Collective Punishment Is Evil And Why I Stand For Hollywood

            Do I even believe in the concept of “evil” given that I stand for a more loving world, and in a recent post said that there was room for everyone at the proverbial table, even Donald Trump, and that no one is beyond redemption? 

            The answer is “both/and.” I’ll introduce the concept of “both/and” to readers who are unfamiliar with it. It’s not mine, and I believe in proper attribution, so let’s just say it comes from someone I admire and respect greatly and who I view as one of my greatest spiritual teachers, and who himself went to rabbinical school in Israel.

            As I understand the concept of “both/and,” which I consider the greatest piece of spiritual knowledge that’s ever been transmitted to me in my entire life, two concepts are not mutually exclusive. Now, I recently had a post about binary choices, and there are simply some binary choices in life and that should be self-evident. For example, my body (even if not the electrons in my brain, which quantum mechanics demonstrates can be entangled with someone else’s on the other side of the country . . . this is true and I cite you rigorous Grade A physicists here to support this proposition), cannot be in two places at the exact same time. For those who are new to physics, this is part of the difference between quantum mechanics (i.e., behavior at a microlevel) and classical mechanics (i.e., macrolevel behavior). In any event, under binding laws of classical mechanics, my body cannot be in the same place at the exact same time unless and until someone invents teleportation or time travel, which some physicists have attempted (albeit, teleportation at the quantum level). But classical and quantum mechanics are “both/and,” meaning that yes, my body is in one place, but equally electrons in my head may be in other places around the world. 

            Returning to the question of evil, do I believe it exists? I stand for a more loving, all-inclusive universe where everyone belongs, and yet at the same time, I identify as an aspiring scientist, and I cannot ignore what science teaches, which is that there are certain humans, animals, and even bacteria that act in what is defined as a “spiteful” way. The definition of “spiteful” is when a person/entity acts in a self-harming way for the purpose of punishing or harming a third party. A perfect example of this comes from the world of biology (though I’m no biologist, evolutionary biology is important to game theory) and there are certain “spiteful” bacteria that poison their own colonies for the purpose of killing their adversaries. From a Darwinian perspective, this is silly (and by Darwinian, I mean, biology, because I am against social Darwinism with every fiber of my whole soul and reject social Darwinism as racist, junk pseudo-science). These “spiteful” bacteria are “silly” because they will eventually go extinct, if you believe in evolutionary biology and game theory, because the research shows, in general, that cooperation does prevail, or that’s at least the thesis of my job talk paper and my entire research agenda.  So while I stand for a more loving world for all involved, and by that I mean the entire planet, universe, and if there is more than one universe, then all the multiverses, right now evil exists, unquestionably.  

            Now, we (and by we, I mean society) can have compassion for evil, and to seek to overcome evil through love, as MLK did when he wrote a famous letter to Christians who rejected his message while he was incarcerated in Alabama, and his colleagues snuck in paper to the jail where he was detained telling his opponents he prayed for them, and this is one of the greatest letters every written and I commend it to everyone, although I hope most people are already familiar with it, and it’s called “Letter From A Birmingham Jail.” The letter is excellent, and that’s all I can really say.

            But evil does exist, and from a scientific perspective, the best way to address it, according to game theory research by smarter game theorists than me, is to isolate it. (I mean, hey, if I were ruler of the universe, I suggest Donald Trump move to an island in the Bahamas, where he would harm no one, but I’m obviously not ruler of the universe.)

            Returning to the theme of today’s post, something I’ve known was “evil” since I was five years old is called “collective punishment,” where a group is punished in order to punish a specific individual or to put pressure on that individual. This actually happened in my kindergarten class, and this was the very moment I knew I wanted to dedicate my life to truth and justice. In that moment, my kindergarten teacher had a “show and tell” board where everyone in the class had to present items to “show and tell” to the class. An item went missing, and the teacher assumed someone in the class had misplaced it or stolen it, but no one came forward. To put pressure on that person to come forward, my teacher punished the entire class. I can’t recall exact details because for God’s sake, I was in kindergarten, but I do know at the time I knew what she did was completely immoral and wrong. It was also completely ineffective because the person who had misplaced an item (if this is what even happened), did not come forward, so the teacher’s strategy did not effectuate her goals, although her goal was probably to teach a lesson to a poor student who accidentally lost their item. How silly.

