RE: Win Some SBD - A Writing Contest... with a Hidden Agenda
"Man was born to turn the world into a paradise, but tragically he was born flawed. And so his paradise has always been spoiled by stupidity, greed, destructiveness, and shortsightedness."
If you give a man a fish or utopia he will want more. He is a greedy conqueror and peace confuses him. So he will destroy something to have something to fix. He will destroy social traditions to reconstruct new social values. He ironically destroys again to go back to "simpler" times. He is for and against change. He will cure most fatal diseases and be against vaccines.
Because, in grand scale of things a purposeful effort is an oxymoron and man distracts himself with this chaotic cycle of stupidity of reconstruction. There cannot be everlasting heaven. Nothing truly lasts.
Why do you accept the premises and assumptions in the quote? The belief we are born flawed provides justification for the evil we do. What if we are not flawed?
Always? What do we do right?
The evil is justified to the wrong doer. It is rational to him and consistently logical. In adherence to context of right and wrong a man is born with the blueprint that will drive his endeavors and guide his nurturing. Much of it is circumstances but not really. His moral compass and affiliations are his design. He will act on behalf of his cumulative choices and someone else perceives it as good or bad, thus right and wrong and good and evil are relative. So if there is not any absolute the needle can be nudged left or right to fit the definition of what is evil. Therein comes the conscience which one in ten doesn't possess and the rest posses in a range of degree so what is evil to one is funny to another.
So evil is not quantifiable even in a range. It is the necessary dogma to regulate a society in peace time, completely malleable. Evil is just the other side of line society draws called law and asks everybody to not cross if they want benefits of social contract. Evil is just a narrative which in broader perspective is no more than a utilitarian disaster.