Related to good and evil there are two extreme points of view, with a range of countless variations in between. Both of them have a certain popularity. I would like to shortly sketch them out in the following section.
Some people see good and evil everywhere. In every conflict, in every war they judge one side as evil and the other as good. Often they have specific rules and expectations how a good human being must behave, what a good country or government must look like. For example, they consider a person to be good when rules are respected despite of no imminent danger to get punished in case of misbehavior. Others don’t see good and evil at all, might even deny that this concept makes sense. They consider the actions of all parties as a rational and necessary consequence of their situation or interest. They are merciless opportunists. The world is a competition for them, and who is weak must become strong or blame himself. They might see transgression and conquest as a necessary consequence of strength, that the weak must submit to. The concept of good and evil is seen as a tool for manipulation.
We experience an abundance of sensations. We process them with a lot of thoughts. In that process we judge some sensations as pleasant, others as unpleasant. We develop sympathy and antipathy. We develop individual concepts, our own intentions, our own will. We can judge as evil what brings us unpleasant sensations or opposes our intentions. Therefore good is what brings pleasant sensations and complies with our intentions. What sensations we judge as pleasant, or unpleasant, that is a subjective decision. We will find similarities among others, but should not blindly assume our judgement to be universal or identical to someone else’s. That is especially important with other humans, but applies to any form of life.
To make matters worse, we can hardly overlook all consequences of our actions. We use the power of money without getting a good overview of what we are causing. We buy many products to cope with our daily life. Those products stand on a more or less pretty shelf, are presented in an online shop or get to us through a network, like water or electricity. Often we have little or nothing to do with the production of those goods. We do not know the people who produced them. We don’t know exactly where stuff is produced, often only a country is named on the wrapping. We don’t know how it was transported and by whom. Every kwon and then concerns are expressed regarding the conditions in production facilities and logistics. If we really have expectations for good behavior, then we must get the stuff we need from sources that meet those expectations.
There are farms and businesses that sell directly to the end customer. They often value transparency and allow you to meet the people and see the place, the animals and nature involved in the production. You can experience how the employees, the animals, the plants, the soil, the water and the air are treated. The relation of mankind with animals is a difficult topic for many and worthy of a separate article. The output per employee and per hectare of soil is usually less compared to large industrial farms. But the quality is mostly better, less chemicals and fertilizer are used, the animals have more space, the employees less stress and more diverse responsibilities. But the products must be more expensive to compensate for the lower output. They are directed to customers who value quality and a good life of everyone involved in the production. Who beliefs to not have a good life himself, to always be short on money, will have little interest in such products. From this perspective they are a privilege. Should people who avoid them and buy stuff from cheap anonymous sources reproach themselves for it? Do they not know good and evil?
Those complications can result in hesitations when it comes to the question of good and evil. Then we avoid thinking about it and choose to believe that we pay taxes in the good countries, fight in just wars against evil men to strip them of their power and make a good world for all remaining humans. That is sadly an illusion. Anyone who values truth cannot stop here.
It is not reasonable to judge people for what they do without consideration of their situation. We have very different challenges and tasks in life. Someone growing up in a poor country might be happy to have food at all, and should maybe not get confronted with the demands of people in rich countries who made it their mission to not harm anyone or anything with their diet. That is also true within rich countries. We adopt many fallacies, and it takes time to become aware of them and get an understanding of the consequences. We find ourselves integrated in a society, which supports certain practices and considers them normal. We have a right to question those. But we cannot immediately detach from our surroundings, and we cannot reshape it completely within a day or two.
What makes this task even more difficult is the highly advanced division of tasks, which spans the entire world for almost any product. There is nothing to say against specialization and trade. It is probably not possible for all of us to live self-sufficient. We should only aim for that lifestyle if it really appears attractive to us, and not for ideological reasons. However, it can happen that we no longer overlook everything that happens or is necessary to enable our life as we live it. In such conditions, a well-intended optimization of the aspects known to us can result in the opposite effect on a comprehensive scale. It is worthwhile to have a rough overview of the universal picture complementing the expertise in our special fields of work or interest. So we can avoid causing trouble with well-intended actions. That requires a sacrifice, because we can no longer invest all of our time in advancing our expertise. But if we take the time, we can also not so easily get fooled or manipulated.
Judging things prematurely as good or evil and insisting on it often results in serious misconduct. However, not differentiating good and evil is also not a solution, because we will lack orientation. The power to distinguish good and evil is an important human ability. Unfortunately, it is rarely used in everyday life. Mostly we adopt judgements, given to us by others. What is presented as good with a lot of support, on all channels that we see, that has to be good. The same way we are given enemies, so we are informed about who is evil without the need to think ourselves. Who follows these specifications will not learn to differentiate good and evil self-reliantly and will remain deceived. Deception is the most important tool of evil. And the most significant deception is the conviction that there are no evil forces. And even though I call this a deception I must say at the same time that it is not entirely wrong. But this can easily be misunderstood and result in a worldview that keeps us in the role of a victim.
It is important what we imagine when we think the world evil. What Vorstellung we have of evil. Defining the concept of evil is a difficult task. The evil is a mystery for many. It likes to dress up prettily, uses beautiful words. It approaches our convenience and is delighted when we fully trust it. It always assures us that it want only the best for us and never gets tired to find reasons why we should give it more responsibility. The evil does not like human freedom, but promises it anyway to anyone who wants to hear it. For the evil, the outcome justifies all means. It likes order and control. To achieve this it becomes intrusive, and that is why it is evil.
At this point it is important what image of humanity we have. If we believe that humans cannot handle freedom and must be forced into law and order, then we judge intrusive behavior by the state power as good, as long as it follows the rules that it previously created, even if it limits our freedom. And it is true that we must learn to handle freedom. It is not an easy task and we are often left alone with it. We will err and make mistakes along the way. It is also not generally evil to set up rules and enforce them. It is a necessary step in every humans development.
If we wouldn’t make any mistakes, there would be nothing that we could call evil. If we stood under the direct control of an unerring being, we would be in a paradise. But we were released into freedom. We must discover the world ourselves, and we will err and make mistakes in the process. The resulting consequences we like to call evil. It is a feedback that communicates if we or someone else took a wrong turn. As pain tells us when we damaged our body. We create the evil ourselves, not because we are evil, but because must learn and we need feedback to do so. There are efforts to put humanity under the control of an unerring force or artificial intelligence, so we are guided once more and can no longer err. That way, all evil would be eliminated and we would again be in the condition we already had when we were living in paradise. The task to become free would be abandoned and given up in that case. It is not intended for us to withdraw from all responsibilities and surrender to the dictate of an omniscient power. Our purpose is to discover the world in freedom, learn to see what is good and decide to do what is right voluntarily.
This perspective explains the opinion that there is no true evil. That it all serves a purpose for a greater good. But that does not mean that random behavior remains without consequences. We can choose to join evil forces, we can also err unnecessarily long and make mistakes, but that way we do cause suffering for us and for others. We create a lot of work for us that we must deal with in the future. At some point we will see our mistakes. We will step out of our role of a victim and recognize our responsibility. Then we will create a compensation, establish balance again, grow beyond ourselves. We will recognize that we are a part of humanity, a part of the world, united with something bigger, and we will do good because we really want to.