Book Review: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

See also the preview for this review.

My impression of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson, having [when I had] just read it: It is useful to read to give emotional weight to the problem of humans' dual nature of good and evil, and to good and evil themselves. The last chapter ("Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case") gives more food for thought.

I noted there (in the book) that Jekyll initially wanted to separate the evil nature from the good in him. I think, looking at things from a society-wide or political level, we sometimes split parts of society off from us to be evil for us. Maybe we don't do this intentionally, or maybe we do on some level. Cops and military are exposed to evil and it corrupts some of them or gives them temptations most of us don't face which they then sometimes give in to. People who live in bad neighborhoods pay less in rent and thus can be paid less. So someone needs to keep the neighborhoods bad. Childhoods of abuse may cause people to earn less if they don't go to school. So they provide workers for low wage jobs. Corrupt and authoritarian foreign regimes keep their societies dysfunctional so that they don't develop too much -- keeping wages lower. Building factories in least-developed countries makes those countries wealthier. So we need some dysfunctional countries to wait in the wings when standards of living rise in the countries we have developed.

Money can't buy everything. A person has to convert that money into a good or service, and certain occupations are more often staffed by people who have a certain political persuasion. If you are a certain kind of Democrat, you may despise capitalism, and that may not make you a good person to go into business. If you are a certain kind of Republican, you may despise cultural refinement, and that may not make you a good person to make art or entertainment. The Republican has the kids watch Disney because the kids will drive her crazy otherwise, and the Democrat over and over buys things from capitalist people because he would live in material want otherwise. So it looks like we need the mental software, or house, of Democrat thinking, to spiritually nourish the Democrat so he can make his entertainment, and the mental software, or house, of Republican thinking, to spiritually nourish the Republican so she can run her business. If that's true, then no matter how much the Republican detests Democrat culture, or vice versa, they need that each other's cultures exist, and they need people to believe in those horrible Republican, or Democrat, values.

Does this mean that there is no such thing as evil, or that evil is necessary and thus not practically recommended-against? Which would you rather, to live a long and healthy life in an evil land, or to be poor and unhappy in a virtuous land? What if the good life requires that we all participate in evil, either directly, or by proxy? One could say that everything that exists is inextricably intertwined with everything else, and that therefore evil is necessary for what is good, and so we should do nothing about it, and cease to regard it as evil.

No, it's possible for there to be real evil. I don't want to say that the Republicans are evil and the Democrats good, or vice versa, because I have vowed to be apolitical, but in principle, one of them might be more right than the other. Maybe they both have issues, but a third as yet unarticulated political culture basically doesn't. This third culture might work just as well for business owners as for creative people, or whatever other stereotypically Republican and Democrat occupations one would want to mention. There could be a morally better culture that also unifies people politically, and we can have both political harmony and moral progress / purification in one new status quo. Likewise with the examples of the low wages, maybe those of us with greater wealth and life-situation-resources could simply pay more for what we consume, helping other people to have higher wages. Someone could somehow help people leave their abusive spouses or parents, reform corrupt and authoritarian governments, and we would all pay more for our cheapest goods and it would be fine because we would be well-off ourselves. People who currently have a hard time affording those cheapest goods could be helped by those who have extra resources. Again, things could just be better.

But, that change can't happen immediately, and in the meantime, evil props up good. Sometimes we find it convenient to prop up good with evil and then forget that we benefit from evil, and become morally outraged with evil that we actually need in an important sense. If we're willing to do the work that the evil people do for us, maybe we can reduce the evil. Otherwise we are constituted, in some sense, by something we disown.

Is the status quo fragile, or anti-fragile? If we stress it, will it break? Or will it grow into something better? If we think it's 100% fragile, we will be unable to practically favor morality (change things into something better), and soon, we will fiducially or even epistemically stop regarding evil as evil. A fragile status quo then destroys consciousness of morality. Or, people who are afraid of breaking a fragile status quo do. But if the status quo is anti-fragile, then moral consciousness can be rewarded with societal success / health / sustainability. And moral consciousness makes sense if we are willing to risk breaking the status quo in the attempt to make it really good.

