The first things that comes to my mind whenever I hear the word evil, sadly, are humans. The cruelty we are capable of. All the hatred across the world, the suffer across history. Humans have always been afraid. Thus, they invented themselves a god. And every religion starts the same, but they dislike each other. So, they make war, and every evening they count the corpses. Humans are cowardly hypocrite. They don’t like responsibility. To avoid them, they invented themselves a devil. A creature full of death and destruction. A creature to blame for all the chaos on earth. The incarnation of evil.
But there’s no such thing as the devil. There are only humans, and the atrocious acts we committed. Kids pushing other kids to suicide, populations making genocides, believers killing for ideas. We created this abstract idea called evil to set us apart from our crimes. We don’t want to be related to those who commit them, so we call them evil. They are evil, and we are good. And in-between there’s a huge gasp, separating the two sides. But this believe is completely wrong. Like numerous scientific experiments have shown, there’s not a distinct line between good and evil. There’s not a big difference between us and the SS-Soldaten who worked in Auschwitz. But no matter the evidences, we don’t want to accept it. And those who do, are typed as Psychopaths. But honestly, who has never wished for someone to die. Who has never thought about killing someone, at least in dreams. I recently could observe that madness is like gravity, all it takes is a little push.
Nomendei wrote, (1) "...first things that comes to my mind...I hear the word evil, sadly, are humans. The cruelty we are capable of." and "...hatred across the world, the suffering across history." and "Kids pushing other kids to suicide, populations making genocides, believers killing for ideas."
I often have call mankind a rational- irrational species. We have the gift of logic and reason. The forces that prevent us from fully accessing these gifts are denial, rationalization, emotional reasoning and blind spots. If we are to evolve as a society critical thinking must be taught and ingrained at a young age. It is through mindfulness that we become aware of our thought distortions. We as Carl Jung would say, "Must make the unconscious conscious. Only in this way can we stop being reactive and stop acting out automatically with no forethought involved.
(2) " Humans have always been afraid. Thus, they invented themselves a god. And every religion starts the same, but they dislike each other. So, they make war, and every evening they count the corpses."
I have one pet peeve with the use of the term self righteous anger. What's more deplorable is in the Bible many people point to the fact of Jesus overturning the money lenders table. Speaking as a rational scientist first, if there is a negative emotion it is a sign of an internal disturbance. It is classified and outlined as one of numerous cognitive distortions. Secondly what did he propose to accomplish? The money lenders would just be there the next day. Personally I find this a fictionalized account of Jesus. He acted very uncharacteristically.
(3) "They don’t like responsibility. To avoid them, they invented themselves a devil. A creature full of death and destruction. A creature to blame for all the chaos on earth. The incarnation of evil. But there’s no such thing as the devil..are only humans...atrocious acts we committed."
Two powerful quotes I will share: "If the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness" Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) The Brothers Karamazov, 1879-1880
“We create that bad among ourselves. We create it; then we try to call it devil, satan, or evil. But man creates it. There is no devil. Man creates the devil.†Wallace Black Elk, Lakota
You are right we do not have a habit of being morally responsible. This would entail us having an internal locus of control. This versus an external locus of control where a person projects their inner demons and blames others and life for their difficulties and unpleasant emotions experienced. It is only with the use of critical reason, empathy, communication skills and active listening skills that we can begin to bridge the gap between the different factions. This means we must override the ego and mature both spiritually and emotionally.
(4) "We created this abstract idea called evil to set us apart from our crimes." and "They are evil, and we are good. And in-between there’s a huge gasp, separating the two sides."
Religion unfortunately can be divisive. One side believes that they are in the right and the other party is totally wrong. What must be acknowledged is our common humanity and for us to work on our similarities instead of focusing on our differences. Let each man and woman believe whatever they wish provided they do not harm another.
(5) "...numerous scientific experiments have shown, there’s not a distinct line between good and evil. There’s not a big difference between us and the SS-Soldaten who worked in Auschwitz. But no matter the evidences, we don’t want to accept it." and "..recently could observe that madness is like gravity, all it takes is a little push."
This is scary. We can revert to bestiality fairly quickly and justify it to the aforementioned: denial, rationalization, emotional reasoning and blind spots.