My essay about evil.
I wrote this essay in a moment of passion. It encapsulates my beliefs. Feel free to comment about it, or rip it apart. By reading it, you've already flattered me.
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The Origin of Evil
The following is not exactly an essay……. but instead a personal observation on society, and the world in general. In this rant-like essay I will indulge in discussing the concept of 'Evil'. What is Evil? What makes evil, evil? Where does evil come from?
I won’t beat around the bush, and I’ll give an answer that satisfies each of those questions: ‘Coercion’. In any form, force is always immoral. No reason justifies the use of force to attain ends (a good mantra to this is “The means justify the ends.”), as it violates the right to liberty. All people have the right to liberty, so as long as they don’t infringe upon the same liberty of another person. Therefore, the use of coercion destroys liberty and if this coercion is legal it means that man is a slave.
Coercion is a universal concept. The simplest tribal forms, to the most advanced paper-pushing bureaucratic communist regimes, used coercion as their means to achieve ends. This wanton use force has lead to almost every human misery in existence. Left to themselves, with a right to be left alone, humans will generally do the right thing. Think of slavery, war, racism, hatred, and all forms of bigotry. If you look to the society in which those things occur, it would very odd if the groups that are being discriminated against, were not at one time discriminated against by the law of the land (imposed by the government). I’ll provide examples off the top of my head. Slavery in America is one of the first things that people think about of the subject of bigotry. Certainly, in that society, the bigotry flourished due to the use of the government to enslave those people. Or, another example would be the backwards caste system of India. The lower caste was legally discriminated against through laws. Or, the hatred of homosexuals today was also caused by the government. Marriage was legally defined between a man and a woman, and sodomy was illegal. When I think about it, I can’t think of any bigotry that hasn’t stemmed from the government.
Is that a surprise? No, of course it isn’t. When anarchists advocate self government people seem to believe that they wish to de-evolve the society. Quite the opposite, it would be the most progressive society in history. Throughout the ages, governments have grown and shrunk, but always, people have had to obey laws of altruism (sacrificing ones self or extension of self [property]) to provide for others. Individuality, which is the highest form of self government, has time and time again shown itself to create the most moral people, the most efficient society, and a level of human development much greater to that of a oppressive society. I like to think of comparing countries in the level of oppression to individuality. At the far left end of the spectrum we have Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In the middle, welfare states like France, and slightly right of centre (we’re getting closer to freedom) we have countries like Canada and America. I believe that as the spectrum keeps moving towards the right end (freedom) the society becomes better. Surely, this is no surprise; as the same means will achieve the same ends.
What is Evil? Evil is anything that limits individuality and suppresses free will.
What makes Evil, Evil? The act of enslaving people in the name of freeing other people is a contradiction. We can clearly see that the ends do not justify the means, because this is in the name of the common good. There can be no common good, because the commons is made up of the individual. If the individual is violated, what good could possibly happen to the commons?
Where does evil come from? Evil comes from coercion. For the most part, coercion comes from government. Why is this? This is so, because government is set up to achieve a common good. I think it would be appropriate to provide an example. The government sets up a minimum wage in the name of the common good. The government claims that by setting up an arbitrary value for a service, it will help achieve a greater level of welfare for the lower class. This price floor hurts the lower class because of two reasons. There is now less capital in businesses meaning that there is less money to pay people meaning that there will be less jobs (as the demand for a product remains consistent, producers will still supply the same products [or alternatively, the businesses might keep the same labor, but instead purchase less products meaning that what they sell will be more expensive and thus the increased pay check will be meaningless as a product inflation happens]) and there is less jobs. Now that there is less jobs, two things happen: unemployment goes up, and the more qualified people get jobs as opposed to the more under trained needy people (in the USA the African-Americans found themselves unemployed because the more educated white people took the scarce source of jobs due to a newly introduced minimum wage).
When people have the right to be left alone (negative liberty) instead of having the right to water (positive liberty [if one looks closely, one can see that the two forms of rights are in conflict with each other and the latter demands a right to consume and is inherently backwards, immoral, or both]), the highest form of civilization will have been achieved: Liberty.
Erik
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Originally Posted by Fenris