(Being revolutionary is not always a good idea. Breaking the status quo is a bad thing in itself and can make people conservative, feel like the world is fragile, so they then try to extinguish moral consciousness. But if you have zero sense that it's okay to risk the status quo, in theory, you'll never feel like it's okay to try to change it -- unless, maybe, the proposed changes are very clearly safe to make. And adopting that level of caution may be costly, and sometimes not worth it.)

In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by the evil being separate, it is freed to become more evil. When we separate out and segregate the evil or that which bears evil, it intensifies. Bad neighborhoods and bad cop cultures both become worse. Prisons can intensify the evil of those sent to be punished by those prisons' evil.

Does this mean we should keep all evil mixed in with all good? It seems like maybe Stevenson was trying to say that Jekyll, who all his life struggled with his dual moral nature, needed to keep struggling, with his evil stuck in his own self-concept, and that when he split it off into Hyde, he ended up, when Jekyll, still having the dual nature, plus there was the time he was Hyde and was purely evil. There may be some wisdom in that. We start to make a kind of devil's bargain, perhaps, when we outsource evil to someone else and stop struggling with it ourselves, when we have someone else face temptations for us.

Nevertheless, the way of civilization and progress ("progress" used in a descriptive and not normative sense) is for us to cleanly separate the good from the bad, so that we can be more established. I think that the ordinary person can't handle the worst levels of evil (or amoral behavioral threat, as from some kinds of mental illness). But if we have discipline, maybe we will resist cleaning up society too much, so that ordinary people still have to deal with evil people to some extent and we have to face the temptations faced by those who are professionals in dealing with evil. I don't know how practical this idea is, and I do not relish the thought of having to deal with evil people myself, or with having a job like that of a police officer or prison guard, but maybe as frightful as that sounds to me, it would be better for me to face those kinds of roles -- at least, if nothing else, to face the mild or moderate evil in the world that perhaps is within my reach, to help prevent it from growing to a size unmanageable to me by my (or somebody's) neglect.

I think the book, particularly the last chapter, is good for those who are thinking about holiness and morality. I think the book, overall, is stronger as a source of thoughts about morality on a personal level, rather than the political. But right now, I'm more interested in the political or society-wide angle to it.

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Now I will consider what I wrote in my preview of this review.

There, I wrote

I think Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde might give insight on the ways in which temporary leaders of bodies of people might think about how to behave given that they won't always be in power. Also, how to think about nations that have within them radically different factions.

There was some connection in the book to that question of providing for when you're not in power. Jekyll sometimes set things up so that when he was Hyde, Hyde wouldn't ruin things. I imagine that in liberal democracies, governments think about the fact that they will be replaced by people who don't like their agenda (the opposition). That might be an interesting area to read about if I come upon a source.

One thing that maybe could be pointed out from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is that I know that Jekyll provides for the fact that he will become Hyde, and I vaguely feel like Hyde provides for the fact that he will become Jekyll. This asymmetry to how I remember this suggests the thought that Jekyll was the more responsible of the two and therefore did more of the providing for the reality of Hyde, and had more of a concept that he was responsible for what Hyde did. So, suppose there is a Faction A and Faction B in a country, and Faction A is more responsible, both in the sense of interfering more in / providing for the existence of, and feeling more accountable for, Faction B, than Faction B does of Faction A. Metapolitics (views on the fact that there are politics, factions, etc.) is part of political culture. A move in Faction A vs. Faction B politics might be in denying that there is an overall nation that both are part of, weakening this sense of responsibility. An amoral or evil Faction B (Hyde-like) might have a sort of "youthful strength" by ignoring responsibility. Possibly Faction A's attempts to take care of what Faction B will likely do could end up doing more harm than good sometimes, and Faction B can "shine by comparison" by not messing up that way.

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On a personal note, I find that I have different moods, because I have bipolar disorder. So this book, and thinking about it, thematizes the question of how I might provide for myself when I'm in a maybe radically different mood.