What Happens When Citizens are Evil?
Among my group, the one with Book Dragon, Ranger came and offered a rebuttal to the point I made with my previous writing: Are you Really a Citizen?. “People suck and you can’t trust them to do things right. Not just the government, the average person is out for themselves and can cause a lot of damage if done unchecked.” Not a direct quote and my friend Ranger is a hard-working, talented man who makes a solid point. Humans are capable of selfishness and evil no matter what social class. How do we handle that? Not just as individuals of a particular political leaning, but society in general? And by handle, I mean what do we do when the ones in power are evil? This can be a very discriminatory and esoteric question: What is evil? We often assume that evil is that which is harmful to not just a person, but a majority of people. We speak of evil in social and political manners such as war, poverty, famine, terrorism, corruption. We also discuss things that can corrupt our thoughts and actions which leads us to social ills in the form of morality and sin. This is abstract, but it can be summarized as that which corrupts the well-being of oneself and others. It is safe to say that humanity is capable of great good, and great evil.
State, Citizenship, Responsibility
A well-functioning state is one that has evidently worked for the greater good and made sure that the vast majority of society is in good living conditions. It ends up being reductive: a good citizen produces good governance, which in turn produces good social standards of living, which leads to the betterment of mankind. It also sounds so simple, but of course, it isn’t. We have wants and desires. We differ in opinion about what is good. Many of us actively indulge in behaviors we know will harm others and we do not care. Policy is dictated by those with the most access to capital and weaponry. Laws are not inherently made for good, but to maintain order. We will continue struggling with this since no matter who you are, where you come from, there is no guarantee of knowing who will act in a manner that is most ‘good’ vs who will act in a manner most ‘evil’. Whether or not humans are inherently good, evil or blank slates is a debate we will continue to have many years after I’m a rotting corpse. What matters is: we haven’t found out how to make people act with goodness a majority of the time, and we are seeing the effects of that.
When selfishness triumphs
When I made the comments about citizenship in my previous work, knowledge, engagement, and caring about others and your environment can be noted as qualities citizens should have, even when they can’t vote. I also mentioned how education has failed in making us citizens. But what if you resist education, moral callings, and just want to set a forest on fire because it sounds fun? What if you want to gain influence and command others? What if you want to hunt endangered species and willingly drive them to extinction? What if you want to shoot up a school or mall and just revel in suffering? And what if you just can’t be bothered to care about doing something because it is a minor inconvenience?
I use these examples because of something Ranger mentioned in detail. Besides regulation, after Hurricane María there were reports of freelance agents making makeshift repairs and not working with the AEE. According to a friend’s father, an electrical engineer, people did not want to cooperate with the electric company and sabotaged them when they could. If it meant having electricity for themselves, they did wonky repairs and failed to communicate with the electric company. These faulty repairs damaged the power lines and caused even more delays in power to the general area.
They weren’t fixing power lines to help the local hospital or something. They weren’t working as a supervised group or engaging with people. They were being selfish and caused harm. The people of Puerto Rico are victims of not just María, but colonialism, imperialism, and many other ills. One could ask whether or not Puerto Ricans exacerbate many issues, especially with the rise in gang-related violence in local news and the debates of whether Puerto Rico should be considered a drug state. From hearsay I have been told, individuals have allowed drugs to flow into the island via private agencies. You know, besides corruption.
The problem will always be caused by us
I can’t point a finger and say one individual or entity is responsible. Everything we are living through right now is the result of a series of collective decisions, and explosions all around. I am of the personal belief that collectivist justice and ideologies are preferable to the current ones, but that’s a blanket statement that does not cover all of the complex intricacies we face. We can find evil and good everywhere. These concepts will be hard to quantify, and we will never definitively choose a side over the other. But at the end of the day, we need to step back and answer the question: What happens when citizens are evil? Or rather, what happens when we are evil? We get this. Global warming, wars, and the rise of fascism. Either we learn to care about each other and lend a helping hand and understand that we are stronger together in an empathetic, diverse society, or we all learn to deal with the fact that we hate each other to get things done. The more time we spend blowing ourselves up, the less time we have of surviving the mess we have made. And I for one don’t want the sweet release of death until I can say I have lived a satisfying life.
For that, we need to learn to be citizens and do what we can, even if it seems insignificant.
