The philosphical problem of why evil exists refuses to go away and has never been satisfactorily answered even by some of the world’s greatest thinkers from ancient times to present day. Why should I then chip in my miniscule tuppence worth?  The reason I do is because like most people who have to live in the world today I find evil totally purposeless, perplexing, disturbing, incomprehensible and without value in the least. If we consider the countless suffering evil has wrought upon humanity throughout the ages, can we ever see any rhyme or reason behind it…any shred of good to come out of it?  The problem is, in trying to analyse and rationalise evil we find ourselves in a moral maze of confusing ethical and moral pathways.  Personally, I see shades of grey rather black and white on the issue. I find evil morally bankrupt and repugnant yet in order to understand it I have to at least try to see what value there is in its existence.  This is where we can bring some of the ethical arguments in. Is it ever right to kill?  Well, in the case of tyrannical despots such as Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Amin, Hussein, Ceaucescu and such,  on the face of it, the answer would seem to be a resounding “yes”.  This is utilitarianism, taking one life to save thousands….but we then have blood on our hands too!  We have committed evil by killing a human being.  Do we kill in order to save… take wild animal attacks, we have no compunction over killing the animal to save a human life.  A snake, shark, tiger etc kills by its very nature…it can do no other.  The difference is, animals kill to feed…we, on the other hand, kill for a variety of reasons, personal revenge, a drink fuelled attack, peer pressure, jealousy, envy, hatred even violence for the sake of it, for kicks. Some people on our streets are sociopathic or psychopathic by nature and prey on others…strangely enough, some of our best soldiers or military personnel would be killers on our streets but the army etc gives them a legitimate reason to kill other human beings and guess what…I’m sure the forces have their share of psychopaths who revel in violence also.  There is also that spirit of mob rule, the apparent, quick change which infects a group to inflict violence upon others, think of football matches, political protests or riots…of course there are myriad reasons why people change…political agent provocateurs in an otherwise peaceful crowd and also a “top down” oftentimes erroneous decision from the police to charge in on horseback and with batons striking anyone down who happens to be there.  In the freewill argument, we probably inflict violence or visit evil upon someone simply because we can, which brings me to an interesting point…is the evil we perpetrate wholly of our own volition and making or is there some incorporeal malevolent force at work like an invisible puppet master and if so, is this force rational and intentional or simply a blind, random piece of negative energy which infuses the unfortunate person and causes them to act in an evil manner?   Here we have the nature versus nurture argument.  Are some people genetically predisposed towards certain acts or actions and therefore cannot help themselves…e.g. Harold Shipman, Peter Sutcliffe, Fred West, are these people born “evil” or are they products of their environment…e.g. a bad upbringing, lacking in love, comfort and security.  What of Dr Shipman then?  Were these people bad seeds from the moment they fell out the womb?   I’m no FBI profiler and no doubt there would be a plethora of socio economic and genetic reasons given for the actions of these people from disturbed, poor or dysfunctional childhood to mitigate or at least explain what they did.   In the case of people like Sutcliffe and Michael Ryan, they each clasimed to have been instructed by voices in their heads to “kill”….the question is…are their answers based in some sort of fact? Is there an evil force that can manipulate human beings at will, such as demons or a devil? Is the devil merely a convenient hook upon which evil people hang their own misdeeds? Strangely enough some psychics when visitng certain places, will experience bad feelings, fear and nausea as well as sensing feelings of ‘evil’ in that location…so is evil palpable or tangible?  Is evil some sort of ‘golem’ formed out of mass negative thought which then assumes a form of solidity and a will of its own…much as the invisible violent force in the film Forbidden Planet.  There are of course, different types of evil…..personal and impersonal and corporate.  Personal is person against person, Natural evil results from nature erupting as earthquakes, floods, droughts, typhoons, tornadoes, hurricanes and tsunamis and corporate evil would be companies or groups acting in an evil immoral way which resulted in deprivation, disaster or destruction and death.   Can evil people be evil 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year?  Take Hitler, although branded a demon and villain, to those on his side who knew him, he was a fine orator, an amiable, jovial man who was charismatic, who loved animals and children.  The strange thing is…although he acted like a monster who never dirtied his hands, he soiled his soul by targeting, bullying, harassing, depriving, torturing and murdering millions of people and all done through his minions who idolised him and could never see him as a monster, a psychopath or a demon….but instead saw him as a world class leader, superman and saviour of Germany and master of the world. So, the question remains, does evil need to exist, does the fact that it does exist mean that ‘God’ if he/she/it exists is in some way imperfect and unable to prevent evil or has evil some redemptive power that we cannot comprehend?  Is it because matter is inherently ‘flawed’ because of its density and therefore is a tainted set of celestial lego bricks?  The gnostics thought this, they believed the world to be made by an evil demi-urge (a flawed god) and therefore all matter (including us) was evil and the only way to secape its clutches was to pop one’s clogs!  The old chestnut about evil bringing about good is still bandied around today, some commentators say without evil we can never appreciate the good???  Sorry…but I can get along just fine and appreciate my life without needing evil in the world.  Try telling someone losing a child or other loved one to cancer that there is some kind of greater purpose going on and see what reaction you get!  I read on a website today that evil indeed has such a purpose and that we are mistaken in our thinking and also that it MUST coexist alongside good…there is no other way and that because we see things from a limited human perspective and NOT  the big picture we erroneously attribute names like this is good and that is bad or evil. According to that theory, this results from a wrong view of things as they truly ‘are’.  In this view, good and evil are in fact two opposing sides of the same celestial coin, the yin and yang, if you like and one cannot exist without the other!  I have to admit, perhaps we will never truly understand why evil exists and have to reluctantly consign it to the box marked unsolved mysteries!