Evil, 2001/06/15:08:45
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What do you say about a man in his late thirties who takes up with a young woman half his age, dazzles and delights her and then dumps her precipitously, goes on to take up with an even younger woman, and winds up berating the first woman and threatening to "tell all"? I say he's evil. I'm not going to name any names here, but the people involved know who I'm talking about. I'm not usually into the moral condemnation thing--my ususal response to evil is to walk away from it. But when I see someone preying on the innocent it gets me annoyed. There's a South Park episode in which the kids of South Park get invited to a NAMBLA meeting because Cartman wants to have more mature friends. When they find what NAMBLA actually is (the North American Man Boy Love Association) they repeat "You have sex with children" in resposne to the NAMBLA member's lame attempts at self-justification. For sane, healthy human beings, that should say it all. But not all human beings are sane and healthy, and not all cases are quite so clear cut. A woman of the age of 18 is, legally, a woman. And it's perfectly possible that she's lived through experiences that are big and challenging and full. She may have seen life and death, may have even had a child. But that doesn't mean she's a fully-formed adult, able to defend herself from predators who are old in evil. Around the time I turned 30 I started to notice that first-year undergrads looked like children to me. That threshold has ramped up over the past decade so that pretty much anyone under the age of 25 looks like a child. It doesn't have to do with how many big experiences they've lived through. It has to do with the lack of burnish, the lack of richly textured detail in their pysche that comes from a decade or more of living as an adult. And so I'm automatically suspicious of anyone my age who finds a teenager romantically interesting, although I'm happy to acknowledge that in particular cases it's perfectly possible for a particularly young-at-heart older person to fall in love with an unusually sophistocated younger person. But it's also possible for a particularly immature older person to maniupulate and abuse an innocent and trusting younger person, and that's a different kettle of fish. Whenever there's a big difference in age or experience or power in a relationship, it is beholden upon the more experienced partner to behave impecably, to realize that there is an assymetry and to take it into account. To do anything less is evidence of moral failing, and to actually use your experience against a former friend or lover, to threaten her with your ability to manipulate the facts and present a view of the story for the purposes of making her look bad, is unconscionable. Evil is not a very popular concept amongst modern humans. They tend to view bad behavior as a matter of illness. And that may be the case. But it's a rare illness that prevents the suffer from knowing he's ill. If he retains any vestiges of rational functioning in any part of his life, he should be held responsible for realizing that he's ill and getting treatment. If he doesn't, he's evil. |