This is not due to any inability to see it as evil. They are oppressed by it, psychologically. They are running away. They ascribe powers of moral contagion to evil, and think they are consciously resisting that contagion. Judgment involves assuming a role of power and responsibility that they fear will corrupt them.
Is this an ethical error? Yes. An epidemic one. But then, error is the ordinary state of mankind. They can't be reached by telling them their moral sense in the matter is intellectually flawed. They can't be reached by calling them to responsibility, when they consciously shrink from it. What they need is a way to combine moral judgment of men and things with underlying respect or love of them.
This is not an obvious point, either philosophically or ethically. It is something they simply have not been taught by the reigning philosophy they are constantly exposed to. At bottom it is a misdiagnosis of totalitarianism, and because of it a misformulation of the principle of tolerance. They think they must leave open the possibility the other side is right, or deny that right exists, to avoid annihilationist political consequences.
It reminded me interesting ponderings by David Brin, Sci-Fi author in essay preceding his book Otherness. I did not find it online, but here is his explorations on struggle between different mentalities: http://www.davidbrin.com/newmemewar1.html and http://www.davidbrin.com/newmemewar2.html It's long and here is just an EXCERPT. It's interesting that he wrote this in 1989 and that variation I read (not this one I just found on his website) was much more skeptical about the whole idea. Looks like he was taken aback a bit later with fetishisizing of Otherness worshiping. The Dogma of Otherness is a worldview that actually encourages an appetite for newness. A hunger for diversity. An eagerness for change. Tolerance, naturally, plays a major role in the legends spread by this culture. (Look at the underlying message contained in most episodes of situation comedies!) A second pervasive thread, seen in the vast majority of our films and novels, is suspicion of authority.
Historically, this is a very strange meme, one which encourages such art forms as science fiction, and is in turn spread quite effectively by such forms. Its notion of a Golden Age, for instance, does not reside in some lost, lamented past but in a future that our children may create, if we hand them tools and a better world to work with. The importance of this reversal in the perceived timeflow of wisdom cannot be overstated. It represents a sea change in the human relationship with time.
Naturally, this way of looking at the world was rare in the past. Even today, it would be an exaggeration to suggest that this meme "owns" territories like Europe or America. Even where it is strongest, it must contend ceaselessly with any other forces inimical to its goals. There are lots of Californians, for instance, who personally emphasize macho, paranoiac or homogenizing values, instead of tolerance and otherness.
What we can say, nevertheless, is that Otherness has become powerful in the official morality of most western societies. Look at the vocabulary used in most debates on issues concerning the public. So-called 'political correctness' can be seen in ironic light, as a rather pushy patriotism in favor of the tolerance meme! But even the other side often wraps itself in phrases like "freedom," or "color blindness," or "individual rights."
Even more important, though, is the fact that millions accept the deeply utopian notion that our institutions must be improvable, and that active criticism is one of the best ways to elicit change.
Now imagine if aliens made contact with people brought up in the fourth way I mentioned -- under the Dogma of Otherness. Forget Hollywood pathos about nasty CIA types and trigger-happy rednecks. Try to picture a flying saucer setting down in today's Los Angeles. The National Guard might be called out to encircle the vessel, but they wouldn't face inward. They would be far too busy facing in the opposite direction, protecting our alien visitors from autograph hounds, groupies, and hordes seeking novelty. The jury is still out whether the tolerance meme -- or other-fetishism -- is really any saner than older, paranoiac ways. No tribe ever before had the guts to make tolerance and individualism paramount themes, especially in the messages they feed the young and poor and powerless. Traditionally, the aristocracy would rally those below by pointing to some outside threat, thus making conformity a principal virtue. The whole existence of many tribes was based upon "It's them against us, and us should win." All right. That remark was intended to be ironic and I'm certainly glad most of you in the audience laughed just now! I would have felt a shiver if you hadn't!
The first thing that Californians would ask aliens is -- "Have you got any new cuisine?"
This fourth worldview is related to what we started out discussing this evening... the Look Forward way of conceptualizing truth and knowledge. The notion that, while some theories may be better than others, all can profit from criticism and experimentation.
Emphasizing diversity, this meme even welcomes a little disturbing eccentricity, now and then. You can earn a living as an iconoclast in the West today, especially if you make it entertaining. One gets ego points for being different, if you do it with style.
No guarantees.
And yet, I know where I stand. My preference cannot help coming out in my writing. Not just a shaman or an entertainer, I'm also a propagandist in this war. I'd like to think that people come away from my books feeling just a little more tolerant than before, or a little more eager for change and diversity in the future of this world.
In fact, I think that we should go forth and crush every other worldview that doesn't promote tolerance!
Let's check though... how many of you, despite your laughter, agree at least in part with what I just said?
As I expected. You are intolerant of intolerance... and at the same time amused by the paradox this puts you in!
Well, I'm not surprised. The fact that you are capable of laughing at yourself means, by my reckoning, that you are members of a worldview that says "Don't take yourself too damn seriously." Yet another emblematic trait of this new meme.
While sounding very enlightening, its goes too far. In practical terms it projects similar enlightenment on The Other. The only problem with it is if The Other is not as enlightened, it leaves us defenseless.
In other words, its so protective in guarding The Other's individuality, that it denies a possibility that this individuality will be really nasty.