Free will is often seen as the universal justification for evil — “There has to be evil if there is free will”. Is it is ever possible to make a choice between good and good? Only against a background of greater evil, I suspect.
A friend once claimed that:
“If there were no evil, I could still get up, get dressed (choose what clothes I would wear), eat breakfast (choose what breakfast to eat), paint a picture (choose what to paint and how to do so) and so on. There isn’t just one ‘good’ thing for someone to do – the choices are infinite.”
That isn’t necessarily true. If you are talking about specific actions as defining good and evil, then you are fixed into cultural relativism. What is good becomes what is most accepted by that culture at that time, and what is evil becomes what is most reviled by it. These definitions change over time and from place to place, often radically. Claiming that any current set of definitions is the ultimate ‘good’ is just presumption.
Society will generally decide that the ultimate expression of evil within itself is whatever it finds most abhorrent in current experience or memory. This is entirely relative to how bad things are. As the degree of background ‘evil’ decreases, the measure of what is abhorrent also decreases.
For an example of this, look at European history over the last 1000 years. A millenium ago, Europe was in the Dark Ages. Slavery, serfism, poverty and abuse were all commonplace, and seen by the privileged (and sometimes by the abused) as the natural order. Evil was mainly the province of the supernatural; demons and monsters to destroy the soul. A bit later, the Inquisition performed all sorts of heinous acts to combat what they considered evil. If we come forward to the seventeenth and eighteenth century, serf bondage is largely eroded, and many earlier excesses are considered out of line. Slavery presents no moral problems however, and neither does discrimination on grounds of sex, colour or status. Perhaps the local gentry are no longer free to rape any local they feel like, but there is still a huge divide. Evil has supernatural components still, but it has also become a very human past-time.
The same trend can be seen in small-town “morality” versus big-city “cosmopolitainism” — the narrower the range of experience around a person, the harsher their judgements against things that fall outside the accepted norm.
At the moment, we have eroded a lot of the old injustices. Poverty, exploitation and casual violence are seen as evils, whereas previously they were merely facts of life. Which is great.
Vlad Tepes, also known as Dracula.
But where does this procession stop?
It is known that colour has an effect on mood, and that certain cuts of clothing provoke certain reaction. Is it so difficult to imagine a future utopian society where wearing certain styles and colours of clothing would be considered a psychological violence upon those around you?
In order to function most effectively and to be as contented as possible, good nutrition is vital. In fact, an ideal nutritional strategy can probably be worked out for any person. Deviating from it would reduce your efficiency and happiness; and this could be seen as anti-social towards the general good of the society.
The media around us strongly conditions the way we feel. The correlation between the high levels of violence on TV and the increase of anti-social behaviour in society is currently being researched. Surely, then, our theoretical utopia may well ban certain artistic depictions as a root cause of violence?
Your clothes, your breakfast, your paintings; everything can be evaluated as being more or less good given the simple criteria that “the greatest benefit to the greatest number is good, and and anything less is evil, because it causes unnecessary harm.” When all greater evils are eliminated, then the smaller evils will be turned on and re-defined for elimination.
These are very broad definitions of good and evil, of course. You could decide that the 10% most widely beneficial possibilities were good, and the 10% most widely harmful ones were evil, and everything in between was neutral, but as you eliminated great Evils from the world, the range of options would narrow and narrow, and the bands would need recalculation.
Eventually, you get back to the same place as the broad definitions.
As our utopia gets better and better, it gets more and more restrictive. And what about when differences in personality cause friction? Friction of that sort is stressful, and stress is extremely harmful to the health. To irritate another person is just another form of violence. The only way to avoid it is to avoid personality clash. And the only way to avoid that is to avoid personality, period.
There is only one possible result of ‘ultimate’ good; it is exactly the same as the result of ‘ultimate’ evil — a universe entirely without life at all.
Don’t get me wrong. I hate evil actions. We all do, with a few tragic exceptions. But as long as there is to be diversity — as long as there is to be life — there have to be differences. And in every difference, there will be a ‘winner’ and a ‘loser’, and while there are losers — even if only to the level of disliking the colour of your blouse — there will be evil.
