I Am Disgusted By The Evil In This World
I look at evil like I look at love - so many people have so many different definitions of it. You could write a few lines defining it, and if you wrote them well then people would look at them and say "yeah, that's a pretty good description of evil/love," and yet you could also write a thousand pages describing either one, and you'd barely scratch the surface. Evil, like love, is a force that permeates every facet of our existence, whether we realize it or not. The echoes of the actions of evil people color the world and all of our experiences in it, just like love does when we have it in our lives (and when I say love, I mean platonic, familial, and romantic).
I believe that evil is as real as love. People mis-define love all the time, seeing selfishness and dependency and thoughtless coddling and so many other things as being parts of love, when they're really a kind of anti-love. And yet, love is real. It really exists, underneath all of our imperfect definitions. That's how I see evil - it's easy to mis-define, but it truly does exist, underneath all of our imperfect definitions.
As for how I define evil: I would have to write too much to be able to really explain it. M. Scott Peck does the best job I've ever seen in his book "People of the Lie: The Hope For Healing Human Evil." All I can say is that I've seen the taint that an evil person can put on a space, and on a group of people. I've seen the life and liveliness slowly drained from people's eyes, in ways so insidious that they never even noticed that it was happening. I've seen people in swoon to evil, lost to so many parts of reality. I've seen the ways that reality becomes demented and distorted around them over time. I've seen the way that the miasma lingers after they leave, like the aftermath of a disaster, with people feeling dazed and lost even though the worst is over. And all of this, I've seen happen in contexts where most of the people who suffered through it have no idea that it even happened. They felt it, they experienced it, but they never understood why they felt it, or where those feelings came from. Evil is real, and by-and-large it walks freely in this world, unopposed and unseen.
I believe that evil is as real as love. People mis-define love all the time, seeing selfishness and dependency and thoughtless coddling and so many other things as being parts of love, when they're really a kind of anti-love. And yet, love is real. It really exists, underneath all of our imperfect definitions. That's how I see evil - it's easy to mis-define, but it truly does exist, underneath all of our imperfect definitions.
As for how I define evil: I would have to write too much to be able to really explain it. M. Scott Peck does the best job I've ever seen in his book "People of the Lie: The Hope For Healing Human Evil." All I can say is that I've seen the taint that an evil person can put on a space, and on a group of people. I've seen the life and liveliness slowly drained from people's eyes, in ways so insidious that they never even noticed that it was happening. I've seen people in swoon to evil, lost to so many parts of reality. I've seen the ways that reality becomes demented and distorted around them over time. I've seen the way that the miasma lingers after they leave, like the aftermath of a disaster, with people feeling dazed and lost even though the worst is over. And all of this, I've seen happen in contexts where most of the people who suffered through it have no idea that it even happened. They felt it, they experienced it, but they never understood why they felt it, or where those feelings came from. Evil is real, and by-and-large it walks freely in this world, unopposed and unseen.
