I don't believe in evil. I believe in a set of internal scales which weigh your self-interest on one side and your morality on the other. When your self-interest (or selfishness) outweighs your morality, you transgress. Where both sides of the scale contain lighter quantities (i.e. queue-jumping, or giving yourself the larger of two pieces of cake), we don't tend to see it as evil.
Where the weight of morality is larger (i.e. murder, genocide), we judge virtually everyone who transgresses in the same way, without any account of the level of self-interest required, or that their scales may be malfunctioning. Indeed, it's seen as disrespectful to even consider this in the face of, say, ethnic cleansing. So we badge perpetrators as evil, dole out their punishment, refuse to think about it any further, and never question ourselves the next time it happens. Or the time after. Or the time after that.
The word "evil" is a way of compartmentalising things, leaving them undealt with, without comprehension, and attributing them to the will of, what is to me, a mythical figure. It's simple, guilt-free, convenient, but - above all - fundamentally wrong in every single way.
Do you believe people are evil or the acts people commit are evil?
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I don't believe in evil. I believe in a set of internal scales which weigh your self-interest on one side and your morality on the other. When your self-interest (or selfishness) outweighs your morality, you transgress. Where both sides of the scale contain lighter quantities (i.e. queue-jumping, or giving yourself the larger of two pieces of cake), we don't tend to see it as evil.
Where the weight of morality is larger (i.e. murder, genocide), we judge virtually everyone who transgresses in the same way, without any account of the level of self-interest required, or that their scales may be malfunctioning. Indeed, it's seen as disrespectful to even consider this in the face of, say, ethnic cleansing. So we badge perpetrators as evil, dole out their punishment, refuse to think about it any further, and never question ourselves the next time it happens. Or the time after. Or the time after that.
The word "evil" is a way of compartmentalising things, leaving them undealt with, without comprehension, and attributing them to the will of, what is to me, a mythical figure. It's simple, guilt-free, convenient, but - above all - fundamentally wrong in every single way.