Good and Evil

To start off, the modern conceptions of good and evil completely miss the point of the meanings we attribute to those words. Most people do not understand in the slightest what they mean when they say good and evil. We say “that is good” or “that is bad” so often those words become utterly meaningless to us. Calling something good does not necessarily mean good in a moral sense, similarly calling something bad does not make it evil. However, our lack of understanding of what we mean when we use these words in our day to day lives leads to a major disconnect in our understanding. To break it down, two distinct ideas lay in my opening sentence. There is first our conception of what we think we mean when saying good and evil, and then there is the application of those words as they relate to the collective understanding of good and evil. At the root, an individual's world view and personal beliefs sit as the key components in deciding what makes something good or evil. An individual’s world view evolves constantly throughout life, and through the day to day life experiences one builds out an image of the world in their mind. We do not see the world as it is, we see the world as we perceive it through the memories stored from our conscious experience of the world. Our world view then could be defined as our conscious experience of the world as we perceive it, and each individual's world view is a completely unique experience. Working down to the building blocks of an individual's world view, we find a system of values which develops in our consciousness as building blocks upon which we create an image of the world from a moral standpoint. No two values perfectly align themselves in this system. Instead we find more of a landscape, as Sam Harris discusses in his book “the moral landscape”. Some values sit higher up and some sit lower, forming a sort of hierarchy or moral values. When it comes to good and evil in relation to an individual's value hierarchy, we must discover what lies at the peak in order to understand what a person values most. 

It doesn’t necessarily matter what the peak of that hierarchy is, everyone has some sort of peak. For the religious, the words of their god sit at the peak. For those who love nature, the planet sits at their peak. Even to take the example of Nazi Germany into play, they believed they were bringing along a thousand year reich where they would rule the world and bring peace to nations. No matter how upside down we may see their point of view, what we must understand is they also had a value hierarchy. These grand visions sat at the top for those involved, some even sought out power or influence and saw the Nazi movement as their way of achieving it. For those people the dream of importance and belonging sat at their peak. All of their actions down from there would then aim towards that peak. The point is, everyone has a hierarchy of values. What sits at the peak then would define not only what is most important to your personality and your goals for your life, but also the lens in which you see the world. Once one begins to accept a certain god as the peak of their values, it becomes almost impossible for them to understand the world through any other perspective. Their values become their world view and everything in their life now runs through that perspective. At the individual level then, what does it mean to be good? if someone’s entire world view aligns towards their value hierarchy, would their perspective of good and evil be any different? Absolutely not! For an individual, good and evil solely depends on their values. That which aligns with the peak of their value hierarchy becomes good, that which aligns with the pits of their value hierarchy becomes evil. Of course, the individual does not understand this about good and evil. To them, their world view is the correct world view and the values which align to that world view are the correct values. Thus it is impossible to see any conception of good and evil outside of the individual's world view. A major problem arises when other individuals are introduced into the equation. 

This may be obvious, but most people do not share the same world view or value hierarchy. Each individual’s world view is completely unique, although some may share many similarities. In itself, this is not a problem. The problem comes when we expect others to have the same definition of good and evil we do. In normal conversation we do not discuss the intricate details of each of our values in order to come to a definitive understanding of what the other sees as good before discussing day to day events. We simply discuss the events themselves and assume the other sees them in the same way we do. Let’s take the debate over abortion for example. Each side of the argument believes they know the truth when it comes to this topic. Republicans often cite the holiness of life and the evil of abortion for taking away life no matter how young and undeveloped that life may be. On the other side, democrats find common ground on claims of individual freedom and autonomy over one’s own body to make choices which will permanently affect that body. Each conclusion in this case comes from the values of those supporting the argument. One side predominantly contains the religious communities of the country. On a very wide scale they believe in the values the church instills in them. One of those values is the intrinsic value of human life, specifically a baby’s life. This by no means shows the other side does not value human life, in many cases the reason they support abortion is for the very purpose of saving the mothers life. The difference is where the values lie for each group. One side values the baby’s life above all else and believes abortion of any kind is voluntary murder of that life and should be condemned at all costs. The other side simply does not see it that way. For them, the value lies in the individuals right over their own body. They are not saying everyone should go get an abortion at every pregnancy, but simply it should be an option for cases where it is needed. The problem between the two groups comes because most do not see this as an issue of differing values, they see it as an issue of right and wrong. For the republicans if you support abortion in any way, you commit a moral felony. They may call you a baby murderer or speak as if you have no moral standard. For democrats, if you support banning abortion, you also commit a moral felony. The same results happen except with their own arguments for the evil you do. In this case, good and evil very clearly results from the world view of those making the claims. So from the individual's perspective, there can never be an objective view on moral truth when it comes to good and evil. No matter how much you seek out truth and knowledge, you will always act through a world view and a value hierarchy. 

