Once in a while I contribute to group discussions – one of my favourites is the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology  or ESSST.  There are always interesting people passing through and some are wild and entertaining, others serious and intellectual, still more who have steadfast viewpoints and once in a while there are posts that just exude considered thought and truth.  Today I am including in my blog, with permission from the author, some insights on the nature of evil.  The author is a Christian philosopher called David Huisjen, who is currently running around South Africa.

I am not usually enamoured of so called philosophers.  Generally they like to befuddle you with their learning, intellectual prowess and large words.  David is straight talking and sensible – I hope he understands I mean this as the highest of compliments.

Why am I posting this particular subject today?  No specific reason other than it is a topic we would do well to look at and become more aware of in our daily lives.  How it is part of us and how it is part of those we come across.  In understanding there is always the possibility of finding that hidden spark of the Divine buried deep within and hence the possibility of transformation.  I say this from personal perspectives and for the sake of globally devastating issues.  The two are not mutually exclusive.

Below is David’s take on aspects of the nature of evil.  For the full complement please go visit his blog.

Envy – Too many people get hung up on competition with others to the point where they would rather destroy everything the other has than accept the roll of being the one with fewer toys. This sort of destructive competitive impulse has been the cause of ridiculous amounts of needless violence, pointless consumerism (and the environmental destruction it causes) and useless personal anxiety. If people could get beyond this impulse the world would be an infinitely safer and more pleasant place for all of us. And all it would really require is for them to grow up a bit.

Bigotry – The ignorant assumption that “our group” is naturally better than “their group” might be useful for inspiring some sad souls whose self-image is in the crapper otherwise, but that doesn’t by any means excuse it. This might be harder to outgrow than envy, but it can be seriously improved on with education. When people actually come to understand something about where the “others” are coming from in terms of their own situations and motivations, they actually tend to discover that they aren’t nearly as strange, disgusting or inferior as they had previously assumed, or been conditioned to believe.

Bullying – In this form of evil –– yet another sort of defensive maneuver used in personal competition –– juvenile-minded individuals start looking for someone they can prove that they are stronger and “cooler” than, and they then proceed to find ways of torturing that vulnerable individual in order to beef up their own status. As a teacher I’ve told students that I consider bullies to be a life form somewhere between earthworms and cockroaches on an evolutionary scale, but that wasn’t a very philosophical way of putting it. The main point is that bullying causes all sorts of deep personal damage to both the bullied and the bullies that in turn lead to lifetime patterns of destructive and anti-social behavior in both. Teach kids not to bully each other –– teach adults not to continue bullying each other –– and a great number of the stupid and immoral things that businessmen and politicians do beat up on others could be eliminated within a generation.

Scape-goating – Rather than following the ritual given in the Jewish scriptures that this practice takes its name from, these days we have extensive numbers of evil people who look for vulnerable individuals to take the blame for all of their problems and the results of their bad decisions. The classic example that everyone seems aware of is what Hitler did with the Jews: claiming that all of the Germans’ problems were then Jews’ fault, thus they deserved to die. Usually, however, this evil practice is far more individualized and subtly personally vindictive. It can be a teacher, a classmate, a co-worker, a boss, a spouse, a neighbor… that the escapist accuses of having caused all of the problems in their life, or that of their child. And far too often these accusers manage to convince themselves that the charges they press are perfectly valid. Not only can this do the same sorts of damage on both sides as bullying, but it also prevents people from ever facing up to their personal responsibility for the state of their own lives. Fix that, and a whole range of other problems automatically get dealt with in the same stroke.

Sexual abuse – This is one of the more traditionally recognized forms of evil, where some aggressor (male or female) chooses some involuntary participant (male or female) to satisfy his or her sexual desires. Even if this is not a physically torturous experience, which it most frequently is, the emotional damage this causes to the victim in terms of a loss of self-confidence and a personal sense of value are immeasurable. The way in which this can prevent the victim from experiencing sex as a form of deep personal bonding thereafter is a tragedy of the highest level. The way in which victims of such abuse proceed to self-medicate and take out their sense of bitterness and resentment on others can lead to social dysfunctions of epic proportion. What counts as criminally prosecutable rape is not the issue here. The question is, are both parties in the sex act doing it as partners, in every sense of the word? If not, regardless of the legalities involved, there’s something evil going on. Another thing that can turn sexuality into a form of abuse is when it is based on some form of deception, such as adulterous cheating. I believe that complete physical intimacy should always have, at the bare minimum, a fully voluntary and mutually respectful quality to it. Ideally it should also have a dimension of emotional and/or spiritual connection to it. Lacking the latter can make it cheap; lacking the former can make it out and out evil.

Dehumanization – Perhaps in the broader sense of the word, dehumanization is the common thread in all of the evils mentioned above, but in the deepest sense of the word this is the essence of what combatants are trained to do to each other: don’t think of the enemy as a fellow human being; think of him as a target to take out as part of the game, or an animal to be hunted down, or a strategic objective to be accomplished. Give them slang names that keep you from thinking of them as real people. That makes it a lot easier, if necessary, to torture, rape, kill and mutilate these individuals in order to gain an advantage in battle. While I’m not a strict pacifist, I can’t believe that any objective which requires that form of psychological conditioning in order to be achieved can be used as a justification for such means. Whenever we have to stop thinking of other people as inherently valuable human beings in order to do what we intend to do, we have stepped over the line into complete evil, regardless of how we try to justify it.

So what do all of these things have in common? Besides a laundry list of sins that I particularly hate, is there some basic quality to all of these things that makes them really evil? And to what extent are all of these tendencies inborn rather than the result of corruptions we are educated into? My answers –– and you are free to disagree with me without my consequently considering you to be evil –– are that in our postmodern world these are the things which most deserve to be hated, because they lead to the greatest damage to and destruction of the human spirit. They isolate people from God (or a sense of spirituality, if you prefer) and from each other, and they prevent people from truly loving themselves in a healthy way. These things potentially happen for all sorts of reasons, but more than anything else because of a tendency for cut-throat competition to become the meaning of life for some people. If “winning” is ultimately more important to you than any other form of human satisfaction, that makes you a potentially very evil person.