The Battle of Good and Evil - How do We Save the World?

What is Evil? 

Controversial opinions coming up, but here we go…

Are there people in the world who are inherently evil? Is it even possible to quantify what good or evil is? I am not denying that people cause harm and suffering to each other. But how much of that can really be placed on the shoulders of an individual, and how much is a product of our environment and history? Is it even possible to break this cycle of hurt and blame? Or, at least, what’s the most empowering perspective we can find to guide us in our dark times?

My starting point when trying to unpack all this was when I started to really pay attention to how polarised so much of modern society is. Everything is being made so black and white – often pitting traits against each other that are completely unrelated. With people on both sides believing that they are right and just, and the ‘others’ are ‘wrong’. It seems to me it’s really all a matter of perspective – and the way we see the world is largely a result of the systems, organisations and environment we happen to have been exposed to.

I came across this quote from Paul, the Apostle.

“Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” —Ephesians 6:11–12

It’s really interesting that Paul describes ‘spiritual wickedness’ as coming from principalities and powers in high places. He also suggests the devil is not found in flesh and blood. So what does he mean by this?

Something I’ve been trying to get a hold of for a long time, is the way that an organised group seems to have a mind of it’s own – independent of any one individual. A hive mind, if you will. In that respect, I don’t think it’s unfair to compare the principalities, kingdoms, empires of old to modern corporations.

Any organisation creates a system, built on a set of rules and expectations that will naturally push behaviour and outcomes towards certain goals. These ideals can absolutely be intended for the greater good. But very often, the desire to achieve these goals, and the motivation to prioritise the system above all else, can lead people to compromise their values and cause harm to others. Let me give you an example.

A company launches a product that is wildly successful. The company grows, they launch on the stock market, they have shareholders, everyone’s making loads of money. Suddenly, new information comes to light that proves the product is, in fact, harmful. If this information gets out, the company will undoubtedly go bankrupt and the investors will lose millions.

So they keep selling it. Every member of staff is just doing their job, their own little sliver, doing what they need to do to get their pay cheque, so they can look after their family. They don’t want to hurt anyone, but they have kids to feed and bills to pay. They can’t risk losing their job right now.

These people aren’t inherently evil. They are looking out for their loved ones, but the system has created a situation where they are willing to compromise on their values, because they are afraid of what they will lose.

When you go higher up the organisation, the directors or the shareholders, we perceive them as more evil because of their apparent greater awareness, and the more money involved. There seems to be more at stake, but fundamentally they are behaving in exactly the same way. Compromising their values because of what they fear to lose.

Everyone, from the top down, is afraid they won’t have enough. We are all guilty of this. Prioritising our own needs over the common good. It’s necessary to an extent – for our survival. But the system we’re playing in capitalises on this primitive human behaviour and seemingly exploits it to have us chasing things we really don’t need.

The Devil on Your Shoulder

So, we can think of these systems in much the same way as people used to think of evil spirits. They are these huge, intangible ‘beings’ that have intention and, to some extent, a mind of their own. They don’t have the physical capability to cause harm but, it’s very possible that they can create situations that encourage people to betray what they stand for.

That sounds rather like the devil on your shoulder, don’t you think? And you can see how this played out in Nazi Germany, or Communist Russia, or even the fall of the Roman Empire, where people compromised on their values, little by little, for their own self-interest, and it all stacked up into unimaginable horrors.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago, where he describes the atrocities of Communist Russia and it’s hard labour camps in Siberia, said “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart”.

And what I take that to mean is, we cannot look outside of ourselves and identify any group, organisation or individual as being fundamentally evil. We all have the capacity to do truly horrifying things if circumstances aligned.

If it came to the crunch, most of us would betray a casual acquaintance if it meant saving ourselves or our loved ones from torture and death – just as ordinary people did to their neighbours in Russia. There was a slow, insidious creep to get to that stage, but this is what happens when we elevate allegiance to a system above staying true to our values. Or you might say, when we worship false idols.

We can look at the whole system of capitalism as, possibly, the biggest of these false idols today. The way the system is organised leads us all to believe that more is always better. That we should constantly be striving to collect more resources, more money.

But it’s never enough. There’s no finish line. We can look at so many of the super rich who are still unsatisfied and panicking about the future. And I can’t blame them, because that’s what the system we have built over centuries seems to suggest.

Couple that with the fact that so many highly successful people are driven by the need to prove themselves worthy, to overcome pain they suffered in their past. These people are driven to hoard for themselves because they subconsciously still don’t trust that they are safe and people aren’t out to get them.

