For me, there is no one person who hits the idea of what “evil” really is, at least not to the point when I would agree wholeheartedly with everything they had to say on the subject. Instead, my beliefs are more alligned with multiple people, to take a part of each of their beliefs and mash them together into one big ball of evil. That’s not to say, however, that I think that everyone is right about 30% of what they say. More specifically, there was two people in particular whom I thought made interesting points. First is Andrew Delbanco, followed by Ian McEwan.
One of the things I agreed with most with Mr Delbanco is that it is not a word we should use lightly, not something we should add to our people defining vocab on a daily basis. Where would the force be if every other word was “evil”? Only a few event’s in history have been extremely evil. And the Nazi’s are debatable. Sure they killed millions, but they were all brianwashed or scared or evn bribed. In the trials of the Nazi’s many of they clamied to be under a fog, a vast umbrella of influence. Whould you really call someone like a postal worker evil? Especially if you knew that if they rejected their orders, they had a high chance of being killed. Sept 11 is evil. The terrorists involved were much more so, and always conciously striving for the killing of innocents. They were doing it for selfish reasons, and they were even willing to hurt themselves to hurt others. How far can one go to be evil? Killing yourself, spending years in training to kill innocents, all are far more evil than being forced on fear of death.
Lastly, there is Mr. McEwan. His is a small part, but I think it should be noted that I agree with his ideal that “evil” i a human problem, not some “as-old-as-time-itself” demon that lurks in the shadows and sucks people in. “Evil” can be alligned with other mental disorders, not the devil.
