Cain and Abel are the biblical figures who typify the human struggle with good and evil. Cain kills his brother Abel and attempts to hide the deed from God. Dr. Andre LaCocque, in his amazing book The Trial of Innocence: Adam, Eve and the Yahwist, goes so far as to suggest that Cain and Abel are the same person, or at least that one can make that possible interpretation of the text. We all have the capacity to sin and sin large; we also all have the resident capacity for good.

What makes E-mail such a vehicle for good and evil, and on some days I think for more evil than good, is that it removes the presence of the other to a distance. People will say the most hurtful, angry and even vicious things on E-mail (or in a post on a blog, let me point out), things they would never say face-to-face. Tell me, would you let your Mother read what you post on blogs?

The philosopher and Talmudic scholar, Emmanuel Levinas, makes the primacy of being face-to-face with another human being the foundation of ethics. This shock of encounter with the physical presence of another being does not negate one's own being, but instead teaches us the primordial phenomenon of gentleness. But the shock of encounter with the other can also be threat, as the presence of another makes a transcendent claim, and that can lead to violence. The physical presence of the other is not neutral, but it is also not abstract as in email.

The physical presence of the other, and the claim that makes on me and my existence, however, I have found leads more toward gentleness than threat. E-mail shows this as it takes the face out of the encounter, so to speak. That is exactly why people will say the most ungodly things (and I mean ungodly in a technical sense here) on email that they would never say face-to-face.

I am steadfast in asking people who work and study at my institution, when they have a conflict with another, not to use E-mail and not even to use the phone, but to go talk face-to-face with the person with whom they are having a conflict. I call this my “Levinas policy”. And it almost always works. There is a claim the other makes by their very physical presence that is absent in E-mail. That’s why humor doesn’t work in E-mail. And even if, as Levinas notes, the encounter face-to-face of one human being and another leads to violence, that too is a shock of recognition of the other.

E-mail is great for announcing things, arranging meetings, sending documents around so you save paper, and for the technical details of life that make it go. In that sense, and in that sense only, it can facilitate the good.

But for real goodness to occur, you need to recognize the physical presence of the other and even if, as in the Cain and Abel case, this leads to violence, it is real. This is the fundamental human dilemma.

If you have any doubt into which category, good or evil, an E-mail you have written falls, take my advice and press delete and go talk to the person.