why do good things happen to bad people?
pro tip: the arc of the moral universe doesn't bend toward justice unless we make it.
nb: this post has a coda, “how about some frivolity and self-indulgence?”
so … i guess some little politics ceremony thingie is happening today?
jk! i’ve been bracing myself for weeks. but i don’t quite know what for. like, which exact straw is going to break the social contract’s back?
hey, but would you like to talk about something else? me too! please join me for a chat about theodicy.
no, no, not the odyssey, silly. the problem of evil.
problem of evil or device of self-torture? you decide
theodicy is the rhetorical art of solving the problem of evil, a problem often pithily phrased as why do bad things happen to good people?
here’s the thing. this question doesn’t actually count as a problem unless you believe in a benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent god (BOOG) whose one job would presumably be to ensure that only good things happen to good people and only bad things happen to bad people.
who the hell invented this BOOG? way worse torture device than a boogie man, imho.
let’s take a moment and align with physical reality. to wit, as far as we know:
entropy is inevitable.
trying and failing to impose order is the human condition.
suffering is a given.
it kinda doesn’t matter to me why this is the case. it just is. but we’re all kind of swimming in the consequences of other people’s theodicy, so we might as well take a look at the bloody mess.
you know what’s a real problem? evil theologians
part of the problem with theodicy is that it gets people all tangled around the axle of who is good and who is bad.
if you take the BOOG as a given, there are a couple ways to solve the problem of evil, one of which is pronouncing judgments on others’ goodness or badness (ahem—despite clear and explicit warnings against this activity).
in short, these people tell us, we can tell which people are bad because bad things happen to them. it works like this:
The Rev Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson set off a minor explosion of their own when they asserted on U.S. television that an angry God had allowed the terrorists to succeed in their deadly mission because the United States had become a nation of abortion, homosexuality, secular schools and courts, and the American Civil Liberties Union.
they seem nice.
but hey, who am i to judge? last i checked, on a scale from antartica to spontaneous combustion, virtually every human being is at least a medium-hot mess of maladapted survival instincts. these little fuckers originate from our need to have enough resources, but they somehow manifest in society as war, greed, murder, torture, and rape.
you can probably see where i’m going with this. straight into oligarchs, authoritarians, and the disaffected masses they pit into factions as a distraction from their corrupt kleptocracies.
why the long view is the wrong view
another approach to theodicy is to push back against the existence of good and bad altogether.
sure, good things appear to happen to bad people (e.g., they get elected president and do crimes they will never face justice for because they inexplicably get elected president again) and bad things appear to happen to good people (e.g., their entire nation is made into a hellscape by another guy who is also doing it to escape justice for his crimes).
but hey. we all know that, in the end, everyone gets their comeuppance. the chickens come home to roost, the wheel of fortune turns, it all comes back around, love wins, sinners go to hell, blah blah blah.
i despise “love wins.” there. i said it.
wanna know something?
i hate this version of theodicy way worse than i would hate it if jerry falwell and pat robertson cooked up a stew of misplaced faith, hope, and charity and served it piping hot to me on a bed of rubble from the twin towers.
fuck this too shall pass. fuck the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. fuck that fucking shit right now!
yes, it is both soothing and necessary to tell ourselves that things will be better tomorrow than they are today. but guess the fuck what. that isn’t actually going to happen unless we make it happen.
and while we’re working on it, people are going to die. sick people are going to lose access to life-saving healthcare. refugees are going to be sent back “home” to be tortured, imprisoned, and starved because of their political beliefs. children are going to be ripped from their mothers’ arms. militia members are going to be exonerated for “self defense” against peaceful protesters. people having late-term miscarriages are going to be denied abortions.
we have one job
taking the long view is crucial sometimes. it can be the only thing that keeps us going when our loved ones are dying, when the worst things we can possibly imagine are happening to us and around us, when we think perhaps we have lost everything.
taking the long view must never be used to numb ourselves, to help us we hunker down in an emotional bunker and wait for it all to blow over.
the next four years—hell, the next four hours—are going to be super fucking shitty.
our job right now is not just counting down the days until the 2028 election. set the long view aside. take care of your loved ones. run for local office to protect the most vulnerable people in your community. feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, and show compassion to the growing numbers of people who have nowhere to live and no access to the mental health services they need.
this is the kind of storm we only make it through by tying ourselves together.