What is Evil?

What is evil? By definition, in a colloquial sense, evil is the opposite of good; evil is the raw force that gives rise to mischief and sin. Evil causes harm and makes people suffer numerous ways; and takes various forms: war, disaster, people act upon each other, and further more. From the beginning, mankind has encountered various forms of evil, but mostly, came from two main sources: the evil coming from the outside world and the evil within themselves.

So, where does evil come from? Did it emerge from nowhere, or was it already there from the start? Sadly, the answer is the second part, the evil has already been inside of mankind from the beginning. People let evil exist, they let it exist because it benefits them; they make profit from it, without caring that it may cause harm to another and to themselves. It is a bold statement, but unfortunately true; evil exist because people allow it to be.

First of all, some people oppose that human is trying to stop war at all cost; they claim that numerous organization, association (government or non-government) that stand for peace has been created to protest war. However, war has not stopped; from 2011 up till now, there had been more than thirty wars erupted (a huge number of them are ongoing). So, why does war still happen? It is because the war has numerous benefits, that’s why people start it; when one starts a war, they are always aiming for one element, resources, and they will do everything to acquire the objective; so, they let war exist.

The benefits of war include natural resources, human resources, and conquered lands; because of these resources, human starts war everywhere, regardless the consequences, to obtain the objective. Furthermore, William C. Westmoreland once claimed that “The military don’t start wars. Politicians start wars.”; as true as it may sound, when war happens, the one who benefit from it is the government. Why does the government want to have a war? They claim plentiful excuses, peace, religious, but what they want is another country resource; so, they create war to satisfy their needs, they allow the war to continue to exist so that they can gain from it.

Second of all, some might argue that people can never get used to evil, no matter how much exposure. Supporters claim that there are various organization like the WPC, WPF are the movement against evil. Since the evil has existed from the start, human tends to get used to it. There are so many evil deeds going on around people, thus plenty that they simply get used to it; these evils are lurking everywhere, and taking numerous form: robbery, ransom, vandalism, drunk-driving, harassment, and various more.

Although many crimes are committed frequently, and increased day by day, not many people do anything with them; to those people, those evil is only a common day for them, hence they let it happen. The rate of murderers in the US has increased by 8.6%, aggravated assault increased by nearly 5.1%, the rate of rape increased by 4.8%, and more, all compare to 2015; as you can see, the crime percentage is increasing and continuing to increase as you are reading.

As James St. James implies, the nature of evil is nothing but casual; evil is remarkably casual that everyone thinks it is normal, so they let it remain existing, no matter how harmful it is to the society. People are getting used to the evil is the result of it tremendously casualness.

Last of all, a large number of people claim that no one can ignore evil, it is right in front of one eyes, so no one can overlook evil. Although seeing various evils related events, actions, people do not seem to notice them, or worse, they completely ignore them. When there is a crime happens, not much people are willing to help the victim, they only stand still, watch the incidence, look away, or record it.

In nowadays society, you can see numerous situation that involve tremendous ignorance of people to one another; there is a beggar in the street, but no one acknowledge him, they casually walk pass him like there is no one there; there is a car accident on the street, everyone keeps driving; there are two students fighting but the others are just recording, cheering, and ignoring, but none of them helping.

People do not want to get involved in any incidence because they do not want to get themselves in troubles; there are stories when one decided to help the victim, but they were turned into the victim instead, the criminal aimed to their compassion and their urge to help one another, people get harmed because they want to help, thus people starting to ignore the evil.

People also chose to ignore the evil because they don’t want to worry about it; our little girl, Anne Frank, on March 7, 1944, comments: “I don’t think then of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.” (171); they don’t want to feel miserable because of the existing evil, they then chose not to do anything about it, or not even think about it.

To conclude, people let the evil continue to exist because it benefits them, or they get used to it, or they chose to ignore it. There are many attempts to defeat evil or to contain it, but none of the effort success; the evil will keep on existing because human allows it to be.