I have come to believe that there is no such thing as good vs evil.
The more I learn about the world, the more I realize just how infinitely complicated it is. Although the human brain is incredibly powerful, it’s impossible for the brain to understand all of the information in the universe. Even all of the human brains combined struggle to answer some of the most basic questions in life: how does the human body work?, what is the meaning of life?, are there aliens?, etc. In order to make sense of the world we live in, we develop stories and labels to explain our surroundings and to prevent our brains from melting down from fear of the unknown or information overload.
Over time these stories and labels become ingrained in our lives, in the form of education, religion, political identities and culture. By adopting these stories and labels, we often forget they are all manifested from the human brain and not actually a fundamental nature of the universe. When we forget that these are man-made explanations of our world, we tend to grow more and more entrenched in these ideas. We often reach the point where we absolutely reject the possibility that any other story or label can be true. We boil down the situation and disregard information that we find unnecessary until we come down to a binary case of my idea vs any other idea that conflicts it. Hence the birth of good vs. evil.
The problem is, the more you investigate something it will eventually disappear. Once you start looking into a claim of good vs evil with an objective lens, the argument falls apart pretty quickly. Typically the “good” usually represents what is good for my interest and the “evil” tends to represent anything that goes against me. But how do we even know what is “good” for us? With an imperfect understanding of how the universe operates, it’s impossible to know that any one situation is going to be best for you.
As a simplified example, say someone cuts you off while driving and gets in front of you at a red light. In that moment, it’s easy to believe that the other driver represents everything evil and wrong in the world. Now, say that that same car that cut you off gets t-boned as they go through the intersection. If they hadn’t done that “evil” thing earlier, you would have been the one to get hit. See how quickly the situation changed from “evil” to “good”? To even further blur the line, assume the person in the car died and left behind a family that had to mourn over the loss for the rest of their lives. Was the situation “good” because you were spared, or “evil” because a family lost a loved one?
The fact is we don’t have the ability to explain the complexities of every situation. We do our best to describe what we see with these artificial terms, but it will never be enough to do the universe justice. So how do we proceed? Well, we can start by looking at situations on more of a sliding scale with infinite possibilities between 2 axioms. And not just a single sliding scale, but an infinite number of scales. Even this is just a human cognition tool, because those axioms (endpoints) are really just extreme examples, and are subjective in nature. Nevertheless, this will help you adopt a more nuanced view and deeper understanding of how the universe operates.
If you understand that there are no absolutes, you will always need to be seeking more information. Take this into consideration when making decisions. Temper your own convictions with a willingness to accept new understandings of truth. Accept that no decision or individual is ever perfect, ever completely “right” or “wrong”. There is no one right way to do things, because there is no such thing as an absolute.
Refrain from the temptation to blindly follow a decision, organization, or individual, because you believe they can do no wrong. Distrust anyone who believes they are 100% correct because they are probably delusional – we are all susceptible to imperfections. If someone is better than you in some aspect, feel free to learn from them, but do not try to become them. You have to remind yourself that they might be the expert in one area, but it is impossible for them to be experts in all. You will find that you are probably better than them in many aspects, so by trying to become them, you will lose those good qualities.
We have to operate in the world however, and denying the use of any type of heuristic or cognition tool, or even the difference between a perceived “good” or “bad”, would lead you to a life of inaction. Luckily, our innate use of these mechanisms is so strong that we really don’t have a choice in whether we use them or not. Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking, Fast and slow, even admits that after a lifetime of studying cognitive biases, he still falls prey to them on a very frequent basis. So we can use these learnings as another selective tool to help when we are making decisions, but this understanding does not have to debilitate us. Trust your intuition to know when to stop seeking more information. Our nature is built on the most powerful force – time. Our decision making abilities are literally time-tested over millions of years of evolution. If your individual decision making system fails you, accept and learn from it.
I believe this understanding will help you be a kinder person, develop as a life-long learner, and operate more peacefully in accord with nature. But of course I’m not 100% certain about that.
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