonder if the Karen in your story was acting out of misplaced concern for your dog, or if, instead, she likes confontation for its own sake, and was just looking for a pretext to justify her strange hobby)
This essay reminded me of a quote from CS Lewis, who also talks a lot about evil as the result of "disordered loves": "But in reality we have no experience of anyone liking badness just because it is bad. The nearest we can get to it is in cruelty. But in real life people are cruel for one of two reasons - either because they are sadists, that is, because they have a sexual perversion which makes cruelty a cause of sensual pleasure to them, or else for the sake of something they are going to get out of it - money, or power, or safety. But pleasure, money, power and safety are all, as far as they go, good things. The badness consists in pursuing them by the wrong method, or in the wrong way, or too much. i do not mean, of course, that the people who do this are not desperately wicked. I do mean that wickedness, when you examine it, turns out to be the pursuit of some good in the wrong way. You can be good for the mere sake of goodness : you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness."
All of this which has some interesting implications for EAs: https://twitter.com/MatthewAdelste1/status/1584934725625720832
Great quote, and also clairvoyant noticing that it relates to EA. I had a couple sentences making that exact connection, discussing once again why I personally am not really in EA (although I like the majority of their causes, methods, and activity). But I removed them, figuring that (a) everyone had heard enough about that from me already, and (b) it ended up feeling like an unnecessary digression.
I would characterize this woman’s moralism as deranged and suggestive of her own personal alienation. Hitler’s moralism was also deranged in that it was entirely other-directed. Most moral systems are inner-directed focused on restraining the individual’s tendency for anti-social behavior and aiding the common good. Deranged people focus only on expunging minority groups or castigating random strangers they are not really connected to at all.
Over-developed moralism can be an interesting topic but the Karen meme is so clearly just a way to make misogyny acceptable (they're white women, fuck them!) that I don't see the sense in playing into it. Blue collar, middle-aged white women don't actually have an inordinate amount of power in the world, aren't there some other groups more worthy of our ire? The over-educated East Coast elite SJW who employ the meme come more readily to mind for me as an example of a sickening level of righteousness.
Agreed. I reckon that most "Karens" are daughters of women who had little agency. As a mother of teens I have of course been called a Karen, but daughter does concede that I don't actually fit the bill. I see"Karens" as high on the novelty of having a voice that can cause a meaningful reaction. Delightfully expanded in this piece!
I completely agree that the greatest evil tends to be done out of moral motivations. But once we acknowledge this we have to confront a follow-up question: how do we avoid doing evil ourselves? We cannot simply appeal to the purity of our moral convictions.
I think part of the antidote is a good-faith effort to understand other people's moral convictions, and the origins of their ethical frameworks. I like to think I'm not evil, but I certainly used to do and say things I would now consider unkind or even bigoted, out of dedication to specific moral teachings of the religion I was raised in. Considering other moral frameworks allowed me to see the negative effects those unkind things were having, and to understand that there is no universal morality.
👏. Love this. I once started writing a novel called Karen, about a frustrated Karen with a half-Black GenZ trans daughter, set outside Charlottesville, VA, and she starts a movement to designate “Karen” as hate speech and a racial slur, and of course meets with shame and backlash... Then I realized mid way that no one would ever publish it, cause it was so intense and edgy, and so I stopped working on it.
An epic essay.
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Since March 2020, the abyss has been working overtime.
Great piece, Erik. One of humanity's biggest faults is we don't know where the limit of "good" is, before our moralism turns into dogmatism.
Solzhenitsyn's "both good and evil cut through the heart of every human" quote fits here, too.
I do my best not to watch the Karen memes but end up looking at some of them. And I sometimes see the Karens having a a clear mental illness breakdown, perhaps a temporary one or possibly as a part of a chronic illness. Also, I think our definitions of Karens is very limited. It occurs to me that road ragers are also moralistic Karens driven by narcissism and a warped sense of injustice. And I'd say that at least 90% of the people who've road raged me have been men.
I submit that a lot of road rage is in response to “Karens” (male and female) who appoint themselves the enforcers of traffic rules (e.g. parking themselves in the passing lane and going 50 mph because they disapprove of speeding.)
Maybe the Karen is in the eye of the beholder :-)
That's certainly something that happens. But I think road rage happens most often when one driver makes a mistake. I've been road-raged when I accidentally cut someone off. Rather than accept my mistake as part of life on the road, the road rager will seek to disproportionally punish me by driving dangerously close to me. I've been chased by road ragers. I'd bet that is the most common form of road rage: an angry person, usually male, who treats driving as a competition. I've also been dangerously tailgated simply because I was following the speed of the surrounding traffic.
