I have recently been pondering the differences between evil and virtue. To my surprise and to be honest disturbance I have concluded that the distinctions betwixt has more to do with relevant circumstance than actual process.
Major acts of profound wickedness and immorality that affect multiplicitous persons, acts of unmitigating mass violence, senseless cruelty, unnatural maliciousness, are easy to categorize as diabolic, for any action that has no limits, no controlling logic or pattern, must be the product of a diseased or irreparable damaged psyche, but lesser happenstances that in a convoluted manner benefit the larger populus are decidedly divergent and may in the broader picture be almost, indeed ethically desirable, and therefore acceptable.
Indeed to take the simplest example, the argument that state sponsored execution, assuming we accept the widely held premise that all killing is iniquitous, is anything more than legally underwritten revenge, is utterly fallacious.
The difficulty arises with definitions, for language tends to attach interpretations to words beyond their simple meaning. Evil is somehow demonic, fiendish, black hearted, odious, and contemptible, so therefore to pursue any action bracketed with those understandings must necessarily be wrong. Morality is a constant sliding comparative, moving according to the natural changes of mass understandings and interpretations. Homosexuality is a prime example of a once historically categorized evil, that has with deeper perception and compassion of the true human state become a wholly acceptable, indeed normal persuasion. Over the same period virtuousness, particularly in relation to human sexuality, has been obliged to change dramatically, gracefully, irrevocably.
The fluidity between bad and good behaviors, thoughts, concepts, means that the public at large have become morally fractured, divided multitudinously, a pit of serpents, often writhing acrimoniously. We have entered the age of singular, individual, perspectives. The moral and ethical compass has been crushed perfunctorily, in the clenched fist of the disparate masses.
Daily Abstract Thoughts 