The Changing Face of Evil in The Stuff That's Not Interesting But Is The Most Interesting Stuff I'll Write

There was an interesting wrinkle to the other night that I didn’t share in that entry because it didn’t really fit with the theme I was going for. I don’t know whether or not you know this, but I sometimes omit information or occurrences simply because they don’t necessarily fit with the thrust of my entry. However, something that happened the other night needs to be mentioned.

I ran into a girl with whom I used to attend college, when I was going to school up here. We didn’t completely recognize each other at first, but when she did, she proceeded to make a series of extremely obnoxious choices. First, she left me with her gay friend, her amazingly stupid, wants-to-be-deep gay friend. There’s nothing that makes me lose my respect for someone quicker than someone who tries to force intellectuality out of themselves, especially when they are totally hammered and not at a place to even read a fortune cookie without being confused by it. The second mistake was that she tried to invite Edgar over. Granted, she didn’t know that Edgar and I had had an intimate relationship, in fact, I down-played it completely (“Someone we went to school with, and I think you went to France with him, Edgar, he’s across the street! I invited him over”). To Edgar’s credit, he knew better than to come swarthily galloping through my space, but this girl was just…

The word I was going to use is evil, however, after the last week, I’ve had a series of conversations and strange interactions that have made me realize that nobody really knows what evil is.

This mainly stems from the fact that I have just come out of three years at a university where everyone is told they are underprivileged when in fact it is still a privilege to go to college. This is a world that facilitates with ease, and creates the illusion of need to bitch about every fucking thing in the world. It is a place where each individual is encouraged to complain about what the world has not done for them. And the argument that is most often presented has something to do with good vs. evil.

It’s a pretty easy thing to understand. It’s found in the most basic of oppositions between groups. Let’s take an easy one. Democrats believe Republicans are evil because they want to defund social entitlements and put business first by relieving the tax burden on corporations. Republicans believe Democrats are evil because they want to turn America into a socialist state where people are penalized through taxes for having a job. Obviously I’m simplifying this, but the key element remains the same. People who live off of social entitlements feel personally attacked by Republicans and paint them as this “Empire of Evil”. Business owners feel personally attacked by Democrats and pain them in the same light. In reality, there’s only one difference, what drives the economy? But people don’t see that.

I don’t believe that anybody gets their foundation of right and wrong in a vacuum. The things that are right and wrong are based solely on the social concepts of society at the time. I got in trouble this week when a friend was categorizing this guy who was not a feminist as evil. I simply told her that’s problematic because it assumes that right and wrong exist outside of comprehension, and if that were true, she would have no way of knowing if she was truly right. She wasn’t happy with me.

Different types of social circumstances are deemed appropriate or inappropriate by society at large, and whether or not they are right or wrong, good or evil, are found in those constructs as well.

This is why I am much more patient for a person who is spiritual or religious. It is clear they have an inherent belief in right and wrong, in the cases of some religious individual like ISIL or the KKK, they take it to an extreme level, but I’m far less afraid of that then I am of someone who has never known any religion whatsoever. That’s right. I’m essentially saying that I believe atheists to be inherently evil. Someone’s idea of right and wrong was borne out of somewhere, and there’s no real way to trace that back.

That being said, I also realize that there’s only real one point of difference between myself and an atheist: the existence of God. Does that make a person evil? According to some religious texts, yes. But that’s the wonderful thing about realizing your definitions of right and wrong come from somewhere else; there’s wiggle room.

I don’t really believe there is evil out there. I believe that each one of us believes we are doing the right thing at that moment. But there will always be someone out there who will tell you that you are evil, that you are stamping on them, that you are threatening them by just existing. They just have a perspective problem, so keep on existing.