Analysis of the Self: The Development of Evil

I have been thinking about the different variations of evil, and was looking for a primal cause. Some say greed is the root of all evil, but greed first requires human selfishness, and is often triggered by fear. The causes of fear are too diverse, and will likely exist even in a perfect society, so this is just a secondary cause. We must then take the primary issue, selfishness, and look at how it is created. When I did this, I remembered that it can be seeded to some degree in genetics, and it can be learned through experience. I also noted that both of these influence one another, so both must be addressed. Evil is technically caused by improper thinking, but such thinking also has its origins.

So in essence, evil has two beginning roots in human beings: genetics and experience. Genetics can either restrict or expand a human’s potential, impacting how we think, feel, and create. It grants us a specific level of intelligence and health that we must work with. Experience (or the lack of) impacts what we know and understand. It also has an influence on our character, our emotional intelligence, and our levels of ignorance.

Experience dictates how much higher our potentials can be, while genetics puts a cap on these potentials in the long-run. Both influence human growth and personality unification, but genetics ultimately influences the rate of growth we receive from experience. When we discuss evil, what we are truly looking at is selfishness in thought. It acts as a counterforce to goodness, but can ultimately make a being ignore truth and beauty as well. This trait is often triggered by one’s own experiences (which can include a lack of education), but the underlying traits or limitations of the being indicate either what types of experiences create such behavior, or how much learning is required for such behavior to be rooted out.

How is evil minimized in human society? It requires the multifaceted approach of improving our genes, changing how we educate ourselves, and improving the experiences of individuals. Not one of these actions alone will do the trick, because either the potentials of humans will remain just as restricted by DNA, or we will fail to change the very elements of life that shape who we are and how we grow. It must also be said that such adjustments to society do not create results at the same rate, nor is every change appear positive at first.

The Burden Series: Trust

Trust is something that is commonly valued throughout life, whether in the home, at work, or in general social situations. The heart of trust is the belief that an individual shares a common value. Even when that trust exists as relying on someone to follow a responsibility, you are trusting that accomplishing such a task is valued by the other party. The problem with trust is that even when the subject is only one human being, that trust cannot be universal. It is usually very specific.

Humans do not all share the same values, and universal trust between two individuals would imply that each shares the exact same morals, and even the same mores. But in reality, even when there is a strong commonality between individuals, circumstances and goals shift. While one person might feel betrayed about another’s decision, the other may just be following a higher priority. To trust an individual is thus a set of values you expect another to follow under certain situations. This is truly limiting and vague, which should tell us that no one should trust others completely, because such belief or faith does not account for a wide enough set of circumstances.

Instead of blindly trusting friends, family, or coworkers, we should trust each other to make certain relevant decisions. The foundation of trust is then the circumstances of the decisions a person is faced with. So long as the personal values of an individual create dependable results, you can trust that individual to take certain actions, and that is really where the trust ends. Of course, the boundaries of this trust are going to be different for each individual, and it is each person’s responsibility to identify these boundaries on their own.

This also changes how we look at people we do not trust, because instead of labeling a person with the negative trait of untrustworthy, we instead identify areas where we either expect problems in the decision-making process, or a conflict of values or interest. The point is that being trustworthy is not the same as being a good person, and vice versa. You cannot expect to satiate the ideals of everyone, especially if you intend to be genuine. Everyone has a different idea of what trust means to them, and this meaning is hardly communicated properly when we depend on others. We then suffer as a result of our own assumptions, something that could have been avoided by adjusting how we perceive human relationships.