I believe that evil is selfishness and self-loathing acted upon.
Easy.
Lack of good.
And I like pineapple on pizza. Apples and cherries too.
And I’m not evil.
Am I?
Lonesome.
In my view we all have a list of unspoken biological, sociological and personal urges inside of us that motivate us both individually and collectively. Things which seperate us from the goals of those urges is evil.
Example: as social creatures we desire to conform to social standards, that is a biological/sociological urge (the urge to not be different). Someone who takes pleasure in humiliating someone (ie who enjoys forcing others out of their social standing by pointing out how they are different) is usually considered evil, at least by those who think that either the victim ‘counts’ or that the humiliation was ‘undeserved’ or ‘unfair’. Physical pain is a sign that you are threatening your biological urges to survive. Someone who inflicts pain as punishment for political dissident in North Korea is considered evil by most people. However if you inflict pain on someone who ‘deserves’ it (ie beating up a serial rapist) most people dont consider that nearly as evil. That is probably because in situation 1 you are threatening the fabric of (western) society because we are western nations that believe in freedom of the public and harming someone for invoking those rights is evil as it threatens social memes but in situation 2 you are upholding the social fabric it by punishing a deviant. Both are torture and the malicious infliction of pain but it varies based on whether it upholds or threatens the social fabric.
Evil by and large is just a response to pain in one form or another. If it causes pain it is evil, but pain alone doesn’t make something evil. It has to be unfair pain to someone who counts and doesn’t deserve it and/or deserves better. Pain by and large is just a response to our unwritten list of goals and ambitions and whatever prevents us from obtaining them.
As far as things like smashing a childs toy you are doing several evil things in that step.
- You don’t have a reason to do it
- Children are considered innocent and defenseless
- The child didn’t deserve it
All are important. If you destroyed the toy because it was defective that is ok, if the toy had small parts a child could choke on throwing it in the trash is considered acceptable. Throwing it in the trash for the hell of it is considered evil. If you destroy something that belongs to a competent adult that is not as evil. If the child was acting really rude and cruel most people wouldn’t think it was as evil either. In fact the second reason is probably why blacks sleeping with white women was such a touchy subject 100 years ago, because women were considered innocent and defenseless and when you combine something immoral (sex) with something innocent and defenseless (children or women from 100 years ago) there will be hell to pay. In the book ‘combatting cult mind control’ the author talks about social structures and how they relate to circumcision. If you take away the religious and cultural memes we have surrounding circumcision you are basically just cutting a 2 day old babies penis with a scalpal while the parents watch. In any other society that would be hellishly evil because they don’t have the same sociological memes that we do, just as we think that torturing someone for invoking their religious or political rights is evil because our memes are different.
Genocidal dictators usually don’t consider themselves evil. Hitler probably didn’t think he was evil, nor did Mao or Stalin I would bet. They probably just thought of people as ‘things’ who exist to justify/strengthen the state and as a result their only purpose was to obey. I see this same attitude today but instead of servicing the state we all service the status quo. The idea of mentally torturing someone for not being communist 100 years ago may strike people as offensive but in 2005 the idea of mentally torturing yourself because you are fat/weird/poor is not considered too evil, but both are the same thing. In both situations people are devalued into objects who exist solely to service. Rjung’s quote is one of the better descriptions I’ve seen. Another problem with evil is that not everyone/everything counts. Historically people didn’t care about those of different races, nationalities, religions, etc. Nowadays we have no problem with an exterminator who gasses millions of bugs or a hunter who kills hundreds of animals but a serial killer or genocidal leader is considered evil. Child molestation, although a horrible evil in our society, probably becuase you are combining something foul and odious (sex) with something innocent (children), was normal in ancient Roman culture and Greek culture. They would probably think us cutting a babies penis with a scalpel is evil.
All in all I’d say evil is dependent on a variety of factors
- Does the evil perpatrator know and/or is able to know better that they are evil (mentally retarded people aren’t considered as evil as mentally competent people)
- Does the victim deserve it
- Does the victim count/matter to the observers (I think the defense of one of the perpetrators of the final solution in germany was to say “I didn’t kill humans, I killed Jews”)
- Does the act uphold or threaten people’s social, individual and biological goals (ie, are you cutting the babies penis for religious/cultural reasons or are you doing it for kicks. Are you beating the man because he is a rapist or because he is from a different religion than you)
I don’t believe that any person is born evil, or predestined to become evil, or genetically predisposed towards believing and doing evil things. We all have free will towards determining what our beliefs are. Some people choose a good belief system, others choose a bad one. Most people’s brains include a variety of positive and negative impulses. Indeed if you want to push far enough you might state that everyone’s brain has at least a little bit of good and a little bit of bad. Here’s my defense of my definition of evil.
Humans desire a certai sense of stability and security. We want to be able to know that we can make it through the day with certain needs met, without having to worry about going out of our way to meet these needs. To reach such a state, we form societies. In every society, certain tasks must be accomplished. Food must be grown, clothing manufactured, housing built and maintained. Illnesses and injuries must be treated, fires extinguished, stuff transported. And every society has one other important task. People who try to destroy the smooth functioning of society must be thwarted.
That’s where evil comes in. The concpet was not carved on stone and handed down to us from the Heavens. It is a concept that was socially constructed, to let us identify those people who need to be thwarted. Classifying them as evil people allows us to set up systems (laws, police forces, military) that can perform the important task of stopping those people who would destabilize and destroy society.
Why do some people turn evil? That’s a debate for the philosophers. Maybe it’s bad decision making, maybe mental illness, maybe genetic predisposition, maybe implacable social forces, maybe the Devil made them do it. The concept of evil does not depend on cause. It depends on effect. The people who wish to see the destruction of society must be stopped or else the entire world will eventually be nothing but pain and misery.
Does this approach dehumanize those who are classified as evil? That depends on the institutions that we set up for the task of dealing with evil people. We can set up a legal system that deals humanely with criminals. Everyone, even the much-maligned murderers and sex offenders, should be treated and rehabilitated as much as possible. But on the other hand there are cases such as World War II where such nicities aren’t on the table. When facing a nation of sixty million people that is dedicated to causing pain and prematurely terminating life, it’s a matter of kill or be killed. The moral certainty that comes from knowing that the Nazi Empire was evil allowed us to keep shooting and bombing until it was destroyed.
to me the definition of evl iswhen a person intentnly harms any persn or animal. when someone sy mean tings to anoter prson,such as tellinglies about aother persns religion, knowing it hurts them. gossiping. spreadng hate sites about religons, tellng non christians that their religions are wrong an telling them their going to hell if they dont follow the christian way.forcng your religion in someones face. the horrible things christians say about witches are not true, those hateful evil lies have been going on way to long, ignorance needs to stop. witches are not evil, actually talking to one will teach you they are good careing people. www.ravenightpoet.zoomshare.com