Causes and Cures for Evil

There is much written on this web site about how to make good decisions, with the expectation that when people become better at decision making, good things will result. There hasn't been much attention given to what to do when things go wrong, and in particular, how should one handle situations where evil occurs? Let's consider that now.

We don't need a complex definition of evil, as we will define it as simply the opposite of good. Most people have a pretty good understanding already of good vs evil, and if not, there is plenty of content on this web site to help clarify it. Evil is not just a neutral state, but it is opposition to what produces mutual wellbeing.

Here are some causes of Evil, categorized into two types:

While these causes often lead to evil actions, there are means available to prevent all of them.

The items on the left are typically within the control of the person, as a matter of habit or choice. They may be triggered by external events, which is particularly true of anger and jealousy. But it is still within the choice of the person whether he lets anger or jealousy be the guiding force of his actions.

The same is true with the other items in this column. The person has it within himself (or herself) to overcome characteristics that lead them to harm others. Consider ignorance, for example. It is a matter of integrity to ensure one has knowledge necessary for any particular duty they are undertaking. Ignorance of a society's rules regarding driving, for example, can result in a driver crashing his vehicle, potentially harming himself and other people.

Closely related to ignorance is carelessness. Unlike malevolence, it causes harm without intent. It happens because the person never bothered to check what are the full consequences of his actions.

Preventing evil from the "character flaw" items in the left column is primarily a matter of upbringing. Each time a baby is born, they know nothing, and are heavily dependant on parents, teachers, and others. For example, every child has within them the ability to speak a language, but this requires that other people speak to them and respond to their speech. Similarly, every baby is born with a natural compassion for other people around them, but this requires that others treat the child kindly, while by contrast with cruel or indifferent treatment this characteristic is likely to be suppressed. When compassion is weak, then selfishness, malevolence, arrogance, and other such motives may become dominant in the person.

There is much written by many authors about what is involved in the development of good character, in these domains of knowledge:

• Child Psychology
• Parenting
• Education
• Emotional Intelligence (EQ)

The second kind of problem leading to evil is summarized by the situational column above. In these cases, people adopt harmful behaviors, not because they have come to want those things, but rather because the situation drives them to it or tricks them into it. They typically think they are choosing between the least of two evils.

To prevent these kinds of problems, it is up to the society in which a person lives. The society must ensure that everyone is in an environment where "frying pan vs fire" decisions never arise. It requires collective responsibility.

Consider the "desperation" cause of evil. Unemployment of adults is a prime source of desperation, as it makes them unable to earn money for food, health care, or other needs. Stealing a loaf of bread for their children, as in the classic story of Jean Val Jean, is a typical kind of "choice between two evils" that people can be pushed into. To prevent this requires an effective economic system with safeguards to handle "bust periods" and an education system that enables every child to succeed in that system.

Another situation of evil is war. It is typical that people on both sides want the war to end, as it brings much suffering. But it is also typical that neither side is willing to stop. Each believes their side is in the right. That cannot be true. It is said that "the first casualty in war is truth," and that is very accurate, because it is typical for leaders on one or both sides to use disinformation. If you control what people believe, you can control the people. To prevent the evil of war, it is necessary for societies worldwide to set up reliable sources of information, and to hold leaders accountable to their citizens; the failure to do so is very risky.

Again, there is much knowledge available about how to organize societies so that people can be successful and avoid situations where they feel pressured to do evil things. The domains of knowledge required cover most of the social sciences, including:

• Political Science
• Economics
• Justice
• Leadership
• Social Work
• Business and Government administration

Truly there are situations of evil that arise in the world, and often the worst cases are brought to our attention by news headlines. One wonders how such things can happen. Is it that the offending people do not understand the difference between good and evil? Is it that they are just naturally evil?

Those are simplistic explanations and most often they are incorrect. Evil more often occurs because it's complex to create societies in which situational problems never occur and every child is raised with care. Nevertheless, in much of the world there are nations that have prosperity, low crime rates, and good relations with neighboring nations. Further, they are better at doing so than most nations of the ancient past. This doesn't make the headlines, but it does demonstrate one thing: the knowledge exists of how to do it.

We also see that there are wide domains of knowledge that are involved. There is no one person that is an expert in all of them. That is why we must collaborate to succeed. And fortunately, this knowledge is widely available to those who seek it out. There is no organization that has a monopoly over it.

As for this web site, it is meant to be a foundation for rational decision making, but by no means is it a comprehensive solution to every problem. It focuses primarily on prevention of common problems that people encounter in their personal lives. But sometimes prevention doesn't happen soon enough...

Sometimes things go wrong. Some people steal. Some people commit a crime and hold others as hostage. Some parents may fail to feed or take adequate care of their children. Some people cheat on their spouse and end with a divorce. Some people are nasty or rude. One could make an endless list. What is to be the response when the offence is done already?

Among wild animals, the response is often a physical reprisal. Imagine two tigers, where one has encroached the other's territory. The second may growl, as that is the limit of its communication ability. If that wasn't understood, he may make a swipe with his paw at the first tiger. Now the first might understand, and exit his neighbor's territory. Or he might consider that swipe to be totally unjustified and make a swipe of his own. This latter can lead to escalation, and soon they are fighting viciously.

Humans can do a lot better than that, by communicating and making agreements (such as registered land ownership as a cure to fighting over territory, for example). But sometimes that is not enough. Some people break rules, form of acts of aggression against someone, or cheat in fulfilling their obligations.

A war goes beyond a police action. As an example of a police action, consider a criminal who has taken a dozen people hostage. The police will attempt to free the hostages while apprehending the criminal, and maybe they make a concession to the criminal so that he agrees to free the hostages, such as to reduce the criminal charges. Their goal is the wellbeing of the citizens, and they try to optimize that result.

But this is not what happens in a war. In a war, offences arise from one group to the other, with no police effectively restraining the offenders. The offenders may sit launching shells from a populated area, onto their victims in the other group. Their war response is to drop a bomb on the area, killing guilty and innocent alike. War creates injustice, and soon neither side is willing to have peace. They all believe that justice demands that they continue.

Justice does not make demands. Justice is a tool, that would normally work in favor of mutual wellbeing, by preventing one person from harming someone else with impunity. But sometimes the situation is one in which the tool won't work the way we suppose it should.

We can think of each group in a war as a medical patient; the patient is bleeding and suffering. The solution does not require more bleeding! Instead, the first step of a solution is to stop the bleeding. The two sides must stop fighting.

It may not be instinctive to them, to leave so many injustices unpunished, but continuing the fight just adds more injustices. At this stage there are so many injustices, that it is quite impossible to sort through them all to try to make restitution one by one. And with such suffering on each side, typically neither has the capacity to make restitution. There is no amount of work and money that can compensate people for the maiming, deaths, and loss of homes and livelihood they have suffered among them.

When people are doing evil, they do need to be stopped, but the means of achieving this are not so simple as a typical super-hero movie would have you believe, where the hero vanquishes the villain and all is well afterward. The typical story fails to recognize how the villain got that way in the first place, and what other villains are being created. Prevention has got to be part of the strategy, or else it gets beyond the capacity of heroes to stop all of them.

The causes of evil are complex, but at the same time knowledge exists of how to cure it. It involves knowledge in the various domains described above, and there are knowledgeable people in each domain. Moreover, there are ways that people collectively can contribute to the result, with each person applying their particular skill to serve as a vote for a better world. As some examples: