‘Calling Wilding What It Is: Evil’

Will argues that we ought to use the term evil to describe a recent gang attack in Central Park. He accuses social scientists and liberals of diffusing responsibility by describing the broad cultural and social forces that contribute to sociopathic behavior--and he certainly cited some sloppy thinking to make his point.

But the Christian concept of “evil” is much broader than any defined by social scientists; it is often used to describe forces with cosmic dimensions. Will wants us to apply the concept of evil to individual actions--to focus attention on the evildoers. He would like us to come to the simple conclusion that bad people should be punished, and that very bad people should be punished severely.

If bad people are cancer cells in our midst, the reasoning also goes, let’s surgically remove them (by police action, imprisonment and capital punishment). But malignancies are often difficult to treat by surgery--and there is always the risk that they will spread in unanticipated ways, like drug gangs that move to our suburbs and small towns, like the “wilding gang” that swept down out of Harlem to prey upon the innocent account executive.

Who is responsible for evil actions and the rise of evildoers? Do we only hold 14-year-olds and their parents accountable? Do we only point the finger? Or do we take up the larger commitment of prevention? The conservative agenda eschews broad investment of capital in education and child care (through use of the federal tax base)--incorrectly assuming that the homeless, the uneducated and the powerless can be isolated and walled off from the rest of us.

I thought Will was closer to the mark when, in an earlier column, he used the term barbarism to describe the decay of values among the youth of our urban underclass. “Barbarism” reminds us that human behavior is a product of social and historical influences. It connotes a culture in limbo between savagery and civilization. And it should remind us that if our society (middle- and upper-class taxpayers note) doesn’t pony up the megabucks for a serious effort to educate and socialize its underclass, we will all pay a much larger price in the future.

BROCKENBROUGH S. ALLEN

Associate Professor of Educational Technology

San Diego State