Evil: Does it Exist?

A lot of New Agers don't want to believe anything negative really exists. What do you think?

I personally think there is evil. It is characterized by a soul departing from the light and then actively working to harm those in the light.

This is why I don't believe in the Law of Attraction. Sometimes good people get hurt because bad people are actively working to hurt innocents.

Take Martin Luther King, Jr. Now there was a powerful man of the light. He wasn't assassinated because he “attracted” the assassination. He was assassinated because an evil person wanted to snuff out some light in the world.

Your best defense against evil is to love. In this respect, Jesus is the greatest teacher on this point, when he taught us to love our enemies.

Re: Evil: Does it Exist?

buddhists say the enemy is the friend and greatest teacher.

a favorite quote from taoism is 'when one knows the tao, they will serve their enemies'.

i think Jesus is an interesting teacher surely, i especially like some of the gnostic writings creditting him with various statements. i think there is a lot there, but i find some amazing stuff in hinduism through people like ramakrishna or yogananda and they were closer to modern times so i think they have a lot to contribute to the mix of things.

i guess i would not necessarily dispute, but challenge the idea of Jesus being the 'greatest' teacher because i think it may lead one to focus on him as conclusive and enough and i think a lot can be gained from other traditions, and some of the other traditions can shed some new angles and ideas on things and/or deepen one's understanding of Christian ideas and vice versa.

as far as evil and it's existence, well, i think that dark stuff happens, buti have some odd experience with people who are 'monsters' of sorts as i mentioned in another pod. i am often surprised at how much pain is under their anger and hatred and how much is passed down, and subsequently at the love that is there. what is relevant i think is the question of the source of 'evil' perhaps or the 'nature' of evil. is someone at their core 'evil'? are they influenced by 'the devil'?

i think that the framing of 'evil' in some ways is interesting because often it gives the sense that if something is 'evil' then we should 'hate' it or 'judge' it, or at least that is what many do with what they perceive as evil. jews were killed as they were perceived as evil. gay people have long been killed as they have been perceived as 'evil'. many consider the mormons 'evil' and condemn them in various ways. so i think there are dangers around abuse with ideas around 'evil'.

a brother of mine said once to me that he was tempted by the devil to not turn the channel fast on baywatch i believe it was. i get concerned about things like that that i see around mormonism. it seems to breed a lot of fear in people. fear of themselves. fear of others who are not like them. a friend's family essentially saw everyone outside of the mormon church as evil and deceived by the devil. he was told that to leave the house and go outdoors on sunday other than to church was evil. there is a lot of fear and distortion projected onto evil around religious circles and a lot that people seem to have to undo if they ever get conscious on any level.

i think it is naive to say it doesn't exist on an energetic level to some degree. it seems to exist as distortion and there is value in avoiding perhaps to some degree or having caution around it. i think there is instinctive caution. there are cruel people. there are opposing views. there are people i avoid or don't interact with who i would say have something other than my best interest at heart, but are they 'evil?' are they 'distorted'? is 'evil' there on one level, but have a function? from the Biblical view, it was the 'evil' that led eve to eat the apple and from there all were born. so in a way 'evil' was necessary from the beginning in that way of thinking.

i think the new age view of 'evil does not exist' is often spouted as rhetoric. people read books and spout slogans that they have little or not actual thought around, much less any actualization around the ideas. slogans are easy to spout and at times comforting, but so easily distorted.

Re: Evil: Does it Exist?

Well, not to confuse things, but when you point out the evil that has been done by calling certain groups of people “evil” (Jews and homosexuals, e.g.), that is just an example to me of how evil cloaks itself in righteousness and good much of the time.

You should read the “Sociopath Next Door.” Apparently 1 in 25 people in America are sociopaths and have no conscience whatsoever, and it has nothing to do necessarily with how they were raised or past trauma. Food for thought.

Re: Evil: Does it Exist?

interesting thanks.

one thing i was going to mention in this thread is the book 'the soul's code' by james hillman, and in it there is a chapter dealing with evil and ideas around it. explores hitlet and i think manson. looks at the 'seed' of their soul so to speak. the 'acorn' is the term he uses and ways that their seed seemed to manifest. i think it may have been called 'the bad seed' (that chapter).

i guess to say 'cloaks' itself in good sounds like a person is entirely evil, but masquerading as good. i guess in my experience i see often people who hide behind various masks, inauthentic and have all sorts of fears. when they deal with things interesting things happen and they often shift in my experience.

that said, i remember having one interaction with a guy who seemed particularly cruel. i remember thinking maybe that was evil.

