Word: eviler
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...problem of evil has long been the province of philosophy. Philosophy is not particularly interested in that question anymore. (Nor is the world much interested in philosophy, but that is another matter.) Journalism has taken up the slack. Unfortunately, journalism is not terribly well equipped to handle it, principally because journalism is a medium of display and demonstration. When evil is the subject, the urge to display leads to dark places indeed...
...journalism, as for the other performing arts, evil is a fascinating and indispensable subject. The question is how to fix on the subject without merging with it. For many arts, the solution is to interpose time: their reflections on evil are, for the most part, recollections in tranquillity. On television news, that protective distance disappears...
...same, the drama we would miss would no doubt be riveting. Evil is riveting. From watching Hitchcock we know of the perverse, and fully human, enjoyment that comes from looking evil dead in the eye. But when the evil is real and the suffering actual, that enjoyment is tinged with shame, the kind of shame one experiences when exposed to pornography...
...legislate morality. That conviction represents an amalgam of Puritanism, with its belief in a permanently flawed human nature, and the Enlightenment tradition, with its belief in the perfectibility of man. Cotton Mather, meet Thomas Jefferson. This contradictory combination bespeaks the sheer and sometimes hopelessly unrealistic determination to overcome any evil that cannot be ignored, the refusal to accept the status quo in the universe...
Immigrants struggling to make good in the U.S. often express dismay at what they see around them. "Many American values and customs which are very much part of the American way of life are seen (by Indians) as 'evil,' " writes Parmatma Saran, associate professor of sociology at Baruch College in Manhattan. "The American attitude toward sex . . . is viewed as immoral." Gaspar Ortega, a onetime Mexican prizefighter who is now a social worker in New Haven, Conn., is concerned about American treatment of the family. "I get disgusted when I see families separated. I blame the pressure of the dollar when...