Tip-Off #153 - Guilty innocence
Tip-Off #153 - Guilty innocence
"God save us always from the innocent and the good.” - Graham Greene, The Quiet American.
When both roads lead to trouble, any turn can be a mistake. Caught between two bad options, many settle for the “lesser evil”—a common compromise. Pope Francis, while staying above the fray of American politics, criticizes both presidential candidates and advises voting for “the least evil.” Yet, a thinker he deeply respects, Hannah Arendt, warned long ago: “Those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.” Such a choice often leads to justifying greater wrongs, even totalitarian ones, under the pretext that the end justifies the means.
Amid political fear and anger, we often miss the obvious: we are constantly confronted with the tension between “greater” and “lesser” evils, facing complex choices. “Lesser evil” increasingly echoes in everyday life—whether staying in a dead-end job to pay the bills, handling political dilemmas, or deciding whether to uproot your family for a risky but potentially life-changing opportunity. These personal dilemmas reflect broader tensions. Every political system must confront the clash between collective and individual interests, the tension between majority rule and minority rights, and the rivalry of competing visions of justice.
Faced with such tensions, the reminder of the inevitability of lesser evils feels like a cop-out, a moral dodge to justify difficult choices. Debates over shades of gray often lead to impatience and self-righteousness. Believing we possess a unique clarity to discern the "right" path closes our eyes to the unintended consequences that frequently follow. As Graham Greene wrote in The Quiet American, "Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a lost soul wandering the world, meaning no harm."
Unchecked by self-awareness and humility, "innocence" can wreak havoc. The choice of "lesser evil" foregoes innocence for responsibility. Handling the complexities of being human—and acknowledging our complicity in what we deplore—requires balancing compassion with accountability. Political action may not attain the good, but it can resist evil, like maintaining a garden—you can't force the flowers to bloom, but you can work on the weeds that would choke them out.
In recent years, escalating crises—from systemic racism and widening economic inequality to rising teenage depression, unprecedented natural disasters, and global pandemics—have fueled collective anxiety and reactionary tendencies. Much of the left believes they have a monopoly on political virtue, the right claims timeless truth, independents can't see their own illusions. Many have simply loosed the bonds of coherence. Social media algorithms create echo chambers, promoting bombast and self-righteousness. Even those with similar views find it difficult to express themselves freely, as it seems like the script is already written. Self-assured righteousness on all sides endangers freedom of speech and genuine dialogue. The tension between "greater" and "lesser" evils spares no side.
Cultural pessimism is rarely a helpful state of mind. The German author Thomas Mann once accused his peers of cultivating a "sympathy for the abyss"—a mood that follows deep political disillusionment. We may assume that society will simply revert to a previous, more stable mode after periods of upheaval. However, it's important to distinguish between policies and the people behind them, leaders and their supporters. Writing off large segments of society as hidebound, extremist, or otherwise threatening to our way of life is, as one columnist noted, "lethal malpractice." To dismiss their concerns as invalid—as racist, sexist, or homophobic—without listening to them amounts to delegitimizing their genuine anxieties.
The open-ended capacity to respond and relate to others may not always lead to "the good," but it prevents complicity in extreme evil. The "lesser evil" can be the "greater good." To claim an inability to communicate—as frustrated spouses often do—is to assume there's only one way to express ourselves. Is that true? The choice is ours.
Notes and reading
"God save us always from the innocent and the good" - Graham Greene's The Quiet American (1955, 2018), Part 1, Chapter 4. Spoken by the protagonist, Thomas Fowler, as he reflects on the idealism of Alden Pyle, an American CIA operative whose well-intentioned but misguided actions in Vietnam have deadly consequences. Innocence and a sense of righteousness can lead to harm despite moral intentions. Also, “Innocence calls mutely for protection” - Part 4, Chapter 2.
Pope Francis - Hannah Arendt. “Amor Mundi: The Miracle that Saves the World” - Roger Berkowitz, The Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanity, Bard College (December 23, 2020). - Arendt discusses the concept of the "lesser evil" in her work Responsibility and Judgment in the essay "Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship.”
Even if we don’t like either candidate, do we still have a duty to vote for the lesser-of-two-evils? - Debate: “Should Americans Vote for the Lesser of Two Evils?” Two Muslim Americans discuss whether voting or abstaining is the better option. Wisdom of Crowds - Substack, October 25, 2024. [Note: Kamala Harris received eleventh-hour support from Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim community leaders. - The New Republic, October 25, 2024.]
Sympathy for the Abyss: A Study in the Novel of German Modernism: Kafka, Broch, Musil, and Thomas Mann - Stephen D. Dowden (Kindle edition 1986). Dowden is a German Language and Literature Professor at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.
“To dismiss their concerns as invalid…” - Robert Eisinger, “Siloed Opinions,” Persuasion (October 26, 2024). Eisinger is a political science professor at Roger Williams University. - “lethal malpractice” - Edward Luce, Financial Times’ US Commentator. The Retreat of Western Liberalism (2017).
About 2 + 2 = 5: https://williamgreen.substack.com/about - revised
"Political action may not attain the good, but it can resist evil, like maintaining a garden—you can't force the flowers to bloom, but you can work on the weeds that would choke them out." Well put and inspiring. I think Arendt would have liked it.
After courage, I think she valued forgiveness as the highest public virtue. Political action, that hallmark of Arendt's notion of public life, requires forgiveness because we can seldom know everything that will result from our actions. But like so much of Arendt's theory, it's hard for me to understand its function among a citizenry removed from regular public life by a system of representative governments. (Of course, in On Revolution, she advocated for something like Jefferson's plan for civic involvement "every day.")
Free elections are the only universal expression of public life we have in America. Elected rulers are better than autocrats, of course, but I often reflect on the unfortunate binary thinking (particularly with exactly two major parties) elections reinforce in public discourse. However, the need to choose between two evils--not an uncommon conundrum in public and private life--can at least help to wean us from innocence. That is, unless we adopt a political ideology that helps us retain our precious innocence.