Stop Making Excuses for Evil

Evil is real. Some people really do hate you.

Hanlon’s razor (not to be confused with Occam’s razor) says the following:

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

I have long known the concept, and heard it expressed by others, but I must confess that I was this years old when I learned that it actually has a name. (It was a commenter here who hipped me to it a few months ago.)

Ever since then, it has bothered me. When something is just a concept, it is just a concept. People can espouse it, reject it, take it at face value, and so on. But when it has a name, it gains a patina of official weight.

Next thing you know, a subset of people—the same ones who had the highest covid-vaccine uptake—are midwitting in arguments with you,

Oh yeah—well what you just said violates Hanlon’s razor, grubble grubble grubble.

As if it’s some sort of cosmic speed limit.

It has a name, you see. It’s a rule. It’s a law.

IS IT?

Is everything explained by stupidity and incompetence? How does one determine when something can be “adequately explained” by stupidity as opposed to malice? Is nothing the result of malice?

People can always claim that something cannot be the result of malice. Because Hanlon’s razor. Because it has a name.

After all, Hanlon’s razor says…

As many of you know, I usually do not plan my writing very far in advance. There are so many thoughts swimming around this loud and crowed head of mine that it’s easy enough to think of something to write when I wake up in the morning, and then just go ahead and write and post it later that morning.

I tarried for a while before making that decision this morning—reading a couple of other stacks (something I wish I had more time to do in general) while chowing on a breakfast burrito. And in the course of that reading (and chowing) two pieces gave me what I needed to form a topic for today.

First was

Max Borders

’ If a Shadow Government Ran America. That spoke to the genuine evil at work in the world. Anyone who exercises such a level of control over his fellow human beings is motivated by more than blind pursuit of his own stupidity. There is malice at work. Malice exists.

Second was

Alex Fox

’s Were the Olympics Deliberately Ruined? This spoke to that same sort of malice and mentioned the existence of Hanlon’s razor.

That did it.

Hanlon’s razor has tyrannized us long enough. It’s not a law. Some things are better explained by malice.

So how can we tell the difference?

Let us first presuppose that in terms of morality, humans occupy a normal distribution: large numbers of morally okay people, with much smaller numbers of wonderful and terrible people on either end.

This would mean that some evil exists. And we certainly don’t need a fancy chart to tell us that.

Evil has objectives. Good can frequently just mean living one’s life and doing good things along the way. But evil—especially lawful evil—has a plan. Such evil is also attracted to power.

So why should we continue to believe that when the powers-that-be impose evil things upon us, it absolutely must, and can only be, the result of stupidity and incompetence? Because of something that some guy named Hanlon said once? (Even the fact that a much cooler dude, Robert Heinlein, had one of his characters echo the sentiment does not make it universally true.)

What if evil outcomes actually do have evil causes? Doesn’t that other famous razor, from Mr. Occam, at least suggest that might be the case? If the outcome is evil, maybe the intent was evil? Isn’t that the simplest explanation?

Why does it make more sense to suggest the opposite? Yes, I know the outcome was evil, but the cause was stupidity. Because Hanlon’s razor, grubble grubble grubble…

There are evil people in the world. People with evil plans. People who are attracted to the kind of power that is needed to put evil plans into effect. People who think of the rest of us as cattle to be herded, corralled, and culled.

Why on earth wouldn’t we assume that the evil we see in our lives is the result of evil?

Maybe we need a new razor:

If an outcome is evil, assume the intent was to produce an evil outcome.

I am not necessarily wedded to that wording (after all, I just formulated it 17 seconds ago), but you get the idea. I am simply not convinced that it makes more sense to attribute evil outcomes to something other than evil intents.

In fact, now that I think about it, why would we do so? Is it because we do not want to believe that evil exists? Because we’re social creatures who cannot accept that some people hate the rest of us with a hot hot hate? Why is our first impulse to make excuses for evil? Why is it the pinnacle of logical analysis to attribute evil outcomes to incompetence rather than to evil?

Perhaps I can illustrate some of this with a story…

Over the weekend, my wife and I had another of our really fun backyard parties. Friends, family, and neighbors. Music. Lawn games. A reasonable amount of adult beverages. Another fun Saturday living the life we are supposed to live.

At one point, around dusk, I sat with my toddler grand-niece on a swing at the very back of the yard.

(Unlike everyone else, I do not talk down to her. No condescension. No sing-songy voice. I am not criticizing those who do talk with babies that way. If everyone talked to babies they way I do, they would grow up to be cold, unsocialized weirdos. I am able to take the approach I do because others take the approach they do. Anyway…)

I sat with her and did a little “science.” We opened up the seed pods of the wisteria plant hanging above our heads. We looked at the seeds and talked about how seeds work. We listened to the katydids—I pointed out which forest noise was theirs, and how they make it. We talked about the different kinds of noises frogs make.

She did not want to leave. She was having a ball. Even as the mosquitos started chowing us alive, she still did not want to leave. We were there for at least 30 minutes—that is a pretty good attention span for a tot. (I did once say to her mother that I would one day become her favorite grand-uncle!)

THAT—what we were doing, right there—is the life we are supposed to live.

You think I want to spend my days looking into the abyss of evil—trying to understand it, raise awareness of it, and figure out ways to escape it?

Screw that. I want to watch my son grow up, listen to the hum of honeybees, have parties with friends, and tell my grand-niece about katydids.

There is a beautiful, organic life we are meant to live. Wicked people in power have put up roadblocks between us and that life. Instead of living that life, we are forced to try to find ways to surmount those roadblocks. Do we go around? Over? Through? Do we run the other way? Manifest them out of existence? Do we fight? Flee? Grovel?

There are evil people, with power and evil ideas, keeping us from our birthright of freedom…

Forcing us to claw and fight and fret to try to get to the life we are supposed to live…

Keeping us mired in a struggle just to figure out what the heck is even going on, and how on earth to fight it…

Maybe we need a new razor. One that recognizes this evil for what it is.

One that does not make excuses for it.

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Update: Some commenters have pointed out to me that “

Yuri Bezmenov

” offered this reimagining of Hanlon’s razor about a year ago. It’s spot on!