I hear you, and I’ve been in those situations, too. There is definitely a competitive or honor-upholding element to some angry road encounters where it seems like these drivers don’t grasp that almost nothing that happens on the road is personal. Most of us are just trying to mind our own business and get where we’re going.
Yup. Karens are not just moralists. They're hyper-competitive moralists.
Great essay. I agree with you. The more one studies the root of genocide, the more one sees how the twisted logic of “morality” played its part. For an article I wrote on the dangerous rise of the white replacement conspiracy theory, I interviewed Dr. Alexander Hinton, an anthropologist and the head of genocide studies at Rutgers University. Dr. Hinton said, “Demonization is key. In mass violence, blame is always displaced.” Thus, the twisted morality. The one area I disagree with you on is regarding the ones who are more likely to be the antidote. While I agree with you to an extent about those who don’t want to intervene, sometimes that turns into apathy and allows a mass atrocity to continue. Sometimes people HAVE to take a side. During WW2, the U.S. wanted to remain an isolationist nation until it was attacked by Japan. But it also refused to let many Jews in, including Otto Frank and his family, which included Anne Frank. There is so much nuance to this topic. How much morality is helpful, and how much can lead to evil? Finally, so sorry about your Karen experience. People have gone nuts lately.
agree with this, was going to write something similar. While there definitely lots of truth in most evil being rooted in twisted moralism, the 'grey' approach itself I think can also lead to inaction, appeasement and excuse making in the face of the reality of evil that the world will likely always contain. There's no easy answers or one approach here I fear
Super interesting read! tho it does make me wonder whether the source of evil is good and the knowledge of moralism or the fact that those people utilised moralism and leaned into the narrative of "i am actually the good guy" to justify their actions to themselves and others.
Love the layout of this. Personal story → Bigger idea → relating idea to history/entertainment/social norms → bringing idea to modern day issues where each side thinks they sit on a moral high horse of some sort and how media/entertainment industries use these strongly held beliefs to make us feel divided. These words were definitely influential and fit into my brain like a puzzle piece. Being a Disney kid in the late 90's/early 00's and coming to appreciate Studio Ghibli just a few years ago definitely has me thinking deeper about the state of our shared reality. Well done, indeed!
This is the reason I dread leaving my dog alone in the car for even a second to go anywhere. We’re overrun with self-appointed police lately and for all their passion and righteousness they don’t seem to be making the world a better place. Quite the opposite. This is timely as I’m working on a piece involving animal abuse and the good (but misguided) intentions underlying “evil” outcomes. I do think there is plenty of plain old malice and cruelty in the world, but it generally announces itself openly. The worse evils are the ones that cloak themselves in the mantle of morality and benevolence.
I also think it’s an issue of seeking power by those who feel powerless in there every day lives which is why Karens escalate, it’s a challenge to the power they seek. I had a similar incident where I just ignored a Karen and walked away. She couldn’t accept being ignored and followed me screaming louder and louder. She was frustrated that I didn’t validate her power and the fact I didn’t even acknowledge her existence drove her crazy.
Agree. Daughters of women who had little agency.
"For it is foolishness and endless trouble to cast a stone at every dog that barks at you." ---George Silver, c.1600 (quoted in Shakespeare's Rebel by C. C. Humphreys)
Fantastic read! Thank you for sharing. I especially like your comparison of ghibli and disney and the way that shapes the next generation's morality
I do not see her behavior as one of moral choice. She has faced situations where she believes herself to be the victim of an injustice, but has received no recompense. Because this is out of her control, she must find what she believes is an injustice and become the justice she so deeply desires. It is not a question of right or wrong. This is why the appeal to authority (the police) because they are the purveyors of justice.
I am not excusing her behavior at all, but something that has stuck with me in my personal and professional life is to never attribute an action to maliciousness when ignorance is a more suitable cause. By ignorance I don't mean stupidity. I mean never being nurtured toward another course of action that can have a better result.
This requires a deeper conversation in many cases when it may not be possible (like this one). Something to chew on.
Justice also implies punity. She didn't just want to be right. She wanted him to be punished for being wrong.
You're looking at the surface of what I said and what she did. Her behavior, which you seem to be saying is motivated by her desire to be right, I am saying is not. It goes deeper than that. I'm not saying justice can't be a matter of right and wrong. What I'm saying is that her behavior points to something deeper. Understanding that can help us better understand why people react irrationally and speak to it.