2019-04-25-not-much-evil.md 1.9 KB
layout: post title: "Not much evil" date: 2019-04-25 07:55:00
categories: ethics
This might sound obvious or controversial depending on how you perceive the world and the word, but i've come to conclusion that there isn't that much "pure evil in the world". Yeah, sometimes we like to use this phrase ironically, but other than that "pure evil" usually exists far away in isolated places: for example, on war; and even murder of unarmed people in peaceful surroundings (usually referred to as "terrorism") is rare enough in most regions.
But this post is neither about war, nor "terrorism". It is about something much more mundane.
So as i said, "pure evil" is rare, but there are many little and big problems in our lives, often making them miserable and even subjectively not worth living. How can this be when we were taught since childhood that all bad comes from personified evil? Well, there are too reasonable ways to deal with that contradiction: either to accept that very bad things can happen without any evil involved, or to find that lesser impure evil in mundane everyday life.
Whatever you choose, conclusions should make most people uncomfortable. Why? Most people tend to use (consciously or not) excuses that what they do "at least isn't evil" or "not so much evil" or the banal "lesser evil". But if (first option) so much misery comes from non-evil, it becomes almost ridiculous to justify actions just for not being (as) evil. The other option isn't more pleasant either: bad actions that aren't "pure evil" are still evil, even if "not much". But as in the first case, it does not matter, if most of our woes come from such impure everyday evil.
As i said in the beginning, this might be obvious to some. But having recently seen this "it's not evil, so it's ok" kind of argument (quite implicit at that) and how it might as well destroy yet another community, i couldn't resist writing this.