Kort Explores conundrums of the human condition

Good and evil don't exist in an absolute form. Events are inherently neutral. Only the effects of events can appear good or evil, and then only as a function of the perception and perspective of the viewer.

The Earth's orbit around the sun makes life as we know it possible, so from our specific perspective as residents of Earth, we see the orbit of the Earth around the sun as good. It isn't the fact that the Earth orbits the sun that is good, it's the effects of that orbit on our planet that are good - at least from the perspective of the life that is dependent on the planetary conditions that result from that orbit. The orbit of Mars around the sun is a major reason why an earth style ecosystem doesn't exist on Mars, so is the orbit of Mars good or evil?

The same effect might appear to be good when considered from the perspective of one individual viewer, and evil when considered from the perspective of another viewer. The same individual may consider the same effect as first one and then the other as his perspective changes over time. The reality of the effect in question doesn't change, only the perspective from which it is considered.

Consider the asteroid that hit the Earth 64 million years ago. From the perspective of the cosmos, the event was neither good nor evil - it just happened. Good and evil don't exist in the natural world. Every living thing eats something and is eaten by other things. When taken out of context, the gory violence and seemingly unnecessary pain and suffering of the natural world can be made to appear evil. But from the perspective of the ecosystem, there isn't any evil in each species performing the role evolution adapted it to perform. The only evil in the natural world comes from a single species that evolved just enough intelligence to use tools to redefine its role in the natural order, but too little wisdom to understand the full consequences of its actions.

From the perspective of humanity, the effect of the asteroid striking the Earth was good since eliminating the dinosaurs made the age of mammals possible. From the perspective of the dinosaurs, however, the agent of their extinction can only be considered the ultimate evil.

The same principle holds true at every level where judgments of good and evil are made. The messiah of a young aggressive religion appears the embodiment of good to the believers in that religion, but evil incarnate to the remaining believers in a older religion that is being displaced. The monsters of our age appear evil to those of us who judge them from the perspective of their effects on their victims, but most of these monsters judged themselves as doing good within the context of their own perspectives. Many individuals have caused effects on others that at the time they believed were good, only to undergo a revelation that changed their perspectives and caused them to see those previous effects as evil.

The good and evil each of us perceives in the world around us will be determined by what we've learned to perceive as good and evil. As individuals we can't actually feel what we've done to others, only how we feel about what we've done. Those who maliciously commit evil tend to do so because of the way committing evil makes them feel, not how the victim of their evil experiences that evil. Serial killers don't kill in order to experience the death of their victim, they kill in order to feel the perverse pleasure they experience causing the death of their victim.

Since evil is a function of perspective, it can behave in many of the same ways as an illness. On an individual level, a persuasive individual can infect others with his flawed perspective, causing changes in the perceptions of evil by those he infects. Evil will tend to spread and increase in virulence unless treated with reason.

The illness analogy works even better on the level of society. Evil can infect a population like an epidemic, turning otherwise good people evil by changing their perspectives. Consider the spread of fascism and communism in populations of otherwise "good" people, who became so desperate from unending economic hardship, they where willing to change their perceptions of evil. They became evil not by knowingly embracing evil, but rather by being infected with a perspective that allowed them to deny the evilness of the actions they took to ease their own economic hardships.

The most dangerous forms of evil are committed by individuals who have adopted perspectives that allow them to deny that they are committing evil by denying the perspectives of those who suffer from their evil.

It takes a deeply flawed psyche to knowingly do evil.

Evil wrapped in a facade of false goodness can be enthusiastically perpetrated by all those who are untroubled by a need to question what they've been told to believe.