Evil

[rivenscythe.livejournal.com]

Following on from the discussion on demons/evil entities in practice and theory: Do you believe that beings and entities, including humans, can be born innately and irrevocably evil?

Blessings,
Riven

Comments

[greensh.livejournal.com]

I believe that people can be born innately and irrevocably broken and incompatible with others. This can be due to brain chemistry, genes, past-life possession, present-life possession, madness, etc. I don't believe this is the same as being born innately and irrevocably evil.

Now... I do believe that people can develop and live lives that are Evil (with a capital E). Is this irrevocable? I suspect not. It depends on your definition of "irrevocable". To fully explain my position on that would be an article unto itself.

[starlightwind.livejournal.com]

I believe evil is a human illusion, like safety. A quick explanation for things they don't understand. I feel that though we certainly don't agree with, like, or we may even be disgusted and pained by the acts of others, every action involves a long chain of reason that stems somewhere. I see sickness, ignorance, and misunderstanding. "Evil" makes it all too easy. Black and White. This or that. But I see everything as a multitude of varying shades of all things. If something is considered "evil" it just makes me want to dig deep into the mystery of the label and find out what's underneath.

That's not an excuse for others to be cruel and harmful with malicious intentions, but something somewhere told them it was okay to do that, and that's what I want to find.

Therefore, I really don't believe in evil entities at all, or evil in general, so I can't say I believe that anyone can be born inherently evil. Same with inherently good. We are born as unity and begin to separate as we begin to understand the world around us. Our world starts to separate into black and white, good and bad, and it's only later that the gray begins to appear and shatter what we've been taught/learned. I think that there are beings that are born more sensitive to those around them than others, and so are more apt to be empathetic than others, and so are less likely to "hurt" someone else. But beyond that, I can't see anyone born being inherently anything.

[joansies.livejournal.com]

I don't believe humans can be born inherently evil. Life events and their own personal choices are what can make a person evil, but they aren't born that way.

[valkyriur.livejournal.com]

Have to agree with Joansies here.

[moonvoice.livejournal.com]

Evil is a difficult word to define, because what we define as an 'evil act' may not be considered so to others. Some may say that the suicide bombers who destroyed the twin towers were doing something 'evil,' but those on the other side of the fence will acknowledge that a beautiful sacrifice was made, and that the only evil was that the twin towers existed in the first place. See where I'm coming from?

'Evil' as a definition is pretty useless, and while there are certain things most people will agree on as being evil: child rape, serial murder, even some of these are up to subjective argument, and evil itself becomes an arbitrary term to me.

I do however believe that there are beings and entities, and maybe people, who are inherently destructive. They do not possess compassion, or love, for anyone or thing in particular, and may even only be able to source their pleasure through the pain, discomfort and death of others. I believe there are demons out there like this, who have no need to be nice to humans and go out of their way to be the opposite, not because they're teaching us a 'higher lesson', but because that's just what they are. Just as I believe there are beings out there that are only compassion, love and wanting to help, comfort and aid others. I believe both of these are not as common as entities that possess a little of both qualities.

I suppose you might call a demon who possesses those destructive or hurtful qualities 'evil', but for me it doesn't work. I don't have a word for what they are, or the fear they put into me. The same fear I imagine I would feel when confronted by a serial killer who would not free or help me no matter *what* I did. In other words, it's your own resources against someone who would very dearly like to see you dead. I don't tend to call it evil. For me it's like a selfish malice, where no activity is designed to help anyone else, unless for some reason it's to further their selfish malice.

And yes, I believe there are people out there like this too. Some of them are the worst of 'sociopaths', and some of them aren't even clinically insane at all.