On Evil

When the word ‘evil’ is heard, many images are conjured up in our minds. They range from the rather ridiculous super-villains from the 60’s batman series to the menacing characters from video games like Doom. But what does it mean to be truly evil? Buy a cape? Hire henchmen? Put the nearest man wearing tights in a death-trap? I have found the answer to be much simpler and less expensive. Evil means different things to different people. I have found that the most common elements of evil include; insatiable greed, theft, a need to inflict pain to get something from a subject or just inflicting it for the pleasure of inflicting it. A common, maybe the least disputed element of evil is killing others. Then why are people who do none of these considered evil by others? Take the common stereotype of witches. Witches are depicted as green skinned old women who have a taste for children’s flesh. They fly on broomsticks while cursing people and turning them into newts, toads and other small animals. It’s ok right? Witches don’t exist do they? Witches do exist, but they are no way near as how they are depicted in movies and story books. In fact it is considered unwitch like to cause people misery. Yes there is magic, but like any human operated tool there is as much ability to cause evil as there is to cause good.

One of the problems with evil is sometimes it claims to be good. All it takes is an organisation to form and people will flock to it thinking they have everyone’s best interests at heart. For example, in the 1930s such an organisation became known. It gained a following, it had popularity, and it claimed to be working for the good of its people. I speak of the Nazi party of Germany. All they needed was an “evil” enemy. This role was given to the Jewish people. The use of propaganda cemented these ideas the party wanted the people to believe. Making themselves look good so they can be excused with genocide on an “evil” race.

The Nazis were not the first to attempt genocide. When Christianity was introduced to England, many were subjected to the witch trials. These were to determine weaver or not people were witches. The Christians told people that witches were the enemies of their good, made deals with demons or the devil himself and must be exterminated. The trials were often in a fashion that would kill the subject despite innocence. In fact one of the tests was to throw the subject into a lake, if they float they must have demonic help, if they sank and drowned, they were innocent.

Evil indeed comes in many forms, but the worst are the forms that pretend to be a force of good.