Evil takes a holiday...

Evil. What is it? Is it something we can define? Can we put our fingers on the pulse of evil and say, "Aha! There it is!"? I'm not so sure. Tonight, when you are watching the leader of the free world address us as a nation and the rest of the people with TVs or radios around the world, I'd like you to listen for the word. How is it used? In what context? And really think...what is evil?

If you take a look at the common definition for the term, typically you will find one of two things: "morally bad or wrong" or "causing ruin, injury or pain". Both seem adequate at first, but then the obvious questions arise: What is the definition, not our definition of Morally? My morals or yours? And if we can not come to a happy conclusion for that, then we have to throw that definition out the window, But lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The second part of the definition deals with injury, pain and ruin and the cause of it. Again, it sounds okay and I think it starts getting to what evil might be, but there are problems. It's a matter of both significance and intent. Examples: Causing ruin...when I first arrived in Roswell, my colleagues did many things to make me feel welcome. One thing they did was to give me a nice plant. That plant is dead now. Why? Because I went to Philly for the holidays and it didn't get watered. Ruined...definitely. Evil...hardly. I also ruined one of my brother's great etch-a-sketch masterpieces once when I was a kid. Evil?

How about injury? I stubbed my toe yesterday on my living room table. It was late. I was thirsty. Evil table? It caused my injury and pain? You might say, no Dan, your own negligence caused that pain. You could be right...does that make my negligence evil? Or is there some way to determine that I might be evil from this experience? No...the fact is that we cause ruin, pain and injury and are harmful all the time. It's not necessarily evil. It might just be stupid, ignorant or not compassionate. So we can throw the baby now.

So, if you can't trust the dictionary, who can you trust? Maybe Voltaire was on to something. When he wrote his definition of "Free-Will" in his "Philosophical Dictionary" he included this thought: "Either everything is the sequence of the necessity of the nature of things, or everything is the effect of the eternal order of an absolute master; in both cases we are only wheels in the machine of the world." If this is the case, how can anyone be evil?

I say, Evil just aint what it used to be. You might disagree, but in my estimation, Evil is the absence of intent. It is un-agenda. It is reasonless and meaningless...without motive. If you have motive or agenda, you might be wrong in someone's eyes, but you are probably right in your own. You might be causing some harm, but you probably think you are saving someone else's. Don't get me wrong, this is not a defense in any way shape or form of killing people or terrorism or any of that stuff, it's just a thought. Nobody looks in the mirror in the morning and says to themselves, "Ok...I'm evil. What evil things am I going to do today".

I'll leave it at that for now and await your responses. This was all egged on by a radio broadcast I heard this morning where the host asked her audience: Do we really want to live in a world where we 'humanize' our enemies?. I'm no tree hugging hippie here, but, uh, maybe a good deal of humanizing on a global scale might do some good for a change.