Good vs Evil

The battle of good against evil is thousands of years old. But what exactly is evil?

A couple of years ago, I was reading this book by David Farland.  Off the top of my head I do not remember which, but it was one of the books in his Runelords series.  And the question of good vs evil came up. One of the characters had a definition for evil. I am describing what I remember of what he said.

He said imagine a circle that includes all of your possessions and ideals and  thoughts. Now imagine that circle being inside a larger circle which is all of the possessions and ideals and thoughts of your family. And now imagine one more circle outside of that one which includes all of the possessions, ideals and thoughts of your community.

As you go through your life each of those circles should continue to grow. Things that contribute to that growth are good. Things that take away from or injure the occupants of those circles are evil.
To be honest, I really like the imagery involved in that. It's very simple, cut and dried. A rival tribe comes into your community rapes, loots, plunders and murders your people. They are evil right? Against blatantly obvious examples, it allows you to feel justified in believing this system.It sounds good on the surface. But it's really too simplistic.

What about when it is your community that takes from you, decreasing your circle but increasing it's own?  Taxes for example. Taxes serve the community, allowing it to serve you.  Or community taking from your family. Let's say your son is drafted into the military and dies serving his country. He was forced to go. Your family circle was decimated by the loss and suppose your community(country) lost the fight he was in. Your community circle didn't gain either. And finally what about bank robbers. They make the community circle smaller by stealing from the community. And to a lesser extent it also affects the other two circles as well. So it's definitely an evil act right? But, how about if the bank robbers randomly dropped sacks of cash at people's front doors in your neighborhood? And what if your front door was one of those doors? They would be increasing your family and personal circles. So then it would be a good act right? And what about the robbers themselves? They are increasing their own personal and family circles aren't they? Wouldn't this just reinforce the action being good?

While it seems that the same action can have both positive and bad consequences on different people or groups of people this does not seem like a sound definition for good and evil. It does start to point us in the right direction though.

Religion would have us believe that it is any act or thought that is counter to what a god or group of gods says you should do. At first I would say this is a load of garbage due to what most people think of when they say the word god. I do not believe a supernatural power should be defining good and evil. I feel that each person should be making that decision for themselves.  Now wait a minute. That actually resonates with some of my previous posts. If you view yourself as a god, the author of your life, the ruler of what does and does not happen to you, then the definition of evil becomes any act or thought that you perform that is counter to what you think you should. It begins to come down to what you think is right and wrong for you to do. Anything outside of your moral code is evil.

Does that make anyone who disagrees with your way of thinking evil? No, not exactly. You get to define what is right and wrong for you. You do not get to define that for others, except your children. Good is what is right for you to do. Evil is what is wrong for you to do.  It boils down to good and evil simply being value judgements. Each person has their own value judgement system. So each person has their own code for what is good and evil.

More on this later. I promise just not sure when. I have a lot more to say but am not sure what direction I want to go in. See you tomorrow.