This-essay is a7706261.htm which is available at the web-site www.essayz.com. See more notes at the bottom. Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay By-Months By-Years By-Words Webs of Like-&-Un-Like ESSAYS <==> Like-&-UN-Like This-One ========================================================== %EVIL-1 770626 Evil is an abstraction used to explain human relational imperfections. The imperfections are existential realities. We experience frustration when our noblest good intentions do not lead to the fulfillment of our highest aspirations. Our expectation is that through intense dedication and effort our highest ideals should be realized. It is virtually impossible to call into question our noblest good intentions and our highest aspirations/ideals. It is intolerable to believe that the nature of the universe is such as to fail to support us in our noblest aspirations. We are too confident of our knowledge of what is good and evil to examine our values in the light of their consequences in everyday life. We are thus blinded to the way in which our inappropriate (but ultimately cherished) values and value systems are themselves the origin of our alienation and so the occasion for much of our thoughtless, heartless, unwise behavior. We are often incapable of judging our values and value systems in terms of how much they promote reconciliation versus how much they promote self- righteousness, judgementalism, condemnation, excommunication, punishment, alienation, sin, sins, and the undermining of our highest aspirations. When we place our cherished values and value systems above the essential human need for continued dialogue, we lose the best standard by which to judge our values and value systems. Once we have make idols of our values and value systems we must devise a way of coping with the existential reality that we can not behave in ways which fulfill the promises implicit in them. The traditional coping mechanism is to invent" forces" which are acting to further what we call "good" in support of our values, and explain temporary imperfections in terms of "forces" of "evil". We thus excuse ourselves from examining our idolatrous values and externalize the problem---until we discover our invented "evil" within ourselves. So long as we continue to explain things in terms of a presumed knowledge of "good" and "evil" and where they reside, so long will we be kept out of the Garden of Eden for eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We pay for that knowledge with the breakdown of human dialogue. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in www.essayz.com Search for Integrity and Honesty (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================
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