(Evil: morally bad, wicked)(moral: goodness and badness, right and wrong outside of the realm of law)
The concept of evil has always puzzled me. Perhaps my confusion stems from the common media portrayal of evil, that larger than life guy, the remorseless manipulator of people and power, living in a fortress lair surrounded by minions, ala Tolkien’s Saruman or Shelly’s Frankenstein and much parodied in the form of Batman’s The Riddler or Phineaus and Ferb’s Doctor Doofenschmirtz. They are the guys we love to hate because they are so despicable. Darth Vader in Episode IV before they watered him down and made him whiny. Scorpius from Farscape, evil in all its glorious camp. (I am purposefully excluding Tolkien’s Sauron from this list because he/she/it was not really human but more of an Elemental, being less an agent of evil and more a force of nature or an agent of Chaos, whose effects caused immense damage to the well ordered realms of the more evolved species. One could argue that the forces of destruction must exist in a balanced universe in order to control the forces of life. One could also argue that by definition, to be evil, one must understand the difference between right and wrong. Can we call the hurricane evil because we don’t like the damage done? No. Of course not. Things of the Elemental nature exist outside the realm of morality.)
In real life, in the ordinary day to day workings of human life, it is hard to see evil. There is no sign post pointing the way to Frankenstein’s castle or Saruman’s tower. Bad people do not wear Vader helmets or implant cooling rods into their heads to maintain their evil body temperature. Bad people can’t pretend to be good people, as it is ever so hard to blend into a crowd when you are dressed in neon green spandex with an enormous question mark on your chest.
Theism invents bad guys. They likes to make evil remote and disconnected. They create demons and devils; something outside that manipulates you into making the wrong choices. Muslims go so far as to mark a place in Mecca where one can go and throw shoes at the devil, that they might deny him access to their lives. Christians invented a story of temptation so that their deity might be shown successfully vanquishing Satan. Evil becomes a fall guy. Someone to blame other than ourselves. (see Midichlorian Fall Guy, below)
The truth is that every human, at around the age of seven, reaches a state of brain development where the understanding of right and wrong overwrites all the rules beaten into their heads by their parents up until that point. The little hungry chick moves from survival mode, where they are in constant fear of dying and must therefore manipulate everyone in their surroundings to get their needs met, to a more evolved state of sentience in which they perceive that the world is populated by beings just like itself and that those beings deserve and require as much respect as they do. It is at this point that all children become secure in their understanding of their own godhood and are comforted by the fact that despite all appearances to the contrary, the universe is a well ordered mathematical construct whose rules never change. Nowhere, in all this glorious Oneness, does evil exist.
What then, is evil? Forget everything you have ever been taught. Our current environment is toxic with false labels of good and bad, right and wrong, moral and amoral. Go back to that place and time when you still remembered what it was like to be connected with all of creation and know that you belonged there, that you were part of it and it was a part of you and that all that infinite power was yours to do with as you pleased as long as you stayed in harmony with the order and pattern that resides there.
Evil is anything that takes the certainty of that knowing away from you.
Do you still need sign posts? Evil cannot affect you unless you allow it. Fear and hate kills your connection; do not listen to those who would tell you to do so . Logic and intuition must be equal partners in your decision process. Guide your life not by steering clear of that which you repudiate but by embracing that which you love. Do not allow anyone to have power over your life, no matter how benign their appearance. Let your heart be the final arbiter and let your instincts guide your feet. You are not defined by this planet or the avatar you animate, but by the being that resides inside.
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