What Is Wicked?
What does it mean to be a binary thinker? Is it wrong to think that way?
The modern world is far too complex to give most of our day-to-day activities much thought. We employ various devices and systems without understanding how to take them apart and put them back together. Even if we are employed as the world's premiere craftsmen for the device or system in question, the various components, when broken down, are likely outside our individual expertise to craft or reorganize them from the ground up.
That level of foundational knowledge is not only unnecessary to complete our daily business; it's downright counterproductive. Most of our daily activities involve, instead, trust in our fellow man, as we all specialize in something unique. From everyone contributing their parts, civilization emerges.
No one individual has the hours on this Earth to duplicate civilization. Thus, we deploy mental shortcuts, heuristics, in making decisions in our day-to-day lives. You trust the medicine you take will heal you, not because you've studied and created it yourself, but because you are relying on other people who brought it to you. Your decision to take or not take the medicine is contingent upon your level of trust in various others instead of upon your foundational knowledge of how the medicine works.
Knowledge is ever imperfect, especially in an increasingly-complex world where we are reliant upon countless faceless individuals to craft our day-to-day needs and desires. Thus, we create binaries to navigate our day-to-day lives. The show on your screen is either entertaining or it's not; so you change it or keep watching. You either have enough gas in your vehicle or you don't; so you stop by the gas station or you don't. The hows and whys don't matter much. And much thought beyond simple yes/no or this/that on every single day-to-day decision put before you could drive you mad in addition to consuming precious time.
Thus, binary thinking is, usually, a desirable way to navigate life. But it can, of course, be exploited. In America, the Republican versus Democrat binary, as libertarians might instantly think of, is not an example. The nature of American representative democracy is majority-vote and only one vote per office. If there are more than two parties, since the winning candidate takes the office, parties will always coalesce to two defacto parties and leave third-parties irrelevant.
Instead, the exploit emerges in how choices are framed. A recent example: should the COVID-19 pandemic stimulus check be $600 or $2,000? The media and politicians present this debate to you to consider. But why not $5,000? Or, why not end the pandemic restrictions all-together?
For a more harmless example, if you're in the mood for Italian food, you might give your spouse a choice between restaurants you like. You've allowed a choice by limiting the options to those you prefer instead of discussing a near-limitless range of options, including cooking from home.
Politicians, bureaucrats, and others we call "experts" frame the choices for us. True power doesn't lie in persuading the public between the choices. It's in controlling the range of choices the public is allowed to consider.
Academics refer to this phenomenon, in the political context, as the Overton Window. Mises Institute scholar, Tom Woods, coined an apt phrase with a little more edge: "outside the index card of allowable opinion." You are allowed to have certain preferences but only within a context the greater social structure allows. This context is enforced through social ostracism. It is framed by whoever controls our media. This power is susceptible to control by the wicked.
So, what is wicked? What makes something wicked?
The first definition that comes to mind: "something that is evil or sinister," which infers willfulness as opposed to mistake or misfortune. The various dictionaries you'll deploy to narrow it down range too broadly in definition to sufficiently explain the word.
Filmmaker Bart Sibrel paints a different picture of the etymology of the word through a theme he brings up often in his countless interviews. Whether this origin is historically accurate or not, the explanation is so powerful it should subsume any old definitions.
Think of a candle with two wicks of wax twisted together.
One wick represents the truth. The other represents the lie. They are twisted and burn together in an inseparable fashion. Thus, wicked applies not to cruel physical acts but to information. It is a means to manipulate knowledge. A wicked act is to blend a degree of truth with a degree of lie in order to deceive. A lie has no power if the subject doesn't believe the lie to be true. Arsenic is not likely to be taken by the victim unless it is blended with a drink.
Thus, to be wicked is to deceive using as much truth as possible in order to manipulate behavior. If your goal is to convince your spouse you didn't cheat on her, saying you visited the alleged mistress but you didn't copulate with her is more effective than claiming you never visited the alleged mistress. If you state you never contacted the mistress, a witness or device can contradict such a bold lie. Thus, the more truth you entwine with your lies, the easier it is to get others to believe them.
Is the truth a higher good, in and of itself, even if stating the truth causes harm? Or, are some lies useful to achieve a greater good? In the Republic, Plato asked you to imagine storing a weapon for a friend. He comes to you, seething in anger, demanding you give him the weapon so he can kill someone. Is it good to lie about the location of the weapon so your friend doesn't kill another and his head cools by the time he's figured out you lied to him? Plato extrapolates upon this by suggesting rulers instill an inherent moral duty by concocting a tale that all those born under a nation came from the soil beneath of classes corresponding to different metals. Born of gold meant one would be among the ruling class. Born of lower metals meant taking a lower role in the status and power hierarchy. This way, individual citizens would accept their assigned roles and defend their nation with a greater sense of moral duty, as their origins are literally of the land they occupy. We refer to this kind of civilizational lie to effect a supposedly greater good as "the grand myth" or "the noble lie."
Is there such a thing as evil? Or is evil a matter of perspective? The pickpocket might justify stealing in that he has taught the victim a lesson, and the mark will, therefore, be more cautious going forward. Any act harming another can be rationalized. The cheating spouse can rationalize lying about his cheating to save his marriage. And an intelligence community can rationalize lying about otherwise illegal assassinations to save their country.
To those that believe the truth is a good in and of itself, regardless of the consequences, however, this game of constructing scenarios where sometimes lying is a good thing rings of hollow sophistry.
Thus, a good definition of wicked: achieving something through deception by blending as much truth as possible with a lie or lies to make the odds of pulling off the deception more successful.
Does the world run on the good, the beautiful, and the true? Or is it a wicked place? Do you accept absurd explanations for injustice in the world because you've thought these explanations through, or because you're terrified of confronting the wicked?
