Dawn and Dusk

Good and Evil. The definition of these words will greatly vary from person to person, however for the purpose of this post I will define evil as any “unwarranted harm inflicted on another living being”. Anyway, let’s get into this shall we?

Now, why do humans commit acts of evil? I believe that it all comes down to two words: desire and fear. Fear of others can lead to acting irrationally and defensively, and easily leads to hate and, in turn, violence. Meanwhile, human desire for things like wealth, happiness, and power easily lead to pushing others down in order to pull themselves up, whether it be from exploitative business practices or something as simple as bullying. However, while these feelings can easily cause evil, these two feelings are part of the human experience whether we like it or not. We all feel them at certain points, and this is not necessarily a bad thing. It is when desire leads to greed and fear into paranoia when these things become dangerous. And unfortunately, it is incredibly easy for humans to slip into these extremes, oftentimes having their “bad actions” rationalized either by themselves or by society.

Now we get into the idea of a “Utopia”, which once again is a word whose definition will greatly vary from person to person. And it’s for this very reason that the idea of a “Utopia” becomes a paradox. One person’s view of an ideal world is another person’s worst nightmare. I mean just look at modern American politics. Each side of the political spectrum believes that “if only the other side wouldn’t get in our way, we could create a better, idealistic American society!”.

Hmm… well, in that case, would a Utopia be where groups of people who all have the same idea of what a Utopia should be come together in isolated communities and make it happen? And if so, does a Utopia really boil down to becoming an echo chamber that won’t tolerate any deviancy to a central idea? Is a Utopia really just drawing lines in the sand and telling people never to cross into other worlds and see other ideas? And I mean don’t we already do this to some degree by dividing ourselves into different countries?

Yeah… I think Utopias are impossible. Dividing ourselves with lines of “what we think a perfect would would be” is incredibly dangerous for two key reasons. 1) It never ends, as there are nearly infinite sub groups of people with slightly different beliefs, and 2) Dividing ourselves along these lines almost always leads to a certain level of fear towards people who believe different things, and thus who pose a threat to a group’s idea of a “perfect world”. And as we covered up there, fear easily leads to irrational fear which easily leads to acts of evil.

As a result of this, I can’t really say what governments could do to try and create a Utopia, because quite frankly that goes against my entire point. I mean, I think more or less everyone could agree that an Ideal society would include one without “acts of evil”, but the key problem there is that no laws or actions can ever prevent humans from feeling fear or desire, which I said are the two primary sources of evil. A Utopia is an inherently individualist idea, and requires individuals to try to do good, not an external power or government somehow creating a “perfect society”. It requires people checking themselves on their own fear and desires. A Utopian society may be impossible to create, but individuals striving to make the world a better place in one form or another… that’s a step in the right direction. Maybe we can’t make a Utopian society, but maybe we can at least strive to make it a better society.