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.
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