Our ego, pride and self-esteem rely on how much beauty, knowledge, talent, charisma, and intelligence we presume to have. Or better: on how much under such qualities, we presume to outdo others, because we also demand uniqueness in everything that defines us.
If you don't agree, then simply suppose that, for a moment, you have the power to give every "inferior" human being on this planet the amount of beauty, knowledge, talent, charisma or intelligence the need to match your level. Would you do it? From a moral standpoint, you should. Still, some might think it would probably be the most stupid decision of your entire existence. Because our nature (despite being mostly righteous and moral) is only good as far as our ego and vanity can allow.
Ego can be the most powerful drive of progress. If not for ego we would be having a very primitive society, content with its simplicity. That's why good and evil seem to be illusion. Everything is just useful, otherwise it would not exist.
I've heard people saying, "Why does God create evil in this world, murder, war, people hurt each other. Why does God have the heart to let that happen? Isn't God the almighty can change, prevent, or stop all that evil? Why?"
And then these people eventually left God.
I'd say, maybe when we see it from above, we might understand better, not "the" God, but for the why.
Since most of the evil is powered by ego--wars, exploitation, betrayal. Power hunger or money hunger are just ego. What is more, those selfish-ego-powered needs bring most of the progress like culture, civilization, inventions, or economy. Since evil is as necessary as good, and if evil is useful does it have a proper label and usefulness as seen from our perspective of what progress brings?
If you accept that our needs are intrinsic to our nature, then so is the concept of usefulness. Every war was good to the winners and bad to the losers, similarly defending yourself seems to be morally right but attacking morally wrong while there's always an attacker. My point is, everything that happened from our human initiative was useful in some way--useful means it had positive consequences, and I mean long term and necessary. So it challenges the concepts of traditionally understood good and evil.
Let's say without all of our evil, our species would go extinct, would that evil still be evil? What is a good motivation for the war other than defending yourself? If not for all the evil, we would be long extinct or soon extinct or very primitive in nature.
My whole point is, that things we consider evil are in fact profitable. I'm not advocating for evil, I'm wondering about the nature and order of things and I begin to see that good and evil serve the same purpose and contribute equally much to existence, like yin and yang.
I personally wouldn't be able to do anything evil, I get devastated for a days when there is an act of terrorism for example, but I think the natural order of the universe holds what we perceive as good and evil in that same regard. Although I don't accept it emotionally, rationally I think all the evil that takes place at least universally might be as important and necessary as the good in the grand scheme of life.
It might be the wars that result in enormous scientific progress. Most of the technologies we have today were originally created for wars. Again wars or conquest and therefore murder. But if people didn't conquer other people, great rich empires wouldn't be created and without enough resources collected in "one hands" there would be not enough progress. We would be scattered tribes unable to build anything big. Examples of that are there in the history of the world.
Which makes me question our perception of evil and the level of our self awareness from the God-creation point of view. Maybe more evolved creatures than us would ditch the concepts of good and evil and operate on other terms? Maybe they would be purely utilitarian?
The nature of the world is not what we expected it to be and we can investigating that, looking at it from different angles, but only limited to thoughts, the reality behind that is not necessarily we can achieve. I think the picture is much bigger than we are able to see through our narrow lenses. I think we might be in fact lacking in self-and-universe awareness to understand it all.
Since we are a kid we are exposed to this good vs evil potentially false dichotomy. Through religion, through literature, society, and the picture might be much more complex. We don't even know what we are like. We don't know how much of what we are is learnt and how much is innate.