You only need to look at many of our modern-day politicians to see this – it’s obvious to me that so many of them have sought power to overcome their own feelings of powerlessness or inadequacy. But when people act from a place of fear in this way, it can never be satiated because it’s unquantifiable.

Every system has the possibility of abuse for personal gain or for a sense of control. But a desire for control is, simultaneously, an admission that you don’t feel in control. Which is why people can never get enough. And it’s not sustainable.

Enough for Everyone

R. Buckminster Fuller, the American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist – back in the 70s, he said that there was already more than enough resources, food, materials for the whole world to live quite comfortably. But he believed it would take another 50 years for humanity to start to unlearn our ways and begin to change.

“There is enough for everyone. People think that there isn’t enough, so they get as much as they can, so many people don’t have enough.”

– R. Buckminster Fuller

We witnessed this first-hand during the pandemic as people stormed supermarkets to hoard loo roll! I’m good for a year but fuck the rest of you! We’re all terrified that things will run out. It’s estimated that there’s enough food in circulation at any one time to feed the whole world and still have another 50% excess. And yet millions around the world continue to die from hunger each year. It’s insanity.

But the shift we need to make is an individual shift. Our systems and organisations are self-perpetuating and they won’t stop until they crash and burn. And anyone who has achieved success and amassed wealth is probably not going to just let go of the hard earned fruits of their labour. I understand that.

Our way out is to stop playing by the same rules. We each need to work on shifting our perspective from a place of lack, of fear of not having enough, to a place of trust that there is plenty for everyone and an understanding of what constitutes enough for us.

Now, the system is pretty great at keeping us in the loop. I still buy things I don’t need, more than I’d like, but it’s about trying to be that bit more conscious of the motivations and drivers of our actions. Why are we working 80 hours a week? What specifically are we reaching for? Are the things we buy really making our lives any better? Are they sustainable? Rejuvenating? Is it worth sacrificing time with our family?

Underpinning all of this is our values. We live in a largely under-developed society – we’re stuck in this eternal ‘youth’ stage of self-gratification. When we’re young, life is about self-discovery. Experiencing everything we can, finding out who we are, what the world can do for us.

Many traditional cultures still conduct rites of passage that signify the transition into adulthood – the moment at which, each individual takes up their responsibilities for their community. In western culture, we’ve lost these rites and, with it, we’ve lost the shift in perspective that signifies a move into adulthood. The moment when we’re meant to shift our values from the external – material possessions, experiences – to intrinsic values of how we wish to show up, how we will contribute and look after those around us.

This is where meaning in life is found – in how we can make things better for everyone. And the reason so many people are depressed, disillusioned, addicted, causing harm, is because we’ve lost touch with that. People can’t find meaning and purpose because we are still looking for it outside of ourselves.

Bids for Love

Hanlon’s Razor states,

“Never assume malice when incompetence will suffice as an explanation”.

And I would add to that, that we also so often hurt people inadvertently while protecting our own wounds. I don’t believe people are inherently evil. But we are all walking around with buried pain that has compounded over generations, that can lead us to harming others when trying to protect ourselves, or because we have been hurt or let down too many times in the past. We all have that capacity within us.

Coupled with our systems and organisations that can encourage people to compromise their values, unaware, in order to fulfil their role, or protect and provide for themselves and their loved ones. There might always be evil in the world, but I don’t ascribe it to specific humans. Many of us have our identities so tied in with our work, or suffering, our desire for personal gain that we might never be able to see the part of us that is perfectly good without any of that.

The most recent understanding of shame and grief and trauma, tell us about how the pain of these conditions can distort the psyche and cause people to project and punish others because they are unable to bear the weight of their own wounds. These wounds influence the story our egos unconsciously tell us about the world and they will do whatever it takes to protect that belief.

When we’re locked in a trauma response, our minds become trapped at the age we were when we first experienced an analogous pain. When someone gets close to one of our shame wounds, we psychologically revert to that stage of development, and we are completely incapable of remaining a functional adult in those moments.

So often, the people who hurt us are incapable of seeing how they are hurting us, because they are acting on instinct like this – like a wounded animal, for self-preservation. I would argue that a lot of the most apparently ‘evil’ people you meet in the world, have been so badly hurt in the past that this becomes a permanent state, where they are so overwhelmed by their suffering that their subconscious drives them to offload their pain out on others.

If you have been let down by people enough times I can easily see how you could end up believing it’s you, alone, against the world. If that’s your perspective, how could you even trust anyone to try and heal you? If you blame the world for everything and behave in a way that gets you rejected, it validates your perspective. Don’t get me wrong, I still think it’s necessary to punish or take action against people who commit acts of violence but, that doesn’t have to be independent of trying to find compassion for another fucked up human, battling their demons just like the rest of us.

