For clarity, let’s define “evil” as “the willful abuse of other humans.”
By this definition, any person or persons who purposely manipulate other humans to their own ends – anything from tricking them into a bad business deal to extorting money from them to murdering them – are engaging in evil.
Evil Almighty?
From television, politicians, and endless “authorities,” we learn that evil is pre-eminent. God may be supremely powerful, but he’s powerful somewhere far away; Satan is powerful here. We can slide into evil with ease, but being good is difficult. Western man is convinced that darkness is stronger than light, whether he defines it in religious terms or secular terms.
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The fear-sellers, we must admit, have won the day.
This primacy of fear and darkness is necessary to the authority of course; without it, how would we be driven into their arms?
So, when someone comes along and calls evil a weakling, we think they’re a bit crazy, and maybe we worry that the devil might notice and chop them down.
Fundamental Weakness
Carrying such fears around every day, people seldom realize that evil is weak. And not weak temporarily or in a certain situation, but fundamentally weak. Here’s why: Evil does not produce.
Armed robbery is a good example of evil, and it is clearly contrary to production; we could almost define it as “anti-production.”
Evil is massively wasteful: it burns crops, it breaks down bridges, it steals important, useful assets, and it kills people. Evil, therefore, must take advantage of healthy and effective life if it is to prosper.
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Genghis Kahn had to get his arrows, horses, and shields from somewhere, and he didn’t produce them himself. Likewise for Mao and Stalin and Tamerlane and the rest. One way or another, they required basically decent people to produce for them. Regardless of whether these producers were tricked or intimidated, it was they who armed evil; evil didn’t arm itself.
And this brings us to one of the great, simple truths of our times:
If goodness ever stops allowing evil to take advantage of it, evil is simply finished.
The good don’t need the evil, but the evil are fully dependent on the good.
It is the good (or at least the basically productive) who permit evil to continue. These decent people are laboring under fears and flawed ideas of course, but without their acquiescence, evil could accomplish very little. And this is massively good news: Evil is vulnerable… deeply vulnerable.
