one of the perennial questions of both philosophy
and of existence, is this question of evil.
what is evil? and how did it enter the world?
for the Religious man, evil entered the world through the
insubordination of Adam and Eve…….
but think about evil… really think about it…
we have evil as being the inevitable actions of being…
suffering is evil and must be eliminated but you can’t eliminate “evil”
of this fashion because this type of “evil” is simply part of existence…
of growing old, of illness, of death and the “evil” of forces like
hurricanes and fire and earthquakes… we cannot do anything about
these matters… evil, true evil requires a choice……. when people
are starving because of human choices, that is truly evil…
think of the things we consider evil that are manmade…
they are evil because of the choices made and choices made
by ego…… it is by an egotistical choices that create evil in the world…
war is caused by the ego wanting something…
ego has driven the immense income inequality issues
that has marred human existence since ancient times…
it was a perennial issue in both Greek and Roman history…
much of history has been driven by the ego needs of rulers wanting
more, and more and more…the ruler might have the biggest
country in Europe but it was never enough… the ego which drives
the need for great wealth and power and land… is also the driver
of evil… for to choice to pursue wealth means that someone else
is deprived of wealth…it is a zero sum game… there are only so many
pieces of the board to take… and if the pieces are in the hands of the few,
then the many go without…
so evil is the choice to enriched oneself at the expense of others…
this enrichment can take many forms…food, water, shelter,
money, titles… in other words, there is only so much of the bottom
level of the needs, of the physical needs that all animals and humans need…
if some hold most or all of the access to the basic needs of human beings
then many go without… this need to dominate the basis needs of people
is ego…
ego is taking as much as possible for oneself as to leave others without…
it is choice plus ego that creates evil……
if you want less evil in the world, then you must remove ego and you
must remove the need to acquire more then you need to exists…
human needs are actually quite simple…we come from animals…
a place to keep dry and warm, food enough to eat, medical needs,
education, clean water, our basic human needs are really quite simple…
the houses we build and the couches and TV’S and cars we acquire are simply
ego… because we don’t need the big houses or seven TV’S or multiple
couches or the multiple vacation homes…
all those extra things are simple ego at work… and
every extra ego driven object we get takes away from another…
Now at this point, some clueless human will shout,
“Kropotkin, if you feel so guilty, then donate everything you own to
charity”…
as if one person can change the cycle of ego that dominates human beings…
even if Bill Gates gave away everything he owned, it would do anything…
because the problem is not only individual, but it is systemic… it is system
wide throughout the entire systems that we human have created…
every single human system has as it basic, ego driven needs that must
be somehow fulfilled at the expense of other human beings…….
capitalism is the poster child of a ego driven system designed to
hoard material for one’s own gratification…for one’s own ego…
political systems are created/designed to cater to ego’s systems…
monarchy, dictatorship’s, Lenin/Stalin communism, and the now corrupted
democracy and Republic of the US.
every single political system out there is one or another version of
ego driven attempt to gain the most material possible even if it
is deleterious to others, millions of other people and animals…
so if you want to know what evil is… it is a choice to
gather to oneself the most material possible even if one
doesn’t need it…
evil is a human choice to practice greed, lust, hate, anger……
and I wonder where we have heard those words before?
Kropotkin