Best Intentions

     Two posts and nine months ago, I posted a blog titled 'We need a new twenty'. If you don't want to go back and read my ravings, I suggested we take Andrew Jackson off of the U.S. twenty dollar bill because of his (integral) part in enacting the 'Indian Removal Act' of 1830. It recently occurred to me that, as dastardly as that act was, President Jackson must have believed he was doing the right thing.
     Without going into what 'Old Hickory' might have been thinking, we must realize that everyone who does anything has affirmative reasons for what they do. I can think of few instances where someone did something out of pure meanness, or committed and evil act simply for the sake of evil. The Red Stick Creek Indians who perpetrated the massacre at Fort Mims, Alabama thought they were doing the right thing by their people. The settlers who pushed the Creeks to the point of violent reaction thought they were doing what was right by their families. Andrew Jackson similarly must have thought he was was in the right by driving the Creeks out of the deep south.
     This doesn't just apply to the Creek war, but every conflict that has ever taken place. The British thought they were in the right to attempt to quell the colonial rebellion. The confederate gentry thought they were right to defend their rights as slave owners. The Japanese must have thought that it was their own version of 'Manifest Destiny' to conquer the Pacific. I could (and probably just did) site examples ad nauseam of people, or groups, who had perfectly affirmative reasons for doing what they did, even though we now consider their actions or ethos repugnant.
    In my most recent novel 'Nagodzaa' I tried to tell the story of two men who both had good reasons for their actions, but were brought into conflict nevertheless. Lt. Willard Riley of the U.S. Tenth Cavalry and Ka'edine of the San Carlos Apache, both fought bravely for what they thought was right, but their differing viewpoints made them enemies. It doesn't go well for either of my protagonists.
     At this point the reader (if there are any) might think that I am taking a stand for moral relativism. This is not the case. Regardless of what Andrew Jackson, or Joseph Stalin, or Jefferson Davis might have thought, they were in the wrong. Evil exits, regardless of anyone's viewpoint or best intentions.
     But it does beg the question: What are we doing now, that will be viewed as evil by future generations? What are we doing as a country that will make the U.S . a byword one hundred years from now? What am I doing as an individual that will horrify and shame me when I stand before the judgement seat?
     I have no answers to these questions. This is not that kind of blog. I do hope however, that I have offered up some food for thought in the maelstrom of information that we have in the twenty-first century.
     So until next week, find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Goodreads, and as always: Watch your topknot!
Arley L. Dial
7/27/2015