What is the point of referring to something or someone as evil? All it seems to do is dismiss any and all motivation to make corrections.
If someone is evil, there is nothing you can do to correct their behavior. If someone is simply evil, we can ignore any and all institutional or circumstantial problems that drove them to act that way. We just say they're evil. And then? What exactly did that do?
We learn nothing about what motivated their actions. We learn nothing about how they became this way. We just separate them from the rest of us. We would never do such a thing, we aren't evil like this person, after all. And so we start to quantify this idea of evil. That there are these inhuman evil people hiding amongst us, just waiting to do something evil.
And then we start to be afraid of these evil people. We start looking for signs of them everywhere. We don't want someone evil to do something to us! We brand groups of people as evil for some arbitrary shared trait in generalization. We start to assume that the problems in our lives are caused by these evil people. We've found the source of all our problems!
At the same time, we lose sight of the actual source of our problems. After all, we are human, we simply, inevitably, judge books by their cover. We only see all the brightest, glaring red signs, and we stop looking for it where we assume it wouldn't be. It becomes so incredibly easy to distract us, like a cat chasing a laser pointer.
If there truly was such a thing as evil, then the idea of evil must be of their own construction, for the only one it benefits would be evil itself.
If someone is evil, there is nothing you can do to correct their behavior. If someone is simply evil, we can ignore any and all institutional or circumstantial problems that drove them to act that way. We just say they're evil. And then? What exactly did that do?
We learn nothing about what motivated their actions. We learn nothing about how they became this way. We just separate them from the rest of us. We would never do such a thing, we aren't evil like this person, after all. And so we start to quantify this idea of evil. That there are these inhuman evil people hiding amongst us, just waiting to do something evil.
And then we start to be afraid of these evil people. We start looking for signs of them everywhere. We don't want someone evil to do something to us! We brand groups of people as evil for some arbitrary shared trait in generalization. We start to assume that the problems in our lives are caused by these evil people. We've found the source of all our problems!
At the same time, we lose sight of the actual source of our problems. After all, we are human, we simply, inevitably, judge books by their cover. We only see all the brightest, glaring red signs, and we stop looking for it where we assume it wouldn't be. It becomes so incredibly easy to distract us, like a cat chasing a laser pointer.
If there truly was such a thing as evil, then the idea of evil must be of their own construction, for the only one it benefits would be evil itself.
