Evil

“Evil is a point of View” – Anne Rice

WRITTEN BY: MYLES P*******

The term evil can be defined as “morally wrong or bad”. As human beings, we all have different opinions and point of views to every situation. There have been many occasions in the past that could inarguably be defined as evil through a global perspective; however the viewpoint of the individual does not always reflect the global outlook. Slavery is an example of one of these situations that is usually only seen as evil. Another illustration of this is the amount of casualties in World War 2 on both sides of the war. The War in Iraq can also be split into two sides and both believe that they are right. Opinions have changed on evil throughout time as does our tolerance of what we define as evil or not. So we ask ourselves, who determines what is evil and what is good? There is no absolute good or evil, they are each only relative to our perspectives and can be justified by us.

Slavery proves that our tolerance of evil can change over time and we can see that there are clearly two different viewpoints to the situation. Slave-owners saw slavery as an opportunity to increase revenue and prosperity for their nation. Slaves were seen as nothing more than assets, similar to cattle and sheep. The slave-owners and those who were responsible for enforcing slavery thought that what they were doing was good for their nation. Those who are on the outside and of course slaves themselves saw this as evil. The Ku Klux Klan a “secret domestic militant organization” saw that the murders and torturing of blacks was the right thing to do in order to preserve the “White-America”. They used biblical interpretations as a means to condone and fuel their actions. White people were finally forced to accept blacks through legislation; however they still saw them as a lesser species. Although the law forced them to give blacks rights, there was still a lot of segregation and unease between the...