The Solution is to Disqualify Evil and Stupid People from High Office

I have been thinking about whether people are mostly evil and stupid and what the implications of the distribution of evil and stupidity within society might be. For my part, I am not entirely misanthropic. I recognize that all of us are sinners who fall short of the glory of God, but folks seem to me to lie somewhere on a continuum between complete depravity and saintliness. I tend to think that their level of goodness/evil is normally distributed with most folks clustered around an average that is more or less honest and peaceful but not perfectly or consistently so.

It has also been my experience that cleverness/stupidity and goodness/evil are independent variables. Accordingly, you can be evil and smart or evil and stupid or good and smart or good and stupid.

Now, the proportion of the population that is very good and very smart will be very small indeed, and they would be just the kind of folks that would make a good ruling elite. The trouble is that the rest of the population will probably not be able to distinguish among the smart folks who are evil and those who are good and there won’t be any way to make sure that only the smart/good combination acquires power. By what principle will the rulers be chosen? If it is the hereditary principle, what is to say that the heirs of the good and smart will in turn be both good and smart? I reckon intelligence might be hereditable, but goodness/evil surely is not. If the people choose, they won’t be able to choose wisely because the evil candidates will pretend to be good. Moreover, actually good folks might well want to avoid positions of power and wouldn’t seek office in the same numbers as evil pretenders. The government will, therefore, inevitably be evil.

How can a government be chosen that would give goodness a fighting chance? First off, you would want to disqualify the evil and stupid quarter of the population right off the bat. The good but stupid fourth is a little harder to cope with. Do you disqualify them because they might easily be manipulated, like Jar Jar Binks when he was inexplicably given Princess What’s Her Name’s proxy? It should be easier to distinguish between the good and evil among the stupid because they may be less adept at concealment, and I would recommend trying to devise a way to keep the good but stupid eligible for public office. This would mean that there would be twice as many good people as evil people eligible to govern and twice as many smart people as stupid people in the candidate pool.

If the legislature were chosen at random from the eligible population, then you would be likely to have one that is two thirds good and only one third evil. Of course, all the evil legislators will be smart, while only half the good ones will be, but there will be just as many smart good legislators as evil ones. I reckon goodness is more important than smartness in any event. Also, the smart but evil will probably have to pretend to go along with goodness because they won’t be willing to identify openly as The Evil Coalition. Besides, each evil legislator will be absorbed with self aggrandizement more than the good ones and might not be able to come together to do organized evil as they do now in the mostly evil Congress and state Capitols.

If we could come up with a way to identify evil, in crafty smart folks, then we could get them out of the picture altogether and limit positions to the good no matter how stupid they might be.

Of course, this scheme will only work if I get to set the criteria for what is evil and what is good.