A friend in India asked a question this morning.  What is the difference between bad and evil?  So I took a stab at it.  I’m not entirely certain even what “good” means. If I looked up a dictionary definition, I’m pretty sure that bad would mean morally wrong, unsatisfactory, inadequate, inferior, of poor quality. Evil would mean profoundly immoral and malevolent. Which makes evil mean intensely bad, perhaps.

I get stuck in the weeds sometimes, though, when considering examples. Is murder wrong? Well, sometimes the deliberate killing of another with malice is the moral thing to do, such as in self-defense of the tribe, or in war for resources so you don’t all die. Even just killing isn’t wrong, because hunting, or because killing all the bad bacteria to save a life And that’s the thing with the examples, often the taking of one life is linked to the saving of more lives on the other side of the balance scale.

Which brings me to a question of why western morality is so intent on saving human lives. Is that always moral? Is it really morally our job to stuff as many humans as possible onto the planet at the expense of the biodiversity of non-human life? Is that really good? Isn’t death and destruction part of the cycle of life, and should be perpetrated and celebrated by humans from time to time to renew the tree of life/liberty/Yggdrasil?

Drinking poison is not always evil. Take chemo for example, or the various forms of illegal cancer cures like turpentine. Even self-destruction is not always evil. Some religious traditions love their self-flagellation. They love the self-imposed scars. Or they are Ahora and purify themselves with alcohol and fire and the skulls of the dead.

Instead, perhaps, not accepting that people must die, not allowing them to do so with reduced time and suffering, that is the evil thing. If I accept the premise that all life and all actions are sacred, because they’re all connected by the red threads in the tapestry of the universe, then I must also accept that all deaths and all destructions are also all sacred, even the suicidal ones. I don’t expect anybody to accept this with me. I am free to change my mind, should more information on the foundational structure of morality come along.

Most people I’ve met have a morality a lot like Daniel Quinn’s description in one of his Ishmael book series. There is the in-group, your own tribe of Bawks and Cawks and Dawks, which you are to keep alive at all costs, and the out-group, which it is preferable to stop from killing the in-group, which may mean killing them but not at the expense of your own deaths. Some people go further, and say that protecting your in-group extends to protecting your land-base from destruction. Most people don’t, because they are nomads and will move on to the next greener wateringhole they can find and take.

In the depths of myth, though, they’re aware of the ancient practices of human sacrifice to the gods for a good harvest. Unable to face death without fear, they scream “All Lives Matter!” and “All Lives are Sacred!” as loudly as possible, as if to drown out Kali, as if to drown out Moloch.

So, to answer the question, it depends on who decides what the definition of bad or evil is. Is it your tribe? Is it you? Is it “society”? Is it your government? Is it your church? There are splits and schisms all over the place on how people answer this one. Is it morally right to rape your wife if a child results? Can you see how different foundations of morality could make different cultures answer the question differently? The answer must be decentralized. It must be local. What is bad for me may not be bad for you. What is evil for me, may not be evil for you. Does that make us inherently unequal?