First in another irregularly updated series are my pet peeves — in particular, the common proverbs and colloquialisms in our culture that, when examined, don’t make any sense.
Let me tell you a phrase that I hate. That phrase is “a necessary evil.” It doesn’t make sense. If something is necessary, how can it be evil? And vice versa! The entire phrase seems to be premised on the idea that there’s some sort of separation between morality and pragmatism — in other words, an idea that moral things aren’t practical. Ergo, practical things are immoral.
I beg to differ. In the long-term, the moral course of action is also the practical course of action. Else, how can it be moral? If moral actions don’t result in beneficial consequences in the long-term, how can you judge them to be good? It doesn’t make sense.
I think if you take a look at how necessary evil is typically employed, I think the concept that is truly being conveyed is that sometimes the right course of action has negative short-term consequences. To use a recent Oscar-nominated example, if your arm is caught under a rock, it might be necessary to cut it off in order to save your own life. Short-term – that’s bad, because you’re short one arm. Long-term – it’s good, because you saved your own life!
So while I get what the phrase “necessary evil” is meant to convey — short-term sacrifice for a greater good — I have to tag it as ultimately a bad phrase, because it carries with it a greater implication that morality is one path and pragmatism another. And that’s just shoddy thinking.
Alex Knapp writes about pretty much everything under the sun, including politics, art, religion, philosophy, sports, music, culture, and science. He also actively writes about politics at the political blog
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I think the phrase “necessary evil” is often used as an excuse to distance the advocate from the position he advocates, but sometimes it makes sense, as in “American participation in World War II was a necessary evil.” or “dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was a necessary evil.” Using this phrase means we acknowledge the immorality of these actions, but that we strongly believe they were only employed to prevent a greater evil.
That’s my whole problem. If, say, Hiroshima was necessary to preserve more lives than were lost, than it wasn’t evil. That’s my whole problem with the phrase, I think.
(On a tangential note, I do think that Hiroshima was probably unnecessary to end the war, and Nagasaki almost certainly unnecessary. But that’s neither here nor there. I also, for the record, think that firebombing Dresden and other Axis cities was also unnecessary.)
I think we’re just conceptualizing the issue differently, which is okay. Conceptualization is one of those things that we humans know precious little about.
As for the atomic bomb, very few people realize that the civilian lives lost via the atomic bomb were an incredibly small percentage of lives lost to conventional firebombing. It seems then that their vocal opposition to the “atomic” bombings is based on nothing more than the sexiness of technology.
One of the two words in the phrase is an overstatement. The word “necessary” carries an implication of inevitability. That which is inevitable is morally neutral, worthy of neither praise nor condemnation.
Perhaps the real issue is the word “evil,” which may be overstating the case. Forming a government and using its coercive power to extract taxes from people may well be both necessary, and distasteful. That it is distasteful does not make it evil.
But the phrase “inevitable distastefulness” just lacks the rhetorical elan of “necessary evil,” which as an emotionally compelling construct that will attract people to its use despite its cognitive irregularity. So as distasteful as the phrase “necessary evil” might be, its use is inevitable.
It may be inevitable, but that won’t stop me from complaining about it!
It’s a stage of the evolution of a cultural artifact.
First it’s not even particularly noteworthy.
Then it’s the way we do things.
Then it’s the way we’ve always done things.
Then it’s a necessary evil.
Then it’s something that nobody else but us does.
Then it’s something that we don’t do anymore.
Then it becomes something that we can’t understand how anyone ever did.
(I know. I missed a half dozen steps or so.)
Ooh, I quite disagree. When you do something wrong, even if it necessary, you have to override your moral instincts. You’re essentially practising being bad. That takes a toll on you, especially if you have to do it for large short term harms or are called to do it frequently. The ‘evil’ in necessary evil recognizes the harm and perversion you do to yourself, to be capable of doing the lesser harm, not the short term harm itself.
That’s the heart of my disagreement. I’ll admit I ran away with myself and made it a blog post, but that’s the gist.
dude you’re way missing it. look at it like this: everything, EVERYTHING in life is a mixed bag. very few things come without their price.
winter is so cold, but its nice to not deal with sweating and bugs. summer is so great but it sucks to sweat all the time and be bit by bugs.
when a person is blessed with the gift of creativity, it is also a curse.
our strengths, are also our weaknesses.
having a baby is one of the coolest things a human can ever do. but being a parent leads to not sleeping, having less or no time to pursue their own interests. having kids young is great because you get to see them as adults when you’re in your 40s, but you missed out on things you could have enjoyed in your 20s. on the other side, having kids when you’re older can be unfortunate because maybe you die when they are in their teens, but you reaped the shit out of your 20s and 30s.
also, peep this scientific example which explains that we literally have necessary evils in order to live, and for existence to be able to take place:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_meant_by_the_phrase_friction_is_a_necessary_evil
necessary evils are at the core of *all* things in life.
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