But what IS evil? Well, we don't have to get particularly metaphysical about this. Evil is a function of human society. It has to do with the interactions of quantities of us (or probably any advanced life form).
So there's a decidedly "quantitative" variable here. As our numbers increase, so does the complexity of our social infrastructure. And that seems to be the rub, since invisibly and insidiously the "social game rules" are conditioned into our vulnerable, biological brains.
And just here is the door to hell. This dimension can be called "consensus reality" and it's an admixture of language (always language!), the past, memory (not always our friend), and the miscellaneous conditionings of our time, place, and families (often profoundly dysfunctional).
More openly, here are the programmed religions, laws, constitutions, and "theories" we so love to worship.
In short, here is the stopping point of our species. Not atomic weapons, but the accumulated programming of years of social/psychological conditioning.
The "operational definition" of all of the above is THOUGHT, because consensus realty IS thought; hence the thing the human race does best is think itself to death.
On a positive note, words like liberation, transcendence, and Enlightenment are "mystical" (the shoe fits) alternatives to this "swallowed whole" existence. The intelligence limitations of our species are still sublimely unknown, but whatever pragmatic value consensus reality may offer, our lives don't even BEGIN until we get straight that this fire storm of conditioning that has become the "mind set" of the entire human race (indeed, the very "God” of the human race), is fundamentally, radically, and biologically arbitrary and random.
In the context of this piece, what this means that the SOCIAL GAME RULES that perpetuate the "Have's", that justify their astronomical wealth and power, and that (worst of all!) give an obscene "righteousness" to deranged right wing lunatics who so love to commit genocide for the glory of God, aren't worth the toilet paper they are printed on.
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