The word "evil" is just like the word "dark". Both are objectified by people as something bad and that which to avoid but really, they're both inherently the lack of something. While "dark" is just a lack of light, evil is just a lack of altruism which is not something fundamental in nature, but simply one of the many traits lifeforms have developed in order to help them survive.
At the dawn of life, single celled organisms and other more developed (but primitive by our standards) life forms only acted in such a way that they could gather resources for themselves without accounting for the welfare of other separate life forms. So by our standards, the world was pure evil back then. Only more complex symbiotic life forms like ourselves needed to develop selflessness because our survival is more effectively assured by our working in unision. Of course evolution is never ideal as it is simply a mechanical process so we still have the natural proclivity to assuring our own gain at the expense of others which, when you think about it, is the more fundamental form of behavior.
I find it interesting to note that SE chose Murillio's confrontation with that shit disturbing child as the follow-up of that passage. Of course he meant to use a child as the subject of said evil only to reinforce his point that what we call "evil" is just our natural tendencies, and not some entity brewed over time from sinister hate and the desire to cause misery as is the common misconception.
This post has been edited by Agraba: 30 July 2009 - 06:13 PM
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