i looked up in dictionary.com the meaning of evil and it talks about 'bad deeds' or 'immoral things'. i think there is 'denial' and i think there is 'harmful action' done at times unconsciously. i guess for me what i am not sure about is that people consciously do evil, or perhaps are consciously evil at their core. well, let's see, something came to mind about a friend who said to me at one point that he didn't want to be so pure. he has certainly seemed to act against what he knew was aligned morally, and his response has been along the lines of why does it matter and everyone is doing it in society.

from looking at the definitions of evil on dictionary.com which are less sinister than the word tends to sound as used by many Christian groups, i would say that certainly malintentions exist. maybe due to unconsciousness. i would say many certainly take actions and abuse people knowingly without consideration/conscience.

is it motivated by a dark lord/satan? is it motivated by unconsciousness? both?

i dated a pretty tripped out guy a couple years ago who was racist and hated women. a personality disorder called histrionic. no logic i had seemed to be useful in much of that dynamic. was that evil? was it biological? some sort of trauma?

good question/exploration. sociopaths. hrm. not sure i want to 'attract' them ;-).

i think the ideas around 'shadow' work are interesting in this context, but would apply mainly to consciousness explorations would require a certain degree of consciousness and not 'attract' those who would be dark at their core perhaps.

regardless i think some interesting things have occurred in my experience around how to approach things which would manifest as 'evil' in one's life. does one fear 'evil'? hide from it? how does one deal with what may manifest as evil?

Re: Evil: Does it Exist?

Evil only exists in humans.
We all have the capacity, as Freud observed when he remakred that humans are incapable of unconditional love, noting that dogs and all the other species are capable of unconditional love - we humans can compartmentalize our beilefs, our motives, our actions, and can maintain our innocence to ourselves, rationalizing whatever we wish, blaming others for our doings, and so on…
Every serial killer blames his victim for the crimes he does, and every political fiend find convenient excuses in his own policy-making, as does every religious person choose whatever scripture he or she wishes to cover whatever he or she wishes to do.
It's human nature, alas, and it is contained by spirutality, if at all, or by adherance to a moral code of ethics, by training, and sometimes this off-sets head wounds, bad chemistry, or other factors in making people violent and cruel.
Educate people in ethics, train them in compassion, show them morality, and we'll all have a better chance at a better world.
In the absence of religion, which is the circumstance we now have, when the media creates ever more violet models to follow, only if the rest of us bring spirutality, Compassion, and kindness into the popular mix will the majority of people become good rather than evil.

Re: Evil: Does it Exist?

“i think the ideas around 'shadow' work are interesting in this context, but would apply mainly to consciousness explorations would require a certain degree of consciousness and not 'attract' those who would be dark at their core perhaps.”

I'm not quite sure what you are getting at here…but I think light attracts dark because darkness is angry and wants to snuff out the light.

This is why, oh, someone like Martin Luther King Jr. would be targeted and shot. He was conscious and powerful. That's why he was targeted. Not because he was weak or in a bad space or “attracting” the negative to him.

Re: Evil: Does it Exist?

ideas around shadow…

Filling the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic of Western theosophy, but not the confrontation with the shadow and the world of darkness. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

A man who is unconscious of himself acts in a blind, instinctive way and is in addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections upon his neighbour.

Re: Evil: Does it Exist?

It's been stated clearly that even the concept of a meme is a meme.

Wouldn't the thought/belief that evil does exist be just as much of a meme as the meme that evil doesn't exist?

It would probably be more productive to sit around and talk about who's brain is bigger.

Pointless Argument #1)  I'm right.  You're wrong.

Re: Evil: Does it Exist?

Interesting thoughts, guys.

How about this in the news today:

Babysitter charged with murdering mother, unborn fetus and 3 children
http://www.wave3.com/global/story.asp?s=6357002

The story is pretty gruesome. Evil? Or not evil?

Re: Evil: Does it Exist?

I love this kind of discussion, and I find there are several  “levels” on which to answer it.  The first most obvious one to me is “duality theory”  i.e for “us” to experience anything, then we must also have experience of it's opposite, or we would be unaware of it's existence in the first place. i.e. if there was no evil, would we recognize, appreciate good?  I personally am glad that we have the choice, so that many of us can have the joy of choosing good.  Basically of course “negative” exists, otherwise we would have no concept of “positive”

The second is that although life is chaotic in many ways, then there are often reasons why a person comes to a point of confusion between good, and evil.  i.e.  I believe that people are very capable of evil acts, for evil reasons.  But I also believe that should we come to a complete  understanding of why they reached the point in their life where evil, became, in their mind the right choice, then we would see that people are wonderful, in that it takes a huge amount of adversity and struggle to push us to the point of evil*.  I believe in evil actions, I do not believe in evil people (though sometimes it is so hard to reach an understanding of where they are coming from that they give a very good impression of being evil).

