Confusion and Evil

When I talked about honoring the wishes of someone who was departed, someon=
e asked, =E2=80=9CWhat if the person wanted to be evil?=E2=80=9D

My response is that, if the person wanted to be evil, he probably was confu=
sed. There are many possible areas of confusion.

The biggest possible area of confusion is  that between a value and the mis=
uses of the value. Wrong things done for a value discredit the value itself=
.  Abuses in families, such as incest and domestic violence, discredit fami=
ly. Abuses in societies, such as extreme conformity pressures and anti-inte=
llectual attitude, discredits society. Abuses done for beauty, intelligence=
 and money discredit all of the above.

So when faced with ethics being practiced in cruel and hypocritical ways, t=
hat discredits ethics. And that leads many honest people to become anti-eth=
ical. Most of these people aren=E2=80=99t evil, they are confused.

To avoid that kind of situation it is necessary to practice values better. =
Ethics needs to be preached and practiced in ways that aren=E2=80=99t cruel=
 or hypocritical. Misuses of value need to be done away with; value needs t=
o be preserved.

Ethics, as such, is necessary. Without ethics everyone would be screwing ev=
eryone else, and very little of anything could get done. To work with a per=
son one needs to know that the person is trustworthy. Confusion between the=
 value and the misuses of the value must be cleared up. Then there will be =
no identification between the value and the misuses of the value, and wrong=
doing done in the name of the value will be eliminated while value itself w=
ill flourish.

So for a long time I was anti-family and militated against society. Then I =
had a family of my own and figured out how foolish that stance was.  The va=
lue itself is a good one; what=E2=80=99s bad is wrong things done in its na=
me. Most people will want to have family, and most people will want to live=
 in society. I want to see more people have better family life, and I want =
to see them forming societies that are vibrant, honest and humane and that =
have a greater place for culture.

When something that=E2=80=99s not good masquerades as good, some people may=
 decide that goodness is the problem. It is not; the problem is bad things =
masquerading as good things.  Then many people make a very bad error. It is=
 that of identifying the good with the pretence and deciding that the good =
itself is bad. This gives the usurpers of the good too much credit. They ne=
ither invented nor own the good, and good has existed for far longer than h=
ave they. With beauty, it is not owned by stupid teenagers and unethical pl=
astic surgeons; and attacking beauty, which has existed for a very long tim=
e, for the sins of stupid teenagers and unethical plastic surgeons is a stu=
pid thing to do.

If somebody wants to be evil, most likely he has made that miscalculation. =
He saw things pretend to be good that aren=E2=80=99t, and he decided that t=
he problem is the good. In this situation, the reason for rejecting ethics =
is an understandable one. The solution is to make a distinction between the=
 value and the abuses of the value. Then many people who are at risk for cr=
iminal or antisocial behaviour will avoid this confusion and take a better =
path.

Different mistakes have different reasons. Here the reason for the mistake =
comes from sincerity, which speaks in favor of the person who is making it.=
 Rather than seeing such people as evil, the solution is to see what they a=
re right about and correct the underlying problems. Make a radical break be=
tween the value and the misuses of the value and see the value flourish whi=
le wrongdoing in its name is corrected. And see the genuine good thrive all=
 across the board.