Good and evil do not exist

I like the Lord of the Rings as much as the next guy. Good guys versus bad guys. The heroes versus the evil forces which are bent on, well, just being evil. It makes for excellent entertainment. But I feel that these stories are dangerous because they instill in us a concept of actual good and evil in reality. As a result we are more inclined to see people who act in harmful ways as evil people. That is why they act that way, because they are evil. And evil is in combated with good. So we the good must combat the evil. This mentality leads to actions which fail to address the actual cause of this “evil” behavior. It does little or nothing to prevent the “evil” behavior from continuing to occur, and in many cases actually increases the likelihood of more “evil” behavior from other “evil” people. Good and evil are fabrications of the human mind. They do not exist in reality. And continuing to believe that they exist in reality is holding back the human race.

Imagine you crunch through a complicated calculus problem and get the incorrect answer. People can refer to this answer as “bad” or “wrong” but for the purposes of specificity let’s call it what it is: incorrect. Certainly nobody would say that your answer was “evil,” but “bad” and “wrong” are words which carry the same connotations. Criminals are widely considered to be bad people and the crimes they commit are wrong, not incorrect. But your calculus answer is just incorrect. So you look back through your work and try to discover where you made an error. If you find an error then you correct it and run the numbers again. If your answer is now correct then you’re done. If it is still incorrect then you look for other errors. This scenario applies directly to human behavior, with “correct” meaning “not hindering (and perhaps even facilitating) the peaceful coexistence of human beings,” and “incorrect” meaning “inhibiting or directly countering the peaceful coexistence of human beings.” Errors are “genetic/environmental influences which have contributed to the incorrect behavior.”

There are psychological conditions which are not experienced by the majority of human beings but are nonetheless correct. Homosexuality is one. Affinity for penguin figurines is another. Even enjoying Barry Manilow is correct (although this one is a gray area if you ask me). There sadly are people who instist that homosexuality is incorrect but if you are reading this then I can safely assume that you are not one of them (and they are not the target audience of this writing anyway). There are people who own exotic pets and people who bike to work. The list of rare but correct psychological conditions is essentially endless

There are also psychological conditions which are not experienced by the majority of human beings and are decidedly incorrect. Violence is incorrect, from spousal/child abuse to outright murder. Bigotry and prejudice are incorrect. Theft is incorrect. Discrimination is incorrect. Even disrespectful behavior, harmless as it can be, is incorrect. You get the idea.

When society is presented with incorrect behavior it is in its best interest to approach that behavior in the same way you approached your math problem. What errors have led to the incorrect answer? What steps can be taken to fix the error (or more often errors) so that the correct answer can be reached? No matter what form the incorrect behavior takes and no matter how severe the consequences of that behavior, the important thing is finding the errors which led to that behavior and correcting those errors. It’s not evil, it’s incorrect. And it needs to be corrected, not condemned.

When incorrect behavior presents itself in more extreme forms, the desire to condemn it as evil becomes much more powerful. I will use the obvious example that you knew was coming: the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. That was evil, right? So much time and effort invested into the wanton destruction of property and the killing of innocent people. Some of the culprits knowingly sacrificed their own lives to do inflicting this unimaginable pain and suffering. That was some seriously incorrect behavior which absolutely must be corrected. But it was not evil and should not be condemned as evil. If we condemn it as evil then we do nothing to prevent it from happening again.

The errors which lead to radical terrorists are an example largely of environmental influences. These are people who are brainwashed by radical extremists into believing that they are doing the good work of their noble god. They don’t think they’re going to heaven, they KNOW they are. They have absolute certainty that what they are doing is good. And our reactions reinforce that certainty. As we sweep through the Middle East to wipe out the evil, more and more of them become convinced that they are good and we are evil and that they must wipe us out. There are no positive potential outcomes to that scenario.

If pain and suffering could be quantified, the amount inflicted by terrorists worldwide would be off the charts, off the table, out the front door, and probably somewhere in higher orbit. But they were acting with noble intentions. They are brainwashed. They are deluded and are taken advantage of. But they are not evil. If we call them evil then we are not acknowledging the errors that have led to their behavior. And since 9/11 there have been countless thousands more just like them created by those same errors. Our main effort to counter terrorism has been to drop over 500,000 tons of ordnance throughout the Middle East. That is the sort of violence that created the error in the first place yet it continues to be our strategy to defeat it. In our feverish rush to counter the incorrect behavior known as terrorism we have not only neglected the true origin of that incorrect behavior, we have also fed into it like throwing gasoline on a fire.

I do not condone incorrect behavior. I am steadfastly against terrorism, abuse, molestation, theft, bigotry, prejudice, racism, and all things which work directly against the peaceful coexistence of human beings. Correcting this behavior is imperative to us as a species. I am not being “soft on terror” by proposing that the men aboard those planes were not evil. I am not being soft on violence by proposing that there are factors, both genetic and environmental which are directly leading to child and spousal abuse.

Right now there is genocide taking place on this planet. There is also exploitation, degradation, oppression, and discrimination (and many other tions) happening in abundance. These things have got to go if we are going make it as a species. But as a species we will never get rid of them if we keep thinking of them as evil things being done by evil people. Condemning incorrect behavior as evil does NOTHING to prevent it from continuing to flourish and spread. In fact it inhibits the prevention of the behavior by letting us off the hook. “We caught the evil people and we punished them! No more evil! Oops, here are a few more…and some more…” The errors will keep happening and the incorrect behavior will continue to be the result.

Imagine the future, at a time when human beings are never taught about good and evil. They are taught that correct behavior is correct. Not virtuous or good, just correct. They are also taught that incorrect behavior is incorrect. Not bad, not evil, not shameful, vile or disgusting. Just incorrect. Now imagine that within this future society a young man discovers that he is attracted to young boys. He realizes that he suffers from pedophilia. He feels no shame in this, no self-hatred, no guilt. It is not good or evil, it simply is. He also knows that pedophiliac behavior is incorrect and the most important thing to him is correct behavior because he wants to facilitate the peaceful coexistence of human beings. He seeks help from a medical institution. He tells them “I am having compulsive desires to act in a manner that I know to be incorrect. Can you help me?” They do not look down on him, shame him, or condemn him in any way, shape or form. They don’t call him evil and they don’t treat him like he’s evil. They treat him like a person with an error (in this case a genetic one) that requires correction. And through medication, counseling, and treatment, he is able to live his life to its fullest potential without harming a single child. To me this seems a preferable alternative to the current system in which a pedophile can be so shamed by his own behavior that he is incapable of confronting it, and instead attempts to live a normal life with the occasional “indiscretion” that he can’t even fully accept (see the movie Happiness for an example of this). Since the concepts of good and evil do not exist, the man feels nothing regarding his condition except that it is incorrect and needs to be corrected. Just like an error in a math problem.

The pain and suffering is what humanity wants to eliminate. And if these things are ever to be eliminated then humanity needs to do away with the concepts of good and evil and start addressing these problems objectively. We need to acknowledge them and accept them as serious errors in our equation that we really need to revise if we are ever going to get the correct answer. The correct answer is a world where ALL human beings can live their lives, enjoy their experiences, and pursue happiness and fulfillment to the best of their ability. And everyone has the right to that.