Can evil be defined and quantified?

Yes. We all do it, all the time. But we need to do it better.

I am a judgmental person. I don’t judge about many issues, but on those for which I do judge, I judge swiftly and harshly. Perhaps this makes me a bad person, but nobody can deny how intoxicating it feels to feel righteous. And nothing feels more righteous than righteous anger.

Again, we all do it. Don’t act like you’ve never swore at somebody in traffic. Don’t act like you’ve never called your political opponents four-letter words. Don’t act like you wouldn’t love to be able to write a name down in a notebook, and see that person drop dead in the exact way you write.

That’s judgement. We all do it, but some of us do it better than others. (I’m looking at you 🫵, asshole!)

Just kidding, but you get my point.

When you do it, you’d better have good explanation for doing it, because it has consequences for those who get judged. I try to live by a set of moral principles, and I’m frequently bad at it. So grace is important too. Probably even more important than the principle of trying to evaluate objectively.

Plenty of people have judged me. Sometimes wrongly, and sometimes to an egregious degree. But also frequently correctly, because we can all be assholes sometimes. The only question is whether we’re assholes all the time. Because some of us are.

Some people are acting with malice, and relying on our generous propensity to give grace to sinners. Some people use words that they intentionally redefine to suit their needs. Some people are manipulators just trying to recruit you to their smear campaign. Some people are resentful of those who have it better than them. Some people say different things in private compared to what they say in public. Some people are using others. Some people are shirking their responsibilities to others. But none of this makes them evil.

If we classify people according to their moral disposition, I would say there are three types of people: garden-variety sinners, the wicked, and the evil. But which is which?

Most people are garden-variety sinners. These people are self-acknowledged imperfect people, striving in vain for perfection that can never be attained. I would say these people are good people.

Wicked people are those who are not actually trying to be good. It’s not that they’re evil, it’s that they “know” themselves to be good, so they don’t listen to you when you say, “Ouch, that hurts!” I’ve seen it so often that I’m not even sure they have the ability to hear words which implicate them in often minor ways.

It’s not a big deal if somebody accidentally steps on your toes. Most people offer a quick apology, and it’s like it never happened. That’s what good people do. But what if, instead of apologizing, they instead said, “Watch where you’re going!” You may infer that this person may not care much about others. If a person who wrongs you can immediately rationalize away their guilt, that person is wicked.

But how often can it happen and still be an “accident”? Two times? Five times? Twenty times? What is your threshold for determining that somebody who is “sorry” is not actually, in fact, sorry? Maybe the third time somebody mashes on your toes and says, “Sorry! 😏” with a shit-eating grin— you should go ahead and realize that this person is not looking out for your interests, and is in fact bent on your destruction. That’s evil!

Now maybe you want to point out that this is not a very detailed framework for defining and quantifying evil, and you’d be right. But the point is that we all have ways of identifying evil. We all have a sense of what is moral. Some of us believe morality is objective, and some of use believe it is subjective, but we can all define what is and is not moral, at least to some extent.

We have families, court rooms, religions, clubs, organizations, and everyday garden-variety sinners all telling us who is right and wrong, and why. We do not lack the will or ability to judge others. We do not lack the frameworks to judge others.

But when you look in the mirror, I doubt you say, “You judgmental asshole!” I’ll bet you think you’re a good person, and it’s all those other assholes who don’t have the decency to feel bad about who they are. I bet you stare at yourself in the mirror, and become slightly aroused by your own perfection. I know that’s what I do.

And that’s really the problem. Most people aren’t willing to take an honest look at themselves. Most people are so convinced of their own righteousness that they’re probably not worth listening to. And if all you do is complain about all the bad people in the world, people correctly start to believe you’re one of them, and tune you out.

Because until you’re willing to be honest about your own capacity for evil in this world, people should not trust you. I encountered evil at a very young age, and I was forced to contemplate whether I was capable of murder. I am. And by the way, so are you. Only after you acknowledge your own capacity for evil can you keep it in check.

But it’s not easy to admit, at first. When you learn about your own nature, it can be downright scary. How could I even contemplate such a thing? Doesn’t that make me evil? I would argue it’s a fact about me held in common with the entirety of humanity. No matter what you believe about yourself, you are human and I know that much about you.

Generally, if you’re not held accountable by others, your capacity for wickedness will increase to fill the space available. So how can we hold wicked and evil people accountable for their actions without entangling good people along with them?

We already have frameworks for judging the actions of others. What we lack is a set of facts held in common. In fact, wicked and evil people depend on it! They thrive when they can defeat transparency. Their power grows when your ability to speak against them is limited. They win when they can discredit you with lies you’re not aware are being told about you.

Therefore we must establish a set of facts held in common. Right now we can do that with writing. Speech is how we help to establish those facts. But wicked people can simply avoid engaging in good faith, or engaging at all. Evil people employ lies. So how can we avoid such things in our commonly held facts?

Courtrooms employ a standard, imperfect though it is, that could be emulated or improved upon. Or overhauled. The point is that we don’t lack the will or ability to change how judgments on people are adjudicated in this world. Instead we lack the infrastructure to bring evidence, testimony, and judgements into a common space where everybody can see the codified rules of engagement.

That is a solvable problem.