            This scene is echoed in one of my favorite movies from childhood called The Saint. (Spoiler alert: if you read on, I will reveal the entire plot of The Saint.) In the Saint, the main male protagonist as child was horribly abused by, that’s right, a priest (which is consistent with reality), and badly beaten in order to force him to take on a new name. He refuses and escapes, and later becomes a huge thief who is known for stealing and cheating people out of millions and millions of dollars. He goes on this way until he meets a woman he wrongs, a female scientist who is the inventor of a new technology that no one believes works. (Okay, some people believe it works, and she has a position at Oxford, but she’s widely mocked.) In any event, the thief steals the female scientist named Emma’s research, which is completely revolutionary and is in fact destined to change the world. The thief (who doesn’t have a name) steal’s Emma’s research to give it to Russia. But the plan epically backfires, and Emma tracks the thief down because she outsmarts him, and Emma later gives her research (cold fusion) to the whole world, all for free. (Okay, cold fusion in reality doesn’t work, but in the movie, Emma is working on early failures, is deeply spiritual, and learns from these early failures and makes cold fusion actually work.)

            The result? The thief and Emma fall in love, and the thief (played by Val Kilmer) finds Emma so inspirational that he renounces wrongdoing, and decides to perform three miracles (the number of miracles required to achieve sainthood according to the movie). The first miracle basically requires the thief to turn Emma’s theoretical physics into applied physics, and to do this the thief leverages a Russian scientist and tricks him into making Emma’s research actually work not merely in theory, but to light up a cathode, and the cathode explodes, showing how much energy cold fusion has created.  Miracle two is toppling a Russian oligarch who is attempting to stage a coup. Miracle three (which I don’t support, but find amusing), is that the thief hacks this oligarch’s bank account while the oligarch is in prison, and gives all his money to charitable causes like the Red Cross and the ACLU. 

            The main point? It’s a happy, Hollywood ending, which is the world I stand for. I want a Hollywood ending for the whole world, which is why I simply don’t understand objections to world peace, because doesn’t everyone want a Hollywood ending? (Okay, aspects of Hollywood are bad, like blatant racism and sexism, but doesn’t everyone know that Hollywood endings make terrific blockbusters and most people would love to have them as their lives?) That’s the world I stand for, even if I myself would never use illegal or immoral means. And even if in the movie, the Russian oligarch does, in fact, go to jail. Just like in my ideal world, Donald Trump would move to the Bahamas and renounce the Presidency, and JD Vance should also resign, and all members in the GOP line of succession should resign until we get to a Democrat. That’s never gonna happen, but the world needs dreamers, and I’m a hopeless dreamer. And I stand for all dreamers everywhere, especially MLK. And even if I also defend the NSA.

            And I don’t completely rule out world peace eventually because the world was never ever changed by someone who played small, and realism is the worst value in the values I don’t hold, as most critical theorists would agree, and my scholarship also stands for critical theory, as well as science, even if some critical theorists dislike it. I give you the amazing Dorothy Roberts at U Penn Law, who in my view wrote the best law review article of all time, called Abolitionism Constitutionalism. She’s does law, science, and critical theory, so “both/and.” Incidentally, Dorothy Roberts is a Black woman, and I nominate her to be ruler of the Universe when Donald Trump moves to the Bahamas. It’s too bad Harris lost, but in my view, the world needs a Black woman lawyer scientist to lead the Universe yesterday. As well as someone who understands critical theory, because while there’s truth in science, legal truth is significantly more complicated, as Cornell Law Kevin Clermont’s scholarship suggests.

-Cortelyou C. Kenney (9/4/2025, 6:43 am PT)