I guess for me those are the most important points/levels, in answer to this question.

Re: Evil: Does it Exist?

Humans are quite complex.
Practicalities force most actions in one part of ourselves and are often fuelled by emotionality and passion in acting on self-interest.
King's assasination was well-planned and had to do with economic realities and the perceived infringement of the rights of certain groups who had before benefitted by keeping other groups down - I don't buy into the “one guy did this” evidence at all.
Baby-sitters and murdering moms are to be found in any study of other primate groups.
Murderous behavior is natural to any of us apes when we're in overpopulated situations, and the old dominance issues abound no matter what, alongside greed and territorialism.
Evil is a concept we needed to create in order to bring ethics and morality into the mix, and to survive in group situations as the groups got larger than just the small bands we were genetically meant to live in, with plenty of resources.
Now, with ten times too many humans on the planet, more of these things, not less, are bound to occur.
Chaos is just beginning, and hormones and other individual indicators of violence, the incessant media-stoking of these tendencies, and very poor parenting and societies meeting ever less of peoples' needs are causing us to face the realities of our complicated make-ups and the terrible capacities for cruelties we're all capable of given the right circumstances.
Religiosity and laws help to contain these actions, but with too many people to police, no stable small village communities but increasing urban populations, no economic justice and other factors, there are almost nil in effect any more.
Those we deem most “evil” are in fact only doing what they're allowed to do, can get away with at the moment, or are basic tendencies gone wild - or they've had too many head wounds, drugs, beatings, institutionalization, and so on.
Organized crimes, like warring, also teach the individual that violence is ok.
There are many issues involved with this interesting question.
The human himself is enough, is adequate to the task of doing evil- we don't need to look outside to find some demonic force to blame.

Re: Evil: Does it Exist?

Wondering what folks have to say about today's shootings at Virginia Tech. Did the victims “attract” their killer and force him to go on a killing spree?

Re: Evil: Does it Exist?

I get really uncomfortable with that way of thinking.  I can certainly say that the responsibility lies with the killer, and  with society in general.  What lessons can we learn that help us to raise a race of people that do not get so “off the rails” that they go on killing sprees.  I suspect that the argument that you present is often used as a spiritual comfort blanket. I see no comfort in it.

Re: Evil: Does it Exist?

Oh, I don't believe that line of thinking, but I see a lot of new age people who do and I am curious to hear their justification for it.

Re: Evil: Does it Exist?

Hi Osma, I think that you will enjoy reading Malcolm's blog

Re: Evil: Does it Exist?

Ozma,

What you said about putting out a light reminded me of something journalist Malcolm Muggeridge wrote back in 1939 on the subject of state managed  terrorism.

“There can be no trust between man and man when all are in duty bound to act as informers; there can be no intellectual or moral integrity when opinions are dictated and any deviation from them punished; there can be no learning or art, no pursuit of truth at all, when the free exercise of curiosity and speculation is made a crime. Human life, so confined, is something very paltry, lacking in dignity, insignificant.  Whatever is fine and permanent in human achievement has been realised through individuals courageously facing the circumstances of their being; and a society is civilised to the extent to which it makes this possible.  Terrorism, which aims at putting out the spiritual light, is the antithesis of civilisation.”

“ What the Bolsheviks have done in the towns of Russia is nothing; a kind of inverted American boom; a kind of morbid equivalent of the general post-war economic extravagance; a thing that might pass and be quickly forgotten.  The particular horror of their rule is what they have done in the villages.  This, I am convinced, is one of the most monstrous crimes in history, so terrible that people in the future will scarcely be able to believe it ever happened.”

Re: Evil: Does it Exist?

Isn't that exactly what the current corporate-ruled world is doing now to the poorest in the world? And any of us who do not green our food?

Knowing what we know about how cattle grazing harms the environment more than any other human activity, and more - knowing that meat-eating and cattle rearing is causing the mass starvation of humans numbering in the millions by taking over arable land that could be growing enough grain to feed everyone, isn't this planned mass murder?

I'm not in any way minimizing what was done on huge scales in the past and yet now, in the information age, we know what causes these problems and how to solve them and we have the means to take care of every problem on a global scale, which has never even been dreamed of before in human history.

Moving toward a plant-based world diet will not only create healthy people and a healthy environment but also will ensure that everyone is fed - plus, the spiritual aspect of knowing that by our food we are creating life instead of destroying innocent beings in the cruelest of ways is a wonderful thing to aim for.

So, isn't it evil not to do the kind thing? To green our food?
Since to green our food is far more important to saving the environment and the starving people than to green our cars or anything else, isn't it evil not to?