Ollie Stone and the Road to Hell

The internet reminds me, this morning, that Oliver Stone will be releasing a 10 part Showtime special that purports to put "Hitler in context." Stone reports that he's "been able to walk in Stalin's shoes and Hitler's shoes to understand their point of view." This effort comes about, evidently, in service of Stone's contention that " Hitler is an easy scapegoat." By Stone's way of "thinking," individual human beings are locked into a social and economic matrix that predicts their actions more accurately than something Stone doesn't seem to account for or even mention-- free will.



Well, kids, let's just leave Ollie up on his stool, wearing the dunce cap for now, convinced he came up with Hegelian Historicism all on his own. He thought he was plowing new ground, but he's really just giving voice to a symptom of our collective sloth: we prefer to study intent and context over outcome. "He didn't mean to do that." "I don't think she intended to do harm." "I think their heart was in the right place." "You don't know what sort of childhood he had, and if you did, you wouldn't be so hard on him." I encountered a strange one a few years ago: "you have to admit that's the way she feels about it. You have to let her have her own feelings." (The offender in question could have been a shoplifter, but the larger offense was not acknowledging how she felt about her shoplifting.)



On the daily level of small, endurable sins,
we tend, thankfully, to engage in this mercy as a way of getting through life. We assume good intentions across the board. Even someone who believes in original sin, and the depraved nature of the human heart, tends to assume that, on some level, we're all trying to yield to a better, "born again" self. Even when someone does something wrong, we reach very hard to acknowledge how they saw their own actions. We want to know "what, in the world, they were thinking" because we have an investment in believing they had a reason for it.



Dale Carnegie, helping us win friends and influence people, observed that even hardened bank robbers
saw their actions in lofty terms. They were merely seeking economic justice, socking it to fat cat bankers, providing food for their kids, etc. One woman told me she thought her divorce was the best thing she had ever done for her kids. (There was no domestic violence or intimidation involved; it was just a matter of not modeling a stale romantic relationship for her children.)



Somewhere in our memory a pastor is preaching, with real conviction, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."



The reason for that is clear: the endless consideration of intent alone produces social and economic malaise on an epidemic scale. We don't drive cars that are merely intended to work. We drive cars that actually work. We don't fly planes that had good intentions. We fly planes that take off and land.



Imagine a basketball game, driven by intent, as opposed to accomplishment:



"What a great 3-pointer he intended! Amazing!"

"That was an awesome defense they were hoping for!"

"We're number one -- in our minds!"



Imagine commerce working on that level:



"We honestly wanted to serve the Alaskan Salmon, but we got too busy. That will be $39.95."

"What do you mean? You didn't serve it."

"But I honestly meant to. That will be $39.95."




Before we're tempted to believe the absurd will always remain absurd, we should remember that we're maintaining colossal prison systems because our obsession with intent is much more acute than our ancestors'. When a New York man murdered an Indian, prior to the Revolutionary War, he was tried and executed within a matter of weeks. No one lamented his "intentions." We maintain leviathan social service expense, because we have chosen to make divorce "no fault." We kill millions of children in the womb, because, honestly, their parents didn't "intend" to become pregnant.



Heck, Oliver Stone can't even call Hitler or Stalin evil.



Be careful, Ollie. Take a look at the roadsign--and the pavement. It's getting hotter and hotter.