9/11 and Evil

Meme shamelessly stolen from the internet.

It's September 11th, and once again there are people who, rather than marking the tragedy and loss of life of the attacks in 2001, take the opportunity to denounce the flaws of American society. The claim is that the United States is a fundamentally evil country, and that the only way to discuss it is in terms of the things that have gone wrong with it, or the evils that have occurred in its history. This, of course, is meant to imply that the 9/11 attackers were morally correct, and that the people who died deserved it.

It is important to not deceive yourself that American society is 100% good, but if you believe the only way to consider it is to think of the bad things, then you do not understand the history of the United States, nor yourself. Thinking that way does not make you a good person. It really means that deep down inside you are a negative person.

There is also intellectual folly in thinking that other cultures are morally superior, especially if history paints them as victims of American culture. There are no cultures that are exempt from evils that can be identified in their history. If you are not aware of that, then you need to read more. The most dangerous people are not those who have read little, nor is it those who have read much. It's the in between people, who have read only a moderate amount, or avoided reading sources they suspect they will disagree with. An in between knowledge of history is worse than no knowledge of history.

We make our society better by thinking critically about it, yes, in the sense of critique, but critique also includes positive observations. Positivity includes celebration of successes and appreciation of opportunities. Everyone knows positive thinking is the key to improvement. Countless successful people have said it and published it in countless autobiographies and other commentaries. If you've gotten anywhere in life, you should know that only happened because you were thinking and acting positively and proactively. So why are you still thinking negatively about history? Fixation on complaint or grievance rather than opportunity says nothing good about you to others, and it isn't good for your own happiness. In my opinion, the perpetuation of historical grievance is one of the greatest evils. Stop doing it.

People who insist on speaking and writing only in a negative way about American history (or any other culture), deep down, are unbalanced, and are prone not to fighting evil, but to committing acts of evil in the attempt to settle old wrongs for which there are no living victims. We see this manifested in the streets of American cities right now. Having known many such people, I kind of get the feeling that they know this about themselves. That's why they think the way they think. I dislike calling people evil and prefer instead to say that actions are evil. But if you keep doing it over and over again, and that defines your world view? Evil is as evil does.