So then we come to another commonly expressed view on the question of why there is evil, one you often hear expressed by someone in conversation: "there are just evil people in the world." No explanation, they just came that way.
Except, there is a serious problem with thinking that there are people who are essentially bad, while the rest of us are essentially good. It leads to a dangerous dichotomy which will almost always end up with the "good" people doing evil things to the people they have decided are evil.
In the first place, there really isn't this dichotomy of good and evil with some people on one side and some on the other side. We all have natural human tendencies, emotional urges, which can lead us to do harm to others for a huge variety of reasons. But we also all have inherent human strengths which can be used to prevent us from acting out our harmful feelings.
Some people have lower thresholds at which their human strengths become overwhelmed by their emotions. Some are more strongly affected by circumstances and have more intense reactions to them. Also, humans, like other primates, are social beings who must learn from childhood how to live in a group population. We have to be taught how to control some of our impulses and develop others; we don't come pre-wired for social interaction. If our particular life situation doesn't provide adequate teachers, or if we're born with alternate or insufficient learning capacities, we're not going to learn the skills needed to play well with others.
Some have better learning environments than others, some have worse; some find learning social skills easier than others do; some have biological conditions that either enhance or inhibit their ability to absorb and use social skills. Circumstances of life, the psychological pressures of our shared environment, can push any of us over the edge. When we are desperate, terrified, worn down, we can dig back into those ancient memories of ferocious, unthinking self-preservation and behave really really badly.
Each individual is composed of a vast variety and number of qualities and characteristics. We may each prefer some characteristics more than other characteristics in those around us. I, personally, get totally annoyed with slow people - who talk slowly, get to the point slowly, eat slowly, walk slowly, drive slowly. It makes me crazy. But that's my fault because I clearly don't have very well developed characteristics of patience and tolerance. It's my bad, not theirs. Some people may get angry a lot; but until you know the circumstances of their life and the particular social, psychological, emotional hand they've been dealt to work with, well, we really can't pass judgment.
No one is evil. Some of us do really bad stuff sometimes. OK, so some of us do really evil things sometimes. But that still doesn't make the person evil. Though it probably is a good idea to launch an intervention to prevent them from continuing to do evil. But we're talking theoretical conceptual frameworks here, not so much the practical necessities of living together.
Being human is a mixed bag, a continually evolving experiment, an ongoing drama. We are each playing a role in it. We're all equally prone to good and capable of evil.
in the next blog we're going over the edge
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