Knowledge is not evil...

[partly]

I'm watching Numb3rs, I love the show. The writing is usually very sharp. It's always sharp where the characters and relationships are concerned. I've noticed a tendancy to get a little sloppy when the show wants to "prove a point". Since the show's heroes work for the FBI, it occasionally feels the need to be heavy handed in order to prove that the government can be evil. Not our heroes, mind, but the government.

Now I can go with that thought. The government is made up of people and people can be bad. Add to it the fact that bad people, when put in positions where they have no restrictions, they can be downright evil.

However, this show the people weren't bad -- knowledge was. And I just hate that.

The plot-line was this. During the anti-war protests in the 70's, an ROTC building was bombed and people were killed. The FBI believed a lawyer named Sterling, a leader in the anti-war movement, was responsible for it, a belief that was reinforced when the man disappeared. Now, more than 30 years after that bombing, there is another exactly similar bombing, killing more people. An old FBI agent who worked on the case is brought in because of his knowledge of the first case.

It turns out Sterling didn't do the original bombing, it was a doctor; a gal who was in the anti-war movement at the same time as Sterling. Sterling was killed when he tried to get rid of the explosive making materials before they could be used again, but his body wasn't discovered until this new investigation. It turns out that the current bombings were committed by the son of another member of that anti-war group who was trying to recapture the glory days of the Vietnam era.

And if they would have left it there, I would have been happy with it, but they didn't. They added in a bit where the old FBI agent, who was brought into the investigation, was an undercover agent with the anti-war group in the 70s. During the course of that initial investigation, he talked to Sterling about possible violent actions that could be used to stop the war. He even, it was implied, left an activist-type book with a recipe for explosives in the hands of the activists. It was that recipe for explosives from that book that was used by the doctor in the original bombing and that recipe for explosives from that book that was used by the kid in the current bombings.

It was implied that this man – and therefor the FBI – was responsible for everything that happened because they provided the information on how to make the bombs. It was wrong, you see, for the FBI to investigate the anti-war group and provide this information because... well, because it made killers out of otherwise peaceful people.

Which is just so much bull that I can't stand it. By that standard, every library in the country is responsible for the actions of the people who get information from them. Schools are responsible for the actions of people who learned things from them. I can get information on how to make a bomb very easily, the person/place/people who I get this information from are not responsible for my actions.

Knowledge is not evil. Knowing things – like how to hurt people – doesn't make you instantly run out and hurt them. I know how to hurt people, I know where to get information on how to make bombs. That doesn't mean I'm going to hurt anyone. You could, in fact, drop a fully-working bomb in the middle of my kitchen, and I still won't use it to hurt people.

Saying that this first woman would never had hurt anyone if only the FBI wouldn't have allowed her to find this "bomb recipe" is dumb. Knowledge doesn't make people kill.

I find that this belief – the belief that ignorance of how to do things is the only way to stop people from doing evil – is very dangerous. It removes personal responsibility from the doers and it makes knowledge the enemy.

Comments

[donnickcottage.livejournal.com]

I agree with you in principle, but the "case" you describe seems different. Dropping a bomb into your kitchen would be fine perhaps, but dropping one into a known Al Quieda cell's meeting space would be just plain stupid. The book was probably a take off on the "anarchist's cookbook". I had a copy, it was fairly easy to find and obtain. If the story was that as part of his cover he needed to discuss things of that nature and in the process left the book behind, then their arguement is specious. But if he deliberately taunted a person he knew to be a radical and likely capable of violence by offering her a book she'd until then never seen to prod her into making some sort of move that would put her into an arrestable position, then they have a point.