I think of it as the food I must eat.
I am to hunger and I am to eat, I am to end something’s being in order for me to be.
Best I can do is reduce the damage I induce. Eat just enough and waste little. Regardless I did an evil and now that something is no more.
I must have reverence for the harm I induce. To apply this into politics, harm will always happen - best you can do is fixate on the interests that are dire and do your part to reduce the harm in other avenues. The world is so interconnected, that almost every action has a negative - we are often just oblivious for we can only see our part.
Back in the day, ex-slave Frederick Douglas had to choose between supporting a Presidential candidate who was for immediate abolition of slavery or helping a wishy-washy liberal who wouldn’t come out in favor of abolition. Douglas chose to support the liberal because Douglas thought the liberal had a better chance of winning the election. Douglas had to weight the odds and decided that it was better to have a President who might listen to the abolition cause than it was to be ‘moral’ and lose the election.
Perfect example since slavery wasn’t banned until the slave states straight up declared war on the free states. You’ll never get a wishy-washy candidate to oppose institutional violence. Only direct action will end injustice
That’s not so much “lesser evil” as “achievable good”.
If there really are only harmful options, for sure choose the least harm. But you have to make sure that you’re not ignoring an option which involves no harm.
The problem really is when people assume there’s only two choices. If you dont like the choices, be creative and come up with something else.
There is always the option to not pick.
Choosing not to act is still making a choice and may still result in a negative outcome. It’s the classic trolley problem. While you may not cause harm through an active choice, your inaction can still lead directly to a negative outcome.
I think it’s usually used to create a false dichotomy so that stockholm syndrome victims can feel good about supporting their abusers.
I use it as an excuse to view the average idiot for what they are. A slow loss is still a loss, but stupid people have convinced themselves that it’s a win. I’m glad I’m not like them.
It’s a good concept but I’m more fond of the concept of sound. It comes down to personal preference.
It’s highly context dependent.
In medicine, you face this question all the time. Will a surgery do more harm than good. Can I just leave that person suffering, or should I roll the dice with this surgery? It’s a proper dilemma to ponder. How about this medication, that improves the patient’s quality of life in one area, but causes some side effects that are less horrifying than the underlying condition. Sounds like a win, but is it really?
In various technical contexts, you often find yourself comparing two bad options and pick the one that is “less bad”. Neither of them are evil, good, great or even acceptable. They’re both bad, and you have to pick one so that the machine can work for a while longer until you get the real spare parts and fix it properly. For example, you may end up running a water pump at lower speed for the time being. It wears down the bearing, moves less water, consumes too much energy etc, but it’s still better than shutting the pump down for two weeks.
In various technical contexts
You probably do this all the time without thinking much about it. For example, updating mains-powered devices without UPS. There’s a chance the power goes out and something gets screwed up.
Yeah. Roll the dice, hope for the best and all that. If power goes out, you could be looking at several days of troubleshooting, but it is unlikely to happen.
On the other hand, you could get that UPS, but that’s going to take time, and the server really needs those security patches today. Are you going to roll that dice instead and hope nobody tries to exploit a new vulnerability discovered this morning?
Either way, it’s pretty bad.
“lesser risk” is a lot different than “lesser evil”
so is “higher cost”
In medicine you chose the best option not the lesser evil
The way I see it, that’s just different wording for the same thing. More patient friendly, for sure.
gotta call their bluff eventually. otherwise you just end up with the “lesser evil” still being genocide.
The concept of the “lesser evil” operates as a manipulative technique, much like the neoliberal slogan “there is no alternative” (TINA). In both cases, the spectrum of alternatives is artificially narrowed to create the illusion of fewer choices than actually exist. For example, while the United States has roughly fifteen multi-state political parties, the lesser evil strategy deliberately implies there are only two.
No, the First-Past-The-Post system + media polarisation makes it a two party system. If you had proportional election you would have more parties, because the rest votes don’t dissappear. The US election system is from the 1800s and outdated.
If you had proportional election you would have more parties, because the rest votes don’t dissappear.
The US election system is from the 1800s and outdated.
So, would the better option not be to fight for a better system or infiltrate one of the two parties and change it from within?
I think the biggest problem I have with the way the US has been working is that we just vote for the lesser evil and call it a day, thinking we’ve done our part. We’ve done all we can do. It makes things simple. It makes us feel good.
The real solution is a long, hard fight for change that will actually solve some of our problems. It involves convincing others, fierce public debate, and may result in violence. You will not be alone, but there will also be countless others who may not agree with your solution and will fight you every step of the way. Your opposition may be inspired by a genuine passion for a different solution. They may have an irrational fear of change. Some may simply benefit from the status quo and prefer to protect what they have than solve any problems for the rest of society. It’s so complicated and it’s just so much easier to offload that work to politicians.
Unfortunately, the most powerful among us know this and work as hard as possible to convince the politicians that they know better… or they just buy them out.
You are intentionally shutting out reality and choosing to believe that third party candidates are viable but they absolutely are not
Its usually used by more evil evildoers trying to paint themselves as less evil than their (real or made up) opposition, while advocating for evil. I think its a desparation move by villains who got found out.
Or arrogance and hubris of villains in politics, painting themselves as the lesser evil while aligned with their opposition against the voters they hsve contempt for.
Hey you’re finally getting it I see.
Finally is not accurate, I have known this my entire life and for over 16 years have been evangela sizing about the need for better opposition politicians offering a new deal rather than plutocratic rot led by the most unpopular candidates they could possibly find. Unpopular and candidates not fit for the moment. Everyone knows they are being screwed if not by whom. It has long been clear either the Democrats channel that anger or the Republicans will. The Democrats refused so now the Republicans will. And those Democrats are blaming everybody else. But they knew the situation and refused to change their strategy written in 1990.
It’s often used misleadingly. For example, in an election in a de facto two-party system, it’s often said that you should vote for ‘the lesser evil’, but this presumes that your vote will decide the result of the election, which it clearly won’t. Thinking e.g. “the Dems winning would be the lesser evil compared to the Republicans winning, and I’m voting third party (or spoiling or even abstaining)” is therefore entirely coherent imho.
I would like to see it used more to describe political situations outside of the West tbh. When we talk about x regime, it should always be ‘compared to what’. But of course, no-one cares about ‘lesser evils’ in this context, which I think says a lot.
The choice is rarely actually binary.
I could do it once. When the “lesser evil” decides their whole strategy is being the lesser evil and blackmail me with “if you don’t vote us the big evil will come” then I grow tired and issue a big fuck you to the “lesser evil”.
Depends on the context, but almost always a strawman imo.
Evil is simpler and easier to pull off than good (because you don’t have to value everyone in your equation), so “reasonable” compromises with evil compounded enough times leads to some pretty evil outcomes.
Thats how it is in our grayscale world
