Things I Learned About Evil

For long periods in my life I fought against evil. I wanted to stop all the bad things in the world, and I mistakenly believed it was my job to fight them. After five years of studying class superiority, privilege as identity, and the ways people justify entitlement to advantages, I understood that my fight against evil was not only weakening me but also not really changing anything in the world. My dreams of changing the world or making it more just slowly dissolved in pain. Alongside the social struggle against evil, I also went through many close and frequent encounters with personal evil. It was the kind of evil that drained my life energy. I was not willing to acknowledge its existence or look at the ways it was affecting me. It crossed my boundaries, boundaries that were not fully clear to me. Instead of looking inward and defining myself, I believed I could fix it, and so life kept bringing me back to it again and again so I could learn how to deal with it.

The most important thing I learned about evil is that there is no point in fighting it. Fighting, in a strange way, feeds it and gives it more power. To deal with evil I had to stop fighting it and stop fearing it. I had to accept its existence and let go of the wish to turn it into the good it is not. The fact that I argue with it keeps feeding it and pulls my attention and energy into a place that is not worth investing in. If I think about it, get angry because of it, or stay busy with it, it will take a price from me, a price I am not willing to pay. This does not mean that I justify evil or validate it. It means I let go of the desperate need to deal with it or judge it. It is the willingness to accept that among all the things that exist in the world, it exists too.

Evil is not a trait of people. It is a quality that exists in the world and acts through people and toward people. Contrary to what we may think, many times it will be invisible. It will not show up announcing its intention to harm. It often shows up pretending to support, to help, or to do good. We might not notice at first, but after a while there is a feeling that something is not right. Sometimes it is very hard to point to what exactly is wrong, because it operates and thrives in the dark. It feeds on the energy of others, on people’s fears, on making others smaller, on manipulating reality or the story, and it does not hesitate to use anything in order to get what it needs to keep existing. When it finds a source of energy, such as a person whose boundaries are not fully clear to them or a situation it can use, it will use it to take. This is why the important thing in relation to evil is to listen to what we feel and to trust ourselves when it is sensed.

On a social level, the places where we protect efficiency, become utilitarian, or cultivate pragmatism are places with a tendency to skip over ourselves, the human beings, and justify control. These are the areas where we focus on results, on being efficient, and on competition, and much less on processes and the people involved. There is something legitimate in speaking in favor of competition or pragmatism, but without noticing, these can permit almost invisible processes through which evil acts, processes that skip over humanity and serve hidden purposes.

The way to deal with evil, which will continue to exist in reality, is from the inside out. If I trust what I feel, my sensations, and the things I am willing or not willing to engage with or participate in, I will have an inner compass that helps me recognize it. I do not need to fear it or fight it. That will only weaken me. Any attention I give to evil will keep feeding it and drain my resources.