Melody

It was interesting for me to see the different definitions of evil given based on the author. For example, Holocaust survivors described evil in a very internal way, while religious leaders related evil to God. However, one common theme I found and loved was the idea that real evil is when someone has to detach themselves from being human. Andrew Delbanco wrote about experimenter Hannah Arendt who stated, “his thinking faculties had been shut down and he was acting as just a cog in a machine; as just a functionary; as just a follower of orders, and his mind was focused on his duty rather than on the consequences of what he was doing.” When writing about the plane hijackers in the September 11th attacks, Ann Ulanov wrote, “You’re serving the cause. You’d have to go against every instict, and these were not adolescent young men. These were older men, some with families, some with children.” Almost all of the authors described evil as being a phenomenon that occured when one completely stopped being human. Khaled Abou el-Fadi said, “It’s as if they become breather, functioning, moving, but not alive.” There is a common thought in this, that evil does not come naturally to humans, and that we must be pushed to our extreme limits to truly act out of line.

The definition of evil that I believe is most accurate is by Kanan Makiya. She described evil as “almost sensual” and that people know it “by instinct”. This particular passage strikes me because only those who have experienced evil can describe it truthfully. Holocaust survivors may have difficulty putting “evil” into words, because once you have been that close to it, suddenly it becomes beyond what words you can think of. Evil carries a certain type of intimacy, as well as a massive amount of complexity. Evil is beyond defining. It is inexplicable. The closest we have come to defining evil is showing examples of evil in people such as Hitler and Bin-Laden. They have brought monstrosity into the world and completely broken down life. These are some characteristics of evil and as far as I can tell, it’s as close as we have come to pointing out its true meaning.

Ali Ro writes

Without evil our society would not be able to survive and rebuild over and over again.

Ali makes a good point because she says evil is necessary in our society. I agree that we need evil to learn from our mistakes. Without evil, we would have nothing to compare good deeds to. Rebuilding and changing things is a part of our culture, and we grow and change as we keep trying to improve.

Evil is something that creates disastrous effects and can often cause violence, harm, or death to other humans. To me, evil has a fairy-tale conotation because no one really uses it in a real sense. Evil is what you hear about in stories and children’s books, making it more of a literary term than a common term in the modern world. It’s hard to articulate evil because some emotions can only be known at the precise moment you feel them. One picture I chose to represent evil was the Lorillard Tobacco company, which is the manufacturer for many brands of tobacco such as Newport and Kent. Tobacco companies can be considered evil because they continuously brainwash the public into thinking that smoking is not bad for you while people are constantly dying from smoking related diseases. The propaganda shown in TV, magazines, and newspapers sometimes target teenagers, telling them smoking is great, which affects my generation. Another example of evil in our society is Wal-Mart, which promises to sell items at ridiculously low prices. The hidden story is that Walmart completely dominates and ruins other businesses in the area, has a very poor healthcare plan, and destroys the environment while it sucks up all of our natural resources. Not cool.