How to Divide People with the Word ‘Evil’
As I begin to understand people more and more, and this is through my practice of talking in conversations with my local community, with all types of people and backgrounds... I realize that many people are quick to judgement and use stereotypes to depict their ‘view’ of a person with immediacy.
This immediacy is a machine value that is being instilled in our human existence through technological advances, but does not work in reality (but works very well within the realm of machines and data). This new value of immediate feedback, causes humans to divide each other (and other sentient beings) into categories that have clear boundaries which certainly do not exist, but within our own minds trying to control the information we are receiving about those people.
There are many reasons we as a modern human society do this, we are taught to think this way through tradition and education, we are influenced by how our peers act around us and the constant bombardment of technology integrated in our lives has an affect too. But doing this: creating preconceptions before seeing how a person acts in different situations; divides us further because instead of listening and observing reality, we are judging based on our own ‘made up’/instilled beliefs. We set aside reality and distrust our senses to simplify the person in front of us. Why we do this is for another post...
Humans are complex beings and it is very rare to be one, so to try and describe a human with one word or trait does a disservice to making a connection with that human or yourself.
Thus it is worthless and dangerous to start using words like evil to describe a human, as a human maybe evil in one instance, and learned their way was causing suffering and they become humble later in life. A group of humans may do some terrible evil in time of war, but then care and treat their countryman with amazing peace, honesty and gratitude. And imagine being called evil yourself, it instantly becomes a projection of what you think of that individual calling you evil. You now portray that individual as ignorant, hasty or even evil themselves. It is a trait that can come and go with human nature and be taught to be avoided (as if practiced, it will cause much suffering to yourself and those around you).
In the end calling a living being evil is worthless- it divides us and simplifies the human condition.
But we can still use the word to define various ACTS, and use it a s a tool to teach those who may have the capacity to do evil, to avoid evil acts for it is as much as a disservice to yourself, as it is to the ones you act the evil upon.
