Thinking

[omimouse]

So, due to recent posts and commentary, I got to thinking. (This means, at least IMO, that Good Stuff came out of said posts and commentary.)

More specifically, I found myself trying to figure out what, exactly, is 'evil'? (For the record, there are times when I would love to be able to convince my brain to pick easier topics to ponder. 4:00 AM is one of them.) Even more specifially, what do I see as evil?

The panel of the webcomic in question is no longer available without a subscription, so I'm going to have rely on memory here. ursulav has a webcomic, Digger. At one point, she had a link up to a panel where the title character was talking about the nature of evil with a charcter by the name of Ed. Digger said something to the effect of, "Evil is doing bad or hurtful things for no reason." Ed's response was long, and it came down to this: "No, evil always has a reason. It beats the wife because dinner wasn't ready, or the house wasn't clean, or because she talked back. It has reasons for everything it does. It all comes back to the simple reason that the world isn't the way that the person wants it to be. So it lashes out at the world; it hurts the world for being not right."

The original text is much better, of course. I wish I'd saved the panel when it was up. But, at its core, this is what evil is to me. The only real qualifier I would add to the above pattern of behaviour would be that evil rarely tries to change its enviroment or those in its enviroment in a constructive manner. This is why I don't see most forms of activisim as evil.

This is, of course, my viewpoint on this. I'm curious what the rest of you think about it, and about your takes on what evil is.

Comments

[ladyqkat.livejournal.com]

Day-um girl! You don't ask easy questions, do you?

I am still cogitating on how to answer this and if I ever put it into coherent form, I will give you my definition.

[ladyfox7oaks.livejournal.com]

Ummmm... Yeah- I'm with Her (Points up at Ladyqkat's response.) That's a tough one. To try and distill what I believe to be evil... hmmm...
I'll try to get back to you on this one next week- when I come back to work,- and my 'net connection...

[raim.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure whether 'evil' actually exists. I mean, it's an interesting concept to play around with, but in the end it's all in the perspective.

I'm not sure about this, though. There are things that I deem 'wrong' (from lying to people to killing them off), people that I consider to be 'wrong'. But I'm not sure if that's evil. I rather think that these people don't know any better, themselves. While I might consider an act wrong, or evil, the person himself thinks, at least at that moment, that it's good. I mean, Hitler was a person who everyone would call evil, but if he didn't think he was doing something right, he wouldn't have done it in the first place. He's just a twisted human being.

Same goes for little wrongs - my ex-boyfriend, for example, has stolen bikes in the past. Now, while I consider this a very stupid and inconsiderate thing to do, he has stopped caring about that, because his own bike was stolen so often. I think he is wrong. He, however, doesn't - though he might, now, but he can't really say it because he can't change or doesn't want to change what he did.

...*shakes head* I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say, here, so I'll just... wander off.... *sheepish grin*