Meaning of "evil"
Jan. 12th, 2017 04:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackA recent conversation about Defence against the Dark arts teachers made me realise I use "evil" in two different ways. Sometimes I mean, "doing something bad on purpose". Sometimes I mean, "doing harm to other people". The greatest harm is often done by people who are indifferent to it. But people who maliciously hurt others are awful is a special way.
A couple of the professors were very indifferent-evil. They didn't set out to hurt people, but they didn't see any of the awful things they did to people. Others were malicious-evil, they were killing people all over the place.
And of course, it's more complicated by that. Most people who cause harm by inattention SHOULD notice, and exist somewhere on a scale from "I'm 8 and I haven't broken away from the worldview I'm immersed in" to "I'm really really really wilfully ignorant, and I must be actively avoiding thinking about this."
But insofar as it's helpful to be able to think about bad things, it's useful to realise that they often overlap, but when I say "very evil" I might mean one of two different things.
A couple of the professors were very indifferent-evil. They didn't set out to hurt people, but they didn't see any of the awful things they did to people. Others were malicious-evil, they were killing people all over the place.
And of course, it's more complicated by that. Most people who cause harm by inattention SHOULD notice, and exist somewhere on a scale from "I'm 8 and I haven't broken away from the worldview I'm immersed in" to "I'm really really really wilfully ignorant, and I must be actively avoiding thinking about this."
But insofar as it's helpful to be able to think about bad things, it's useful to realise that they often overlap, but when I say "very evil" I might mean one of two different things.