People are not inherently “evil.”
Every human being is a complex mixture of capacities for empathy, cooperation, cruelty, and self-interest. Genetic predispositions, upbringing, and — most powerfully — the prevailing social, economic, and cultural systems powerfully nudge individuals toward one set of behaviours over another. Labelling entire groups or classes of people as “evil” essentializes them, ignores context, and opens the door to dehumanization and violence.
Consider historical oppressive structures:
Under slavery: Enslaved people were the oppressed, yet not every enslaved person was virtuous or incapable of cruelty. Slave-owners were the oppressors, yet not every slave-owner was sadistic or devoid of redeeming qualities. The institution itself generated and rewarded brutality far beyond what most individuals would exhibit in a different system.
Under caste, feudalism, monarchy, patriarchy, or other hierarchical orders: The same pattern holds. Oppressors benefit from, and are shaped by, the system; the oppressed suffer under it — but moral character is distributed across both groups rather than being cleanly divided along the lines of power.
The real locus of the problem is therefore the system — the rules, incentives, norms, and institutions that systematically reward anti-social, exploitative, or violent behaviour while punishing prosocial alternatives.
Changing individuals while leaving the underlying structure intact usually produces only temporary or superficial shifts; the same patterns re-emerge because the incentives remain.
In contrast, genuinely emancipatory social structures do not rely on assuming everyone is already “good.” Instead, they:
Establish clear, impartial rule of law that discourages excessive self-centered or in-group favoritism.
Create incentives and safety-nets that reward cooperation, mutual aid, and long-term collective well-being over short-term predation.
Reduce extreme asymmetries of power that allow small groups to exploit or dominate others with impunity.
When ordinary humans take verses from ancient texts as license to purge categories of people, it almost always becomes a justification for authoritarian violence, caste violence, communal pogroms, or fascist cleansing — all of which have repeatedly failed to establish any lasting dharma, and instead reproduced new cycles of adharma.
True protection of the good and re-establishment of dharma therefore lie not in hunting “evil individuals,” but in dismantling and replacing the social architectures that make destructive behavior rational, rewarded, and even necessary for survival.
Blaming and destroying people while preserving (or ignoring) the systems is not justice — it is scapegoating. It is also the classic premise of many of history’s worst atrocities.
In short: Find alternatives to replace oppressive structures, rather than demonize people within these. The former can potentially lead to lasting change for the good; the latter can only perpetuate oppression.
Comments
Post a Comment