This I Believe: Evil is a Human Myth

I truly believe there is no truth behind the thing we call evil. Just like we humans have named the color blue and decided where exactly the invisible lines between groups of people lie, the concept of something being purely evil is purely mythological. Many people have agreed that Adolf Hitler was evil, mostly because of how readily the simple world “evil” communicates the levels of atrocities he orchestrated. This fact is undeniable, but I cannot say that Hitler was evil, because I can’t say anyone else has ever been evil, except the devil himself.

No single individual has the capacity to be evil, only deeply and terribly corrupt, unstable, or misunderstood. Notice that I specify no single individual. While the word cannot be used to describe the motivations or actions of a human being--simply because of our separate conscience--I believe that some huge collections of people, all sharing a misinformed or ill meaning purpose, could be considered as the only true evil in this world. Take Disney as an example, or any major oil company. Or even some governments. While no single employee comes to work every day with the worsening of the world in mind, they do have their own personal goals, which are meant to benefit themselves the most, and so their primary objective cannot be to cause harm to others or the word at large.

Evil itself is defined not as something that one has or learns, but simply the absence of good. Just like darkness is not a form of light but the absence of it, so evil is not a thing which can be easily pinned down, only alluded to and metaphorized about. Darkness is still a very real thing, one that we can see and conceptualize and are affected by. Humans surely all have their own darkness, but it is not the same as evil. We have parts of us which we wish we didn’t, and feelings we try our hardest to keep below the surface. On occasion, those feelings escape, but their expression is not evil. It is natural, and while harm may come to others from the expulsion of one’s emotions, the expulsor will almost always benefit in some way, at least psychologically.

Where else has the concept of evil appeared, other than in various mythologies throughout human history? Although they don’t exist, a culture without a mythology or stories to tell themselves might not have an idea for the absence of good. Do apes consider the machines which destroy their homes evil? They most likely don’t understand the motivation behind those machines, which is their creator’s endless hunger for resources. So if primates or any other creature cannot see deforestation from the viewpoint of the lumber industry, then what do they see happening? Not an evil deed. They see something that threatens them, but they have no thought that this thing has no motives except to threaten them. They don’t see these monstrosities as evil.

It may sound absurdly optimistic, but I believe that every person and every action has some good in them or it, whether that good is overshadowed by the bad dictates how others perceive the person, but no one is ever truly and wholly evil. That is simply a byproduct of our human mythos.