Evil is ignorant selfishness. Good is enlightened selflessness.
I am going to make some generalizations, so keep in mind, I am well aware there are exceptions to every rule, and nothing is black and white, or clear cut & dry.
I would define evil as unenlightened selfishness, which is a result of ignorance. Therefore, and quite ironically, I have concluded that as far as people go, the most evil people among us are our children. I know that sounds crazy and insane, but consider that I’ll contrast that with the notion that the best among us are the old.
When a child cries and throws a fit, because he or she doesn’t get what she wants, she is doing so because she knows no better (ignorance) To a child the world revolves around THEM. Children can be terribly cruel to other children, especially ones with handicaps. But we excuse children because they really know no better; they are acting on their first thoughts and instincts. They are innocent little beings that amaze us. Yet their fundamental nature is very “me” oriented.
Think about most grandparents, about how they dote on their grandkids, worry about their kids, volunteer at hospitals. I think as you grow older you become wiser (hence the evolution of the archetype of God as a wise old man with a beard) and begin to find your purpose in life as being others and not yourself. You live for others. You see yourself in others, and realize a certain oneness with others. And the kind of self worth and happiness this produces far outweighs your own selfish needs. In fact, worrying about your own selfish needs over others tend to increase your isolation and loneliness.
So if you see life as a progression from extreme self-centeredness to extreme selflessness, I see that as the ideal life pattern. Children by nature are selfish, but as they mature and grow and start families of their own, their lives become less about themselves and more about others, and they become happier.
You ask how I define evil. Nature is evil. Life is evil. Think about it. Dogs are evil. If you doubt that just ask a cat. But cats and dogs are simply obeying their natural instincts. If a shark attacks me while swimming is it evil? It is as far as I am concerned, because my life is over. But ultimately the shark is simply acting on an instinctual need to eat. It is not evil in an ultimate sense.
I know of a mass murderer who killed 250,000 people, many who died horrible deaths being ripped from the arms of their loved ones. Is this killer evil? I don’t know can a Tsunami be evil? Is an earthquake evil, or just a natural act of God?
As humans we know the difference between good and evil in that we know that life must kill life in order to live. We comprehend duality. We know that for every sun rise there is a sunset. In math we know that every positive number has a negative integer. I believe we have to find a balance. You can’t give in to nihilism because all of us are in this together. There can be no life without sacrifice. You cannot have good without evil. There is a pendulum swinging forward towards our collective destiny and it involves knowing both good and evil.
Those of us alive in the 21st century in many ways won the lottery of life in terms of when in human history we are living. We have access to the best health care, education, comforts, technology, so I think in many ways we need to appreciate these moments that we are alive and count our blessings. We are doing things that would amaze our ancestors. I know it’s easy to get disillusioned and beaten down by ennui. Mass media makes it possible to know that people are starving and suffering in other parts of the world. We can work to alleviate suffering, but there always will be suffering as long as there are conscious sentient beings in the world.
But think if were born in another time, when women didn’t have rights, when slavery was the norm, when people died of pestilence, plaques. We might have been drafted to fight in wars we didn’t believe in. Of course, there’s the possibility we might witness Nuclear Armageddon or a global environmental calamity due to global warming. Welcome to our part in world history. We are witnesses, in all its gore & all its glory.
I like to think life; our experience of life, the collective human experience is a progression from bad to good, from war to peace, from death to life. It’s an evolution from the simple to the complex. There is a peace of mind when you accept your place along this path. You also need to take a certain amount of responsibility. And you need to love others, unconditionally. If they commit acts of evil, hate the sin, but love the sinner. It’s not easy to do.
There are in many religions and faiths key elements that I believe to be true. That said, I don’t think there is a devil per se. There is your rational mind and your ego coupled with your animal nature, and based upon genetics and your environmental conditioning, there is your fate. To the extent that you become more conscious of your place in the world, and the fact that despite how small and insignificant you may think you are, deep inside you, you are connected to the source of all life, every action, big or small, that you take is important.
I always liked the idea in Christianity of original sin, or that all have fallen short in the eyes of God. It’s a way of saying, we’re all to blame, equally, as life as it is lived must include both good AND evil. There can be no life without sacrifice.
Remember those puzzles we had when were a kid and you had these numbers and you tried to get the numbers all to be in sequence and every time you move a number you affect all the other numbers, like a Rubik’s Cube. We are all like those numbers in the puzzle, and the entirety of the puzzle is the entirety of ourselves in the known universe, and we are one with that universe and yet also that small number. Still every move we make is connected the larger puzzle and brushes up and affects other parts of the puzzle, for a chain a reaction ad infinitum.
Evil is one number in the puzzle that only is concerned about where its number is in the puzzle and could care less about how moving about affects all the other numbers. Some of us when this number pushes up against us, push back, and blame it on the other number. Fair enough, but a wiser approach might be to not push back (turn the other cheek) and try to reason with the number.
Evil would be the unenlightened selfishness of the one number that does not act with enlightened self-interest that is part of a larger puzzle and learning to move in harmony with all the other pieces of the puzzle is the source of happiness.
