Evil doesn’t exist btw
I like so fully mean this btw. “Evil” is just a way to placate ourselves and put imaginary distance between ourselves and our loved ones, and the ability to do harm
I am just as capable of harm as any other human. I am just as capable of committing rape as the people who have raped me. I am just as capable of abuse as those who have abused me. And so are you.
Those who have harmed me are just as human as I am. The harm I have experienced is the result of socio-material conditions, not some ontological bad-ness.
Evil is a convenient lie, but also one that is devoid of any hope. It’s convenient because it ‘others.’
If I am incapable of harming, I am released from the responsibility to avoid doing harm because I am incapable of harming, and because I’m incapable of harming, I am released from the responsibility of avoiding doing harm, ad infinitum. Any harm that i do perpetuate then becomes excusable and metaphysically segregated from the forms of harm we have deemed to be evil, all in the service of helping me sleep soundly. It’s a pacifier.
But with that convenient excuse comes existential anguish, and with that anguish comes complacency. If the ills of our world are caused by some fundamental, immutable force, well… What can be done? Nothing. Best just wait for God to get rid of it. Or if you don’t believe in God, best to just keep your nose down and look out for thee and thine till youre dirt. A belief in evil is a belief that our human lives are futile.
The reality is that we live in a purely physical universe. Metaphysical concepts (like evil) are a reaction to and conceptualization of the material world, not the other way around. The things we ascribe to be stemming from evil are, in reality, materially rooted, and thus able to be altered through material means–means that humanity has domain over. In this way, a lack of belief in evil is not only infinitely more hopeful than a belief in it, but infinitely more pragmatic as well.