Evil

I went to Mano's philosopher's cafe on Wednesday when the discussion was about evil.

Mano suggested that the concept of evil is from previous religious times when there was the dichotomy of angels and demons, good and evil.

Augustine suggested that instead of seeing the two polarities of good and evil,  that there may only be good and perfection on one side, and then it degrades down to less and less good until there is no good at all.  Kind of like light and darkness where darkness is just a lack of light rather than the opposite of light.

More significantly, evil was used as a kind of scape goat to allow us to use it as a place holder as an explanation for some deplorable circumstances.  When we say the shooter that killed children in a primary school is evil,  we are half satisfied that there is a semi explanation for that tragedy.

But using evil as an explanation does not explain anything. It only alleviate us of our possible responsibility in the matter and shift all blame on to the scape goat of evil.

Evil is also one of those black and white concepts that is too conveniently bad. There is no grey scale for a deeper description of the cause.

Is a psychopath evil? His lack of empathy for others make them prone to hurting others.  However, we no longer think people with learning disability as lazy because they were born without some of the abilities that we have.  Should we therefore blame a psychopath for not having empathy when it is something he is born lacking?

If we can be born evil, where is the compassion we have for others that are born with a disability?

Once we get out of the black and white scape goat model of evil,  we are into the messy reality of society where nothing is ever definitively bad or good and we are all responsible to some extent for what is happening.  Just by doing nothing, we are not pushing back the pressure of gun lobbyist and other special interest groups pushing their agendas.  In that sense, we are all responsible and cannot blame others.

We will not ever find out something is definitively right or wrong but we have to act based on what we know at the moment and our judgement of what should be done.  Knowing that we may be wrong but at some point, acting on what we think is sufficient information because not acting is also a contribution to the ultimate outcome.

So,  we have just gotten rid of evil.

Except that we have spread it out all among us as lack of goodness or not caring from our parts.

Not exactly a good trade but that is how it is.