Good and Evil: An Observation without Answers

This is the first thought in six months that has driven me to blog. Yet I hesitated. Because I had (and have) no answers, no solutions, no actions to advocate. Still, the thought wouldn’t leave my mind.

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Silver and I were talking a few evenings ago about good and evil — as who isn’t these days? He raised a few of the metaphors and stories that humans have used to try to explain great evil over the centuries. Zoroastrians had Ahriman. Gnostics blamed archons. Christians point to Satan. Followers of David Icke pin global ills on a race of lizard-brained aliens who have hijacked the lineages of leaders. And on.

“Stories,” Silver said, “because stories are how humans explain the world.”

“Conclusion-jumping,” I scoffed, “that gets in the way of finding real answers.”

The one thing we could agree upon is that evil is a terrifyingly real force that can’t be explained away, not by stories, not by learned discourses upon human nature or history. Evil is ascendant across the world today. Worse, it increasingly speaks with one unified, malevolent voice.

The evil that’s looming creates nothing, invents nothing, improves nothing, honors nothing. It denies reality and substitutes delusions. It aims only to control, plunder, and ruin. If the elites of the world don’t annihilate us all, they will (if their will prevails) reduce humanity to poverty, plague, despair, and serfdom. By design.

Ve vill eat ze bugs — if we are among the few allowed to survive. We will own nothing — but most assuredly we will not be happy.

By design.

Can you think of anything more evil?

It’s a matter of scale

I expressed a thought to Silver that I’ve had in the back of my head for decades, but have never known what to do with.

He said he’s never heard it before. Here it is:

Evil operates on a large scale, while good operates small.

It’s true.

Now, this is not to say that there’s no such thing as small-scale evil. There’s lots of evil to go around and we’ve all encountered it, even amid our mundane lives.

But real, mass-destructive evil is typically grand-scale and long-term. Because the sociopaths who drive it by definition a) don’t care about their fellow human beings at all and b) crave (and believe they’re entitled to) power over others. So they stop at nothing and gravitate to others who stop at nothing and inhabit enduring power structures that stop at nothing.

Good people do care and don’t seek power over others. They make our daily lives livable but are ill-equipped for world events.

Here’s why I first started thinking about the relative scales of good and evil. When we look at the capital-E Evil operating in the world … where are the equal and opposite actions of capital-G Good?

Where are the great good individuals whose deeds balance those of Klaus Schwab or George Soros (or Hitler or Pol Pot or Vlad the Impaler …) on a global scale? Where is the powerful force for peace acting effectively against the drive toward nuclear annihilation? Where is the brilliantly, benevolently governed society that shines as a counterexample to all the world’s misrule? Where is the dramatic, inspiring act of benevolence that’s on the scale of 9/11 or October 7, 2023?

Don’t tell me the stories of mythic battles between good and evil. I’m talking here and now. Don’t tout the supernatural. Show me the actual actors on the global stage, human mortals who commit great, dramatic, powerful good against the constant barrage of equivalent evil. Where are they?

They aren’t there. They just aren’t. Good does not operate on a grand scale.

Good power

Which is not to say that there is no good, or even insufficient good in the world. On the contrary; the forces of good are vastly larger than anything the most dastardly dictator can amass. And good is far more present in daily life than evil. Even in these threatening times.

The first line of good (it should go without saying) is ordinary human decency — neighborliness, familial care, live-and-let-live, honest dealings, the golden rule. And on. Good is multifaceted and everywhere. But operates in mostly mundane ways and doesn’t sweep the globe.

This works fine when evil isn’t on the march. Unfortunately, when evil gets on a real world-wrecking roll, as it has now, this line of good has zero impact upon stopping it. It even has a negative effect because it leads us to the delusion that all is well.

So the second line of good is with those who observe, question, and act. The journalists who tell the truth. The doctors who expose the corruption of the medical system and risk their careers by practicing medicine differently. The educators who give students avenues out (not only out of crumbling institutions but out of the lies that support the old). The dissidents who exercise free speech and rights of assembly at their increasing peril. The philosophers, professors, researchers, and psychologists who doggedly counter deadly nonsense even as they are censored, reviled, and dismissed as wingnuts and haters. The whistleblowers. Always the courageous whistleblowers. The rare — very rare! — politicians who perform acts of freedom. The individuals who eventually give their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor for principled liberty.

In time — if time is granted us — these good individuals and the greater numbers who summon up the courage to follow their lead can bring down evil. We’re already seeing the edges of the looming darkness beginning to crumble.

In time, all giant human-created monstrosities collapse, anyhow — and resistance by the good helps give them a push. After the collapse, everyday virtues like honest dealings, neighborliness, and determination to do better help raise humanity out of ruin.

But right now it’s “the battle of the ants against the elephant,” as Silver put it. It’s as unbalanced and unfair as any fight ever fought.

And time is short.