Lately, I find myself increasingly disgusted with other people's behavior. This is predominately the people I have to interact with on a daily basis, but in light of recent events, the behaviors of people I never have and never will meet can be equally disheartening.
In the last month, among other lesser things, two widely publicized mass murders come to mind.
Which raises the question: What, exactly, is evil?
I've learned through the years that you know it when you see - or feel - or experience - it. It's difficult to describe, but describing it isn't quite as hard for most people as actually defining and understanding it is. Even the American Century Dictionary I keep handy to ready reference does little more than offer synonyms for 'evil'. Imagine that you were asking a child to explain what a cat was, and the youngster told you, 'It's a kitty, a pussy, a big kitten, it's just a cat'. The circularity of those answers really doesn't tell you anything useful, does it?
Evil is the failing of the human spirit.
That's my definition. In legal speak, the phrase, 'in good faith' is often heard, meaning one is being honest, genuine, and real in cooperating with or doing good things for other people. Dealing in good faith, taken in good faith, negotiated in good faith, etc. Bad faith involves fraud, dishonesty, and deceit, perhaps even malicious intent.
I describe evil as having four basic degrees, with some creative interpretive example for my readers:
Selfishness: This is where one acts purely in their own self interest without giving any thought to the needs or desires of anyone else. There is an element of neglegence or carelessness in selfishness. If you're selfish, you didn't mean to hurt anyone by what you did; the thought of anyone else's feelings or well being didn't even enter your mind in the first place. An example: You eat all the cookies in the cookie jar. You were so hungry for cookies you didn't stop to think that maybe someone else would've liked some, so when they lift the lid of the jar, a scant few crumbs is all they see...by which time you've forgotten all about it as you've moved on to more interesting things than an empty cookie jar with crumbs in the bottom of it.
Greed: You know full well that other people will want some cookies, but you don't care because you got there first and everyone else is just SOL. Or, even worse, you'd have been fine with three cookies, but because you knew other people wanted some, you took all ten so no one else could have any and doing so gave you a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. You have the power to ruin other people's day! Or, maybe no one else's day means anything to you, even though you knew you'd ruin it for them, all you cared about was making yours by eating all the cookies you could get your hands on. If they feel bad, that's their problem, not yours!
Hostility: You got to the cookie jar first, before those other stupid morons you have to put up with could put their grubby mitts in there and ruin YOUR COOKIES. So you eat them all to protect your 'turf', and just to let them know what the score is, you jot down a quick note and drop it in the empty jar for them to find when they reach for a cookie. It reads: 'GET YOUR OWN COOKIES NEXT TIME, YOU STUPID PIECE OF _ _ _ _!'. Hopefully they'll take offense to your, um, thoughtful comments.
ILL WILL: You hate the people who will want cookies. So, you have two options: 1) First, eat the cookies. Then hide behind the counter until the next worthless SOB comes along. Then lunge forward, swiping the cookie jar from where it sits empty on the countertop, and smash it over the loser's head. HA, HA, HA,HA,HA! What a rush! Or, 2) Eat the cookies. Then replace the all the ones you took with a batch you made just for those who had the nerve to try to come along and take the rest of your cookies. Your recipie, of course, includes sand, sawdust, soiled cat litter, tiny broken glass shards, and a generous pinch of either 'recovered' chewing tobacco (you sure wouldn't spend the money to buy fresh chew for this now, would you?), or in lieu of that, the contents of the nearest ashtray or maybe something from beneath the sink - a dash of ammonia, some Brasso, whatever. Be creative. No one will ever touch the cookie jar again, except you. And you'll enjoy watching every minute of their wrectched misery as they hover inches from death. Think of the feeling of accomplishment you'll experience. It's all YOU, baby!
You see, folks, evil isn't as simple as just being evil seems like it should be. I remember a lot of story lines that were marketed to young people in recent years, many involving a hero and villian theme. Half the time, those villians weren't all that bad. They were bad guys because we were told they were. I don't recall any of them doing anything particularly horrendous, just vague insinuations that they were out to rule the world, though they seemed to go about it in the most innocuous ways imagineable for characters that looked as ugly as fictitious bad guys usually do. It's almost like, 'Yep, that's us! Just sittin' here, being evil!'.
Intentions are important, but intentions don't make things happen. If you think badly of someone, but no one knows it, usually the only person it's going to hurt is you, if you let it get to you enough. It's when you decide to do something about getting some satisfaction out of those feelings that the evil begins.
Selfishness involves a lot of rudeness. It's being inconsiderate and aloof and doing your thing without even stopping to think about the next guy. We see it first hand every time we leave the house, and quite often we don't even have to get that far! Greed is also to be found everywhere, but it does have an element of arrogance to it. My way or the highway! Hostility is actively projecting some negative energy toward others through unfriendly words or aggressive action, especially if it belittles, degrades, or insults those other people. Ill will is simple: I HATE YOU. It doesn't really matter why, it's the thought that counts, right? It can be as basic as a man treating is wife like garbage because he's figured out she wasn't the brainless bimbo he thought he'd tricked into hooking up with so he could have a living, breathing inflatable doll at his disposal, or it could be as extreme as the impetus to genocide, a la the Nazis attempting to exterminate the Jews in the deluded belief that it was them who took all the good jobs and forced average, ordinary German citizens into abject poverty.
Being evil is about being a small, insecure person inside. Truth is, you are whatever kind of person you choose to be. Want power? Fine. Control yourself! It never ceases to amaze me how it always seems to be the people who can't manage their own lives are the ones who want to run everyone elses. When you are in charge of your own feelings and take responsibility for your own actions, you can begin to affect other people. A lot of people don't know this because they've never tried it: doing something decent for someone else can have a huge impact on them. If they are shown that at least one other person seems to think they're all right, it might just keep them from leaving a note telling the world that they want to go out in a blaze of glory, taking as many people with them as they can.
Or if they do ultimately decide to do that, maybe they'll at least make a point of sparing you because you at least treated them all right...it's happened before.
The TiGor
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