The Only Evil

It is hard to distinguish good and evil. Before the abolition of the slave-trade, for instance, it was considered the norm, or even good to have slaves! Now we would regard someone who owns slaves as evil people. Why? The slaves themselves, and sympathizers rose up and defended themselves against suffering. But the point is, it was regarded as the norm until that time!

What is “evil” and how do we define it? Evil is hard to define in itself, so let’s look at its supposed opposite “good”. What is good? Good relates to prospective. Our individual prospective. We are held in our own universe. We nearly always think of ourselves. We’re never truly empathic. How can we be “good” in general, if almost all the time we’re being good to ourselves.

Good is the elevation from sadness. Sadness would be a moment when someone’s unhappy, or uncomfortable. When we are happy, we are lifted emotionally and sometimes spiritually. This is the most common reference of “good”.

So surely “evil” must be a way of pulling it down. But think, nobody regards themselves as evil. We regard other people as evil. We rarely think “this is wrong, I shouldn’t be doing it” unless it is firmly laid down in society. Society has set the boundaries of good and evil, not ourselves. In the animal kingdom, for instance, there is next to no appearance of crimes being committed within communities.

But evil definitely exists in some form or other. It is a word, and it does describe something. When we are “evil” to someone else, we don’t feel it. We revel in it. Evil people are only so because they enjoy it.

What is the meaning of life? To have sex. What is the reason we exist? Because nothing is impossible. What are we striving towards, in one form or another? A knowledge of the true universe.

Lying is a false statement. It restricts a person’s knowledge of the true universe. For example, if you stole a pencil from a friend, and said to them, “I must have forgotten it”, then you would be hiding the truth from them, and they wouldn’t be able to find out about you from that experience. So therefore, lying is the only act of evil one can commit, be it disputable or not.

So, what is evil in general? Evil in general could be described as our individual prospective. We only think for ourselves, and it shuns and hides us from the true universe. That means that we too, to an extent, are wrong.

Therefore, (at least I can) say that lying is the only true act of evil one can commit, and individual prospective is the general evil in the world.

(Recognition to my dear friends Sirry, Sophie, Katrina, and Shemsar, who gave me ideas, read and evaluated this article.)