We’re going through a big management shake-up where I work, and it make me think about the nature of evil. Yea, evil. Just what is evil? I guess we know it when we see it or experience it. Unfortunately, we don’t see it as clearly when we’re a part of it.
Is evil really a primary force of the metaphysical universe, or is a side effect of something else? Way back in ancient Persia the Zoroastrians saw the metaphysical realm as being governed by a good god and an evil god who were in constant battle. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Devil was given his due as the prince of evil. But as a fallen angel, the Devil was of a lesser rank than God. The Devil was given a realm called hell, but with moral strength we could avoid that place.
The Christian religious philosophers emphasize evil as a side effect of free will. The Buddhists see the world as inherently evil, or sort-of anyway. Actually, anything you say about Buddhism has to be prefaced with the phrase “sort-of”. It’s hard to pin them down. But they don’t seem very optimistic about finding happiness in this world or through any experiences available in this world; annihilation of desire and world-consciousness seems to be their recommended path to Nirvana.
The secular philosophers also ruminated on the idea of evil. Plato and Aristotle pondered the existence of evil in the human character, Nietzsche went beyond good and evil (where that was, who the heck knows), and others tried to integrate the dark side of humanity into a sophisticated theory of everything.
In the world of folk legend, there are many different evil spirits out there. Some of them do nasty things in a direct if ghostly way, e.g. poltergeists, while others act as corrupting agents in the souls of men and women. That’s the kind of evil spirit that interests me. Not the Linda Blair version, the devil spirit that turns children into yellow-eyed monsters (who needs a devil to turn kids into monsters anyway?). I’m thinking more about social factors that make regular people capable of doing terrible things (domestic violence, child molesting, selling drugs, torture, murder, etc.).
In the New Testament, Jesus certainly seemed to believe that people got infected with evil spirits. He was able to call those spirits out of people, being an exorcist extraordinaire. Just what did those spirits do to people? In the Gospels, they seemed to make people rather sick and unsociable, but not necessarily dangerous. The idea behind New Testament demonology was that people are essentially healthy and good, but they sometimes get infected by something foreign. With proper attention, though, they can be ridded of the foreign influence and brought back to health.
Interestingly, Jesus didn’t see evil spirits within the context of criminology. The people who came to him for help didn’t seem to be liars, cheaters, robbers, murders or rapists. So, we can’t quite use the New Testament as the basis for a theory of criminal evil. But my gut feeling is that evil is some kind of accumulation of bad karma that overtakes a potentially good person and turns him or her into a criminal. Everyone has some evil in them, everyone has done bad things and hurt others. But some people just live in extremely bad circumstances, and wind up being corrupted to the point of being dangerous to society.
Like Jesus, though, I’d like to think that everyone is still potentially good in nature, and no matter how much bad they do, you shouldn’t lose faith that the evil in them can somehow be pulled out (even if we don’t quite always know how). That is why I’m against the death penalty.
As to my own work situation, amidst the people who are sworn to fight crime, there’s a sub-criminal form of evil going on. Because of all the uncertainty and fear caused by a new management situation, many people are going around “stabbing” others in the back through innuendo and blame passing. I’ve already had some of the mud splashed at me; I’m an easy scapegoat target. Well, hopefully the situation will calm down and the mud will stop flying. But if not, I’m tempted to show up there one morning with holy water and perform an exorcism.
Or at least play a Charlie Daniels CD, i.e. “The Devil Went Down To Georgia”.