Eradication of Evil

We can never eliminate tragedy – even in a perfect world tragedy will exist.

Evil, on the other hand, as it is created by us, is well within our control to eliminate.

So, how do we eliminate evil? Β Are there fundamental actions we can take that will help to eliminate evil from the world?

If evil is not a force in itself but an absence of good (just as darkness is absence of light) then it would stand to reason that there must be things we can do that will increase ‘the light.’

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
Henry David Thoreau

I wonder what we can actually do to strike at the root of evil and let goodness flourish?

8 Comments

  1. Like negativity and fears, evil is contagious – so are goodness and happiness.
    And like negativity and fears, evil is most efficiently dealt with not by ignoring it but by acknowledging and then denying it to influence us: through increasing our awareness of what really is, making conscious choices and acting accordingly. First aid measure: Taking our mind off our ego by choosing honesty and kindness πŸ™‚

    1. Excellent points – interesting idea to see honesty and kindness as the antithesis of ego – I like this idea very much and now that you point it out, it makes great sense to me as why would we be dishonest or unkind except in the service of an egotistic version of self? I never looked at it quite like that before – thanks so much for the insight.

  2. My friend Charles Hampden Turner used to caution that the attempt to eradicate evil often lead to evil if taken to extreme. He suggested we unpick the causes of evil as your and
    @enermazing are suggesting and deal with them. He talks about virtuous circles: we do something that creates a causal loop that moves us to a much better place without expecting it to be perfect. πŸ™‚ I guess his take is a bit Taoist: in good there is evil and in evil some good and it is about shifting the balance and never expecting to altogether get rid of evil. Indeed a lot of good comes out of our resistance to evil and creative conflict wisdom is about using contesting evil to do better. Hope this makes sense: I am a bit jet lagged. πŸ™‚ My friend Kathy Atwood has written a book about 26 heroines of the resistance to the Nazis that illustrates my point quite well. I also like Katherine Schultz’s book Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margins of Error as some evil comes from error rather than malice and we can learn from it if we are prepared to admit it to ourselves.

  3. It is like shedding the light into a dark place, as you have mentioned. The light is love, love is light. Compassion, kindness, empathy, understanding, joy and happiness are all facets of love. I believe that evil has forgotten it’s true nature, and is just a variable of the same source, the source that all consciousness stems from. We are conscious beings, able to comprehend what evil is, so perhaps it is only evil because we are conscious of it…….
    Making awareness of evil a point of reference to bring love in, within this reality that we are working within.

    1. Thanks for your comment. Love is a very interesting thing – I think we associate it with hearts and flowers to it’s detriment and if we saw it as you describe it – a source of many important things – we’d have a better chance of using it’s power.

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