>Can't help thinking that evil in government etc is much like the concept
>'disease'. That is that a divergence from physical 'homeostasis' in the body
>leads to death - and we need to find a parallel concept (perhaps) with
>society in general.
>Brenda Rosser
Sometimes, the system's need to maintain itself in the moment manifests as trauma. So the stuff you call evil might (sadly) be seen as but a characteristic moment in homeostasis at work. Capitalism gets the day's papers to the newsagents at Ouze every morning, educates your kids, keeps you fed ... and it destroys forests, retrenches workers, starves peasants, and melts icecaps. Sometimes, as rightwinger Tom Friedman has told us, the marines have to come in and incinerate some people to keep the body bumbling along, and sometimes a quarter of a billion SE Asian families have to be thrown on the slagheap.
As the body's constituents include conscious beings, it's as well to try to keep the uglier self-righting moments out of the sight of those most central and potentially dangerous to the organism. In 1997, we saw that it's better to destroy SE Asia than California; in Bush's energy policies, we see that it's better to create a disaster twenty years from now than endure a crisis now; and in the demonisation of individuals like bin Laden, Milosovic and Sadam (or groups like Muslems, Serbs and Arabs) we see that if the punters must see it, we can make 'em see it as something else.
Anyway, sometimes that short-term maintenance produces tensions that destroy the organism in the longer term. And, anyway, homeostasis always ends in death, eh?
Cheers, Rob.
PS Bet Molly Ivins got her FDR quote from LBO.