The modern world is far too complex to give most of our day-to-day activities much thought. We employ various devices and systems without understanding how to take them apart and put them back together. Even if we are employed as the world's premiere craftsmen for the device or system in question, the various components, when broken down, are likely outside our individual expertise to craft or reorganize them from the ground up.
That level of foundational knowledge is not only unnecessary to complete our daily business; it's downright counterproductive. Most of our daily activities involve, instead, trust in our fellow man, as we all specialize in something unique. From everyone contributing their parts, civilization emerges.
No one individual has the hours on this Earth to duplicate civilization. Thus, we deploy mental shortcuts, heuristics, in making decisions in our day-to-day lives. You trust the medicine you take will heal you, not because you've studied and created it yourself, but because you are relying on other people who brought it to you. Your decision to take or not take the medicine is contingent upon your level of trust in various others instead of upon your foundational knowledge of how the medicine works.
Knowledge is ever imperfect, especially in an increasingly-complex world where we are reliant upon countless faceless individuals to craft our day-to-day needs and desires. Thus, we create binaries to navigate our day-to-day lives. The show on your screen is either entertaining or it's not; so you change it or keep watching. You either have enough gas in your vehicle or you don't; so you stop by the gas station or you don't. The hows and whys don't matter much. And much thought beyond simple yes/no or this/that on every single day-to-day decision put before you could drive you mad in addition to consuming precious time.
Thus, binary thinking is, usually, a desirable way to navigate life. But it can, of course, be exploited. In America, the Republican versus Democrat binary, as libertarians might instantly think of, is not an example. The nature of American representative democracy is majority-vote and only one vote per office. If there are more than two parties, since the winning candidate takes the office, parties will always coalesce to two defacto parties and leave third-parties irrelevant.
Instead, the exploit emerges in how choices are framed. A recent example: should the COVID-19 pandemic stimulus check be $600 or $2,000? The media and politicians present this debate to you to consider. But why not $5,000? Or, why not end the pandemic restrictions all-together?
For a more harmless example, if you're in the mood for Italian food, you might give your spouse a choice between restaurants you like. You've allowed a choice by limiting the options to those you prefer instead of discussing a near-limitless range of options, including cooking from home.
Politicians, bureaucrats, and others we call "experts" frame the choices for us. True power doesn't lie in persuading the public between the choices. It's in controlling the range of choices the public is allowed to consider.
Academics refer to this phenomenon, in the political context, as the Overton Window. Mises Institute scholar, Tom Woods, coined an apt phrase with a little more edge: "outside the index card of allowable opinion." You are allowed to have certain preferences but only within a context the greater social structure allows. This context is enforced through social ostracism. It is framed by whoever controls our media. This power is susceptible to control by the wicked.
So, what is wicked? What makes something wicked?
The first definition that comes to mind: "something that is evil or sinister," which infers willfulness as opposed to mistake or misfortune. The various dictionaries you'll deploy to narrow it down range too broadly in definition to sufficiently explain the word.
Filmmaker Bart Sibrel paints a different picture of the etymology of the word through a theme he brings up often in his countless interviews. Whether this origin is historically accurate or not, the explanation is so powerful it should subsume any old definitions.
Think of a candle with two wicks of wax twisted together.
One wick represents the truth. The other represents the lie. They are twisted and burn together in an inseparable fashion. Thus, wicked applies not to cruel physical acts but to information. It is a means to manipulate knowledge. A wicked act is to blend a degree of truth with a degree of lie in order to deceive. A lie has no power if the subject doesn't believe the lie to be true. Arsenic is not likely to be taken by the victim unless it is blended with a drink.
Thus, to be wicked is to deceive using as much truth as possible in order to manipulate behavior. If your goal is to convince your spouse you didn't cheat on her, saying you visited the alleged mistress but you didn't copulate with her is more effective than claiming you never visited the alleged mistress. If you state you never contacted the mistress, a witness or device can contradict such a bold lie. Thus, the more truth you entwine with your lies, the easier it is to get others to believe them.
Is the truth a higher good, in and of itself, even if stating the truth causes harm? Or, are some lies useful to achieve a greater good? In the Republic, Plato asked you to imagine storing a weapon for a friend. He comes to you, seething in anger, demanding you give him the weapon so he can kill someone. Is it good to lie about the location of the weapon so your friend doesn't kill another and his head cools by the time he's figured out you lied to him? Plato extrapolates upon this by suggesting rulers instill an inherent moral duty by concocting a tale that all those born under a nation came from the soil beneath of classes corresponding to different metals. Born of gold meant one would be among the ruling class. Born of lower metals meant taking a lower role in the status and power hierarchy. This way, individual citizens would accept their assigned roles and defend their nation with a greater sense of moral duty, as their origins are literally of the land they occupy. We refer to this kind of civilizational lie to effect a supposedly greater good as "the grand myth" or "the noble lie."
Is there such a thing as evil? Or is evil a matter of perspective? The pickpocket might justify stealing in that he has taught the victim a lesson, and the mark will, therefore, be more cautious going forward. Any act harming another can be rationalized. The cheating spouse can rationalize lying about his cheating to save his marriage. And an intelligence community can rationalize lying about otherwise illegal assassinations to save their country.
To those that believe the truth is a good in and of itself, regardless of the consequences, however, this game of constructing scenarios where sometimes lying is a good thing rings of hollow sophistry.
Thus, a good definition of wicked: achieving something through deception by blending as much truth as possible with a lie or lies to make the odds of pulling off the deception more successful.
Does the world run on the good, the beautiful, and the true? Or is it a wicked place? Do you accept absurd explanations for injustice in the world because you've thought these explanations through, or because you're terrified of confronting the wicked?
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