One time while discussing politics with my brother I attempted to explain my position on a matter that he was quite emphatic about. I warned him that the most dangerous people are the righteous. I was not necessarily referring to religious people, as the term is commonly applied today, but anyone, no matter their opinion, who believes so strongly in their position that they are willing to do anything, even violate their own principles, to make their point or achieve their end.
I am currently reading a book suggested by The Long Now Foundation website called Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse. The 31st chapter of this book crystalized this thought so clearly it was startling. I had to put the book down, walk around my apartment for a few minutes, and read it again. With the belief that using this short chapter falls under the fair use doctrine, I will quote it here.
Evil is never intended as evil. Indeed, the contradiction inherent in evil is that it originates in the desire to eliminate evil...
Evil arises in the honored belief that history can be tidied up, brought to a sensible conclusion. It is evil to act as though the past is bringing us to a specifiable end. It is evil to assume that the past will make sense only if we bring it to an issue we have clearly in view. It is evil for a nation to believe that it is "the last, best hope on earth." It is evil to think history is to end with a return to Zion, or with the classless society, or with the Islamicization of all living infidels.
Your history does not belong to me. We live with each other in a common history.
Infinite players understand the inescapable likelihood of evil. They therefore do not attempt to eliminate evil in others, for to do so is the very impulse of evil itself, and therefore a contradiction. They only attempt paradoxically to recognize in themselves the evil that takes the form of attempting to eliminate evil elsewhere.
Evil is not the inclusion of finite games in an infinite games, but the restriction of all play to one or another finite game.
Everyone, I believe, struggles to live the ideal Carse presents as the role of the infinite player. I know that I face it almost every day. Left or right, up or down, I am always weary of the man who claims his position based is based on some sort of universal moral right or that the ends justify the means.
It is hard to recommend a book after only reading only 42 of 147 pages. After all, how am I to know if the butler actually did it? But this effect of this passage was so strong, I had to share it with both of my readers.
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