Evil

I have spent countless days and nights trying to deliberate my personal beliefs on evil and how to properly convey these beliefs to another. In so describing that which is so difficult for me to explain I have come to understand, within myself, that evil is a consistent presence in life as the product of human actions affecting the livelihood and wellbeing of other human beings as an unavoidable but, not similar, prevalent force for everyone in everyday life and is thereby inherently subjective and personal to each individual. I will attempt to illustrate such with a few examples. While taking public transportation and having the underground railcar break down on the way to class for a midterm; and as a result, being so late as to miss this very important exam is not evil to the person who relied on public transportation to get them to class. Living in a rundown neighborhood and getting mugged on the way home from work only to find that the house has also been robbed is evil to the mugged and robbed. To find that a sibling has died in a plane accident due to engine failures is not evil, but to find that the engine failures were the result of intentional sabotage is evil to the passengers who died and to those they are survived by.

In each of these instances the determinant for evil is not the rise of a difficult circumstance; but, the causal relationship in which the affected experiences the event at hand. Evil is not an action or a reaction but the realization of the gap in reality between base assumptions of existence that are confronted with the physical realm of possibility in a given situation that produces a negative product within the experience. In this definition of evil natural catastrophes, such as burning forests and hurricanes that destroy animal habitat and cities where children play, are not displays of evil. Furthermore, from an ecclesiastical standpoint, if we are created in the image of the divine the forces of nature used as tools for teaching lessons rather than as chaotic unplanned events.

With the actions of people, living agents rather, evils are committed daily, some by intention and others without intention. Looking into the committers of evils there are two kinds; Realized and Unrealized. Realized Committers, know full well of the actions they are taking and the repercussions of said actions. This type of committer has sedated their moral grounds by rationalization to allow them to commit a given action with the knowledge of the extent to which their actions ripple throughout the victims of their actions. The events of September 11^th 2001 one are an example of this. Those who took over the controls of the planes and flew them into the World Trade Centers in New York City were Realized Committers. Through various rationalizations, be they religious conviction, justification for hatred of the United States, or political pressure; the individuals themselves were aware of the extent to which the courses of action they were taking would negatively affect the victims and those survived, even the unrelated, by the victims.

Unrealized Committers are those who commit evils, but do not perceive them to be an evil that breaches their threshold of morality. This threshold of morality differs for every individual. Some view the consumption of meat to be evil that is beyond their threshold and there opt not to eat it. Others view the same consumption to be within their realm of morality because they do not have a realization of the process by which they receive their filet mignon. To the omnivore there is no realization of a gap between physical possibility and their basic assumptions of existence. For this category of people, not all evils are created equal and they have varying degrees of effects on the individual’s basic assumptions of existence and whether or not there is the realization of a gap between them that illicit a negative response.

In looking at the traditional problem of evil with regards to God, the problem starts with God’s power over the universe. Even more so, is creating an understanding of how far this power over the universe extends and to deliberate about where God places himself either existing, and hiding, in our universe or outside of it. Ecclesiastically, God is omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omnipresent, and omniscient. These base assumptions about his existence create confusion with those who aim to understand the personification of the invisible forces in the universe. In identifying oneself with God and aiming to discern his moral community that leads to allowing clearly disastrous events to occur, there is serious conflict about what the parameters of God’s decisions may be. The problem of evil is wholly the problem of the ecclesiastical divine god, and even more so for the pious individual of organized religion. Much of the teachings have a basis in thankfulness for what has been provided by the anthropocentric deity and lessons in sustaining faith at all costs. The difficulty is in being intimately faced with hardship that falls outside the personal realm of possibility; a realization of the gap mentioned earlier, and seeking to assuage dissonance that arises. In doing so, the pious look to their divine and ask why a certain thing was allowed to happen to them.

With misfortune in my life, this is the point at which I have a vehement disagreement with organized religions and their problem of faith. In my following statements I can be mistakenly identified as a nihilllst, but I am not. For the life of me, I cannot conceive of how any multi-celled organism, much less even 6.6 billion of them, on a little blue planet can be of so much concern to something that can create all that is the universe. In the depths of a personally traumatic event, that occurred some years ago at the passing of several close friends, the condolence by someone many years my senior in saying, “God will find a way of healing the wounds of the day.” The only response that came to mind was, “If God feels the need to heal these wounds over creating galaxies and sparking supernovae there are far bigger worries for the human race.” At the time my words were considered rebellious and cynical, and to a degree they were, but in a personal view God bestowed power to me, to the human race, to manage ourselves and to create, for ourselves a world in which to live. I therefore cannot attribute evil to God, nor can I blame him for not permitting certain things to happen to me or to others. Though I am spiritual, I can never be a part of one of the big three religions because I see them as selfish in their anthropocentric view of their anthropomorphized God.

For the theist I believe there is not an absolute path to rectify the discomfort and betrayal of God one feels when they experience evil because a determination of right and wrong is built on the foundation of their morality; which, in turn is built upon their faith. The philosophically minded understand well the phenomenon of the religious mindset and its unwavering position in matters of God’s place and involvement in their lives. For this segment of the population, the vehement religious minded, to see evil as I do, requires the separation of God’s felt necessity to intervene and the understanding of people of all faiths and that we are all human beings first. Visceral cataclysm, much like the events of September 11^th, 2001 could not bring to light such things. Disturbingly, the pious of rational mind abandons logic in such an area of thought. As a society, perhaps we are to live and let live those with moderate stances of God and his will, and with those of extreme views perhaps we are to merely hope and pray.