There’s an African proverb that says,

“The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth”.

And when we look at it like this, it becomes apparent to me that every action we take is either coming from a place of love, or is in some form a bid for love. We are either acting with positive intention for the good of others or we are taking more and more drastic measures to try and get the love and attention we feel we are lacking.

So, why am I saying all this? And why am I making excuses for people who cause so much harm? Because the only way we can release the buried shame and trauma that keeps us stuck is by sitting and witnessing people as they share their deepest, most vulnerable pain – being able to stay present, without judgment or trying to fix, and still accepting each other as the flawed humans we all are. We’re all doing the best we can with the cards we have been dealt.

We need to continue to be committed to doing the work to heal as much of our own pain so that we can stop projecting it onto others, and be able to stand in the fire of their wounds, without being triggered ourselves and then inadvertently biting back.

When our partner is unwittingly projecting blame onto us that was caused by their parents or their past, we need to find the strength to stand there, see it for what it is, and allow them the space to work through it.

Just think how your relationships would change if you were able to see all your moments of conflict as bids for love rather than personal attacks. Arguments arise because we don’t feel seen, or appreciated, or even considered. This doesn’t mean we won’t express our anger, but it can inform how we do so. Adopting a belief that these are all bids for love, as our default perspective, will bring us closer than ever to our loved ones.

Now I fully believe this to be fundamentally true, no matter how extreme someone’s behaviour might be. But I also realise that some people have a lot more pain and trauma than they might ever be able to unpack and they can continue to take it out on those around them.

If people are out to harm us we can still protect ourselves, fight back or remove ourselves from dangerous situations, while at the same time having compassion for yet another damaged human who is suffering just like the rest of us – quite possibly far more so if they are driven to hurt. It concerns me how black and white people see situations like this.

Striving to have compassion and forgiveness towards people who hurt us, frees us from holding on to anger and resentment that keeps us stuck, as much as it releases the tension and judgment that perpetuates the self-view, and world-view of our persecutor.

And I know it’s easier said than done, but the only way to heal is to accept each other as we are, with all our pain and the actions that manifest from that. Do what you need to do to protect yourself from dangerous situations, but we need to try not to judge people who are swimming in their own pain and grief, who have no capacity to act any differently than they do. And it’s gonna take baby steps.

Survival of the Fittest?

When I’ve spoken to people about this, it’s been suggested that collecting material wealth is an in-built human trait – the need for survival right? Creating security through access to materials. Now, there might be some truth in that to an extent, but it’s also evident that humans gathered in tribes and communities specifically because it increased their chances of survival.

If you look at the remaining remote tribes in Africa, or in the Amazon, their societies are commonly built upon sharing everything they have with each other – mothers will even breast feed each other’s young. Everyone in the village uses their unique skills – the hunter, the medicine woman, the weaver or whatever, and they offer them for the good of the tribe.

That’s not to say they don’t have arguments, but even those are largely dealt with as a community, accepting the guilty party and reminding them of their strengths and contribution.

In here wonderful book, The Soul of Money, Lynne Twist said,

“Chronic hunger isn’t “Nature’s way” of limiting population or improving the species. In fact, it is less about Nature and more about flawed government, politics, and economic systems of our own construction. The idea that scarcity and competition are just the way it is is no longer even viable science.

Respected evolutionary biologist Elisabet Sahtouris notes that Nature fosters collaboration and reciprocity. Competition in Nature exists, she says, but it has limits, and the true law of survival is ultimately cooperation. Nature expresses itself in balance and purpose.

Nature thrives in sufficiency. A lion kills what it needs to maintain itself and no more than that. A healthy lion doesn’t go on killing rampages. It wants and takes only enough. Different species of plants and animals coexist, each providing something essential to a balanced environment that supports all life.”

It seems evident to me that we have largely lost the connectedness of community, and with it the confidence to take only what we need, and offer up everything we can for the greater good. This act of giving, knowing our role to play in the tribe, is what provides meaning and purpose that is so necessary to give us fulfilling lives.

Anything in isolation is meaningless – we need the context of it’s relationship to others to help us understand the meaning. It’s the interconnectivity, the relationship that creates our world – and we need to come back into alignment with our deeper, cultural values so we can find the balance point to maintain sustainability. The system of nature is constantly self-correcting. And if we can’t find a way to achieve equilibrium for ourselves, sooner or later, nature will do it for us.

Quite a heavy topic today, but the core message is that I believe it’s going to take individual effort from each of us to identify and live in alignment with our core values, and for the greater good, to start seeing real change. We’ve got our work cut out against the capitalism juggernaut, but we can all do our best to lead by example.