Everyday Canvas

On Evil

Prompt: Is there such a thing as good and evil? What determines an action as good or evil? Who gets to decide who’s good or who’s evil? Your thoughts.

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First, I need to define evil. Evil may be considered as the antonym of good, but the real antonym of good is bad, but not all bad is evil. Even in the justice system, there are degrees of crimes. Knowledgeable people and circumstances can help or even bad people through their own work can turn around to be better and reach to acceptability despite the dual nature of humans. This is bad turning to some degree of good.

Evil is different. Evil cannot be fixed. To me, evil is irretrievable, irreparable, and permanently bad. It is harmful, inexplicable, and obscure. And you-know-who in religious terms, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named as in Harry Potter, personifies evil. (As an aside, come to think of it, Lord Voldemort wasn’t really evil but really bad.)

The dictionary defines the noun form of evil as “profound immorality, wickedness, and depravity, especially when regarded as a supernatural force.” The adjective form of evil is defined as profoundly immoral and malevolent.

Can we know evil when we see it? I doubt that. Evil is cunning, crafty, and sly. It approaches us in many forms, mostly in the forms of things or people we have been yearning for, and that is why we give in to it.

From where I stand, mass-killers and murderers have done acts of evil but are they evil themselves? That, only their creator knows. We might call them sociopaths or psychopaths who commit terrible crimes, if only to explain their horrific acts. This may be acceptable only when the crimes committed are involuntary, which means these people believed in the wrong ideals or chose wrongly while they themselves were quite ordinary or even good people before those acts.

In our time, the word evil has become what we call wrongdoers who cannot be injected with any form of morality and for whom all devices of justice are inadequate, and the word itself describes the limits of what badness we’re able to put up with. For such irreparable criminals, evil may be the appropriate adjective.

As to good, it means all desirable virtues like morality, charity, peace, love, and friendship that benefit someone or something. Good is easy to see and to identify. As the opposite of bad, it forms the bright side of humanity whereas its opposite is our shadowed side. These two sides make up our dual nature.

On the other hand, evil in its perfect meaning is difficult to pinpoint. In any case, I am not the one to decide who is evil as I don’t have the knowledge, insight, or the authority for it.