Acknowledgement of Evil
I.
Since 2020 we have been living in a time of momentous change and peril. Many among those who are not in denial speak of a spiritual battle between good and evil, rather than seeing only the work of greed, cowardice in the face of intimidation, group-think or other all-too-human failings. It seems we may be at a tipping point, when the avalanche of absurdities and corruption sweeps away the remnants of truthfulness and reason, ending our civilisation and maybe humanity.
The tsunami had been long planned, as has been widely demonstrated, the only controversy being whether decades or centuries in the making.
One defining feature would seem to be the pursuit of power for its own sake, without checks & balances, unbridled power seeking ever more concentration.
Against this background, the fight against “Evil” can be a rallying call whether one understands evil to be a metaphysical entity, i.e. ontologically, or metaphorically, summing up an agglomeration of perversions.
II.
Evil is largely an open-ended concept, which means that it defies definition. Largely, because I do wish to give it an anchor, namely when human ingenuity is used to devise novel means of torment. Following on from this, much evil is unmistakeable. At the margins there may room for doubt. Christianity contains the idea of redemption through suffering, an ideology which for long centuries poisoned the practice of that religion.
It has been argued that Good is indefinable because any single definition, such as as happiness or freedom from pain, can be challenged by asking "but is this always good?" My own definition is in terms of a society which enables many, but not all, types of people to flourish.
At first sight it may seem possible or plausible to account for evil in people in terms of illness, or as an aberration from normal health. It might be speculated that some DNA is missing or damaged, such as the DNA responsible for Empathy. This defect would create psychopaths and sociopaths, which are similar, the former being the more sinister.
On introspection, we can ask a parallel question about our personal past failings. Is the reason I failed to act as I should have because of, for example, illness or cowardice? Was such a failing due, say, to depression, or to giving heed to the voice of evil?
In some cases an answer will be possible, but in others the perspective may waver.
The key weakness of what I call the Enlightenment Project has been its failure to address the question of Evil. Christianity does, or did, address the question, not least with the notion of Original Sin, but, I contend, inadequately.
If once it is conceded that Evil is not restricted to the one percent among us who are permanent psychopaths or sociopaths, the concept takes on a metaphysical dimension. In our effort to make sense of certain phenomena, the idea of a realm of evil spirits able to affect human behaviour becomes useful. Where there may be many good reasons to doubt the existence of a Deity, itself poorly defined, the space among mature people for doubting the existence of Evil is tiny.
This said, some words of warning. Much that is bad in society and our own lives derives from misplaced morality. And much of this in turn is part & parcel of our cultural inheritance. Moreover, weakness of will is not evil but simply that: weakness of will. Most everything is what it is and not another thing. Once people start seeing everything in terms of good versus evil, black & white, all nuance is lost and, with it, the forcefulness of the word evil. Denying human nature is itself wicked. This implies the pre-eminence of Truth.