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by s1artibartfast 28 days ago
I'm coming to realize that the word evil has remarkably different meanings to different people. Some people consider evil to be the epitome of immorality, while some consider it anyone less than neutral, or anything that is complicated with a aspect that is less than neutral.

Part of this is black and white compression and modern drift towards superlatives.

However, I wonder if translation also plays a factor. For example German translates evil to böse, and you might also use that to describe a naughty child.

1 comments

> the word evil has remarkably different meanings to different people. Some people consider evil to be the epitome of immorality, while some consider it anyone less than neutral, or anything that is complicated with a aspect that is less than neutral

I'm using it casually. They're still my friends, and I think they're trying to be good people. They know they're furthering an evil enterprise, but it's not clearly more evil than other job options, and they need to survive and try to do good where they can. (They're all looking for an exit.)