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Mesodicy: The Justification of Centrism
Also known as ‘The Dipshit Paradox’
An all-knowing, all-powerful, and purely good God wouldn’t allow any evil or suffering to happen to anyone. A defense of God known as theodicy (literally, divine justification) attempts to resolve this classic philosophical problem. The question is often summed up: If God’s powerful (including knowledgable) and good, why do bad things happen?
To resolve the conundrum, you must at least complicate your definition of knowledge, power, benevolence, or harm. That’s a fancy-footwork way of solving it. You could jettison one of the claims that God is omniscient, omnipotent, or omnibenevolent, or that anything that happens can ever be called bad.
Today, A.R. Moxon discusses a political question of evil he terms “The Dipshit Paradox.” To me, it resembles the question of theodicy. Theodicy really just asks whether God isn’t a dipshit for letting other people be dipshits. Moxon’s discussion could lead us to a question more like: Are we dipshits for tolerating dipshits?
The Dipshit Paradox
A common political stance that calls itself “centrist” generates the following problem. When someone creates or repeats harmful rhetoric, centrism invites us to assume that they speak in “profound ignorance if we want to accept…
