Planning and the problem of evil

Abstract

Social institutions influence human behavior both by creating material interests and incentives to act on them and by giving symbolic meaning to human desires and anxieties and sanctioning their expression in certain ways and directions. The analysis of planning issues and public policies normally focuses on material interests, conflicts among them, and the exercise of power to prevail. Planning and policy analysis give little attention to how societal institutions and culture influence the expression of largely unconscious desires and anxieties in ways that create social inequality and shape policies that do little to reduce it. Material interests and economic exploitation are common planning topics. Psychological interests and the emotional and moral exploitation to which they give rise are less familiar because the western, particularly liberal, ideas that have shaped planning resist knowing about unconscious and ‘irrational’ thinking. This article explores the role of unconscious interests in contributing to poverty and punishing the poor as a problem of evil. ‘Evil’ is a name people commonly give to certain desires and anxieties that trouble them and which they may unconsciously try to get rid of by harming others and producing what is conventionally called morally evil. Planners will need to understand the ways that psychological interests sustain exploitation such as poverty and racial discrimination in order to oppose it.