Because each of us have our own unique life experience and therefore our own unique world view, none of us will have the exact same conception of good and evil. We may get along with others on certain points on the hierarchy, this is often seen within specific religious sects. Religion seeks to unite a separated people under one mythological story to explain who they are and why they are here. It provides a framework for a common lifestyle accepted by the community. When a group of people come to believe in religion, they begin to unify under that framework provided for them, and thus their values begin to align towards that framework. Essentially forming an in-group where the individual's values align with others in the local community. Given no one within the in-group can have an identical world view because each individual has a unique life experience and upbringing, the in-group does not have the power to completely unite the people under one value hierarchy. Rather, key values are selected out and prioritized above others. Values such as a belief in god, beliefs around sexuality, belief in the institution of marriage, and many others form a core structure in which the in-group can identify with. For those who don’t hold the values of the in-group at the heights of the value hierarchy, a separation occurs. When all individuals within the local community flock towards those with a matching value structure, clear divides begin to form separating various groups. In religion we see this in action with the countless splits in religions such as Christianity. Where a single divide of values can split a church right in half, resulting in thousands of churches all believing the other does not hold the right beliefs. The out-group then derives from the totality of all groups which do not align with our own values. Under this system, the world becomes a battlefield where we believe the whole population is against us. The values of the out-group serve as weapons against our own values. We must defend our world view and god forbid a new perspective comes along to challenge our understanding. New perspectives become a threat, and so we seek out a bubble of likeminded individuals. Those within our in-group, whose values we align with. All else becomes the enemy. So the divide between good and evil rises from the separation between us and them.

The in-group can never be evil to the individual. As already discussed, the values aligning with the peaks of the value hierarchy are seen as good, and those at the pits are seen as evil. To the in-group then, all values which the individual aligns with on a personal level, will then correlate to good in the individual's eyes. Labels become critical at this point. When we apply a label to a worldview, take Christianity for example, we intrinsically understand and relate to the values of the individuals assigned to that label. Assuming we belong to the label as well, we will have an understanding of our own worldview and value hierarchy, and therefore can make an assumption about others within the label as well. This allows us to function in social environments by making assumptions about who is safe to associate with and who is not. If we could not make these basic assumptions about others, we would find great difficulties forming social bonds at all. Applying the label to the worldview then helps us to make these assumptions and form in-groups of likeminded individuals. This system of associations works great until we begin to expand our social group, whether that be at work or school or anywhere we might interact with those outside of our immediate social group. The worldview and moral understanding we experience within our in-group breaks down when expanding to include others. We begin to interact with new worldviews and a moral understanding and value hierarchy far different from our own. Often leading to disagreements between the various groups. What lies at the core of these disagreements might be a simple difference in values, but when introducing an in-group we begin to think in an us versus them mentality. It becomes impossible to think of them as an equal to us. The values we hold make us good, and they don’t hold our values so they must be bad. We know this to be true because we know, objectively, that our values are the correct values. 

We love to speak in objective terms. As if we have the complete totality of knowledge the world has to offer. Truthfully, it’s only natural. Life does not not come with an instruction manual. Our conscious experience of the world and the life we live are all we have to go off of. Growing up, we do not experience much outside of our own worldview. Often learned from our parents, the values we hold will always be accepted as truth. These values become deeply instilled in us, and many wind up blindly believing these values the rest of their life. By no means is this a bad thing, often a very good reason exists for the teaching of the values in the first place. They help us survive, help us integrate ourselves into society, and give us a built-in in-group to rely on from our youth. For most of human history this was enough to make it by, even today many cultures thrive specifically because they follow this same mindset and refuse to change. For most of us though, we live in a global culture. It is about time we come to accept our own personal worldview, not only might not be the full, objective truth, but also other worldviews are not fundamentally evil, just a different perspective. At the end of the day, we are all human. No objective truth exists, only different perspectives from different cultures. Anyone who claims to have life figured out is either lying to you or trying to sell you something. No one has it all figured out and all cultures have something of value to say. At the same time though, all cultures miss out on important aspects of the world. With that mindset then, all cultures serve as an excuse for us to learn more about the world and expand our own worldview. One day we may discover an objective worldview, but the problem with that is we would never know it. There is no way to truly decipher objectivity with morality. All we have to go off of is our own personal worldview, and we are in no position to ever judge another for thinking differently. Instead, we must come to each other with open hearts and ears to hear and understand each other's perspective. We must explore this world and all of the cultures in it. We must be open minded and accept we do not know everything. After all, we all want the same thing. We all want to survive and prosper in life. We all want community and peace and love. There is no objective good and evil, only our perspective. As we increasingly become a worldwide interconnected people, our perspective must continue to evolve along with us. Only when we come to realize this can we truly accept the other and be free.