Let’s Clear Up Some of the Confusion About the Stories of Good and Evil
Evil is not an inherent attribute of humanity, but confusion is.
Not long ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu framed the struggle between Israel and Palestine as a battle between “Good” and “Evil”. He didn’t use those exact terms, but we can infer from his choice of words, that he meant to say that the other side was evil. Here are his exact words, translated from Hebrew to English:
“We are sons of light, they are sons of darkness. And the light will prevail over darkness.”
He is using a spiritual frame of reference. And he is probably using what he knows of the stories in the Torah as his frame of reference. Religious texts are often framed as a story of good versus evil. They are used as a frame of reference to understand what is good and what is evil. But they never really tell us where evil comes from.
No one ever comes out of an action movie talking amongst each other about the basis of evil in the movie. Few if ever say things like, “Huh. The villain plotted to blow up the city if he didn’t get 10 billion dollars. How in the world would he be happy with the money? Why does he even think he would be happy either way?”
