Evil

An early scene in Roger Zelazny's "Lord of Light" has the title character giving a sermon on the nature of Evil. His audience consists of Buddhist monks with a worldview that doesn't recognize Evil or Good as independent concepts - or,at least, as concepts relevant to their spiritual goals. The sermon therefore describes the world to them in different terms, of Beauty versus Ugliness. Re-definition allows the same point to be made, avoiding their cultural blind spot.

An article in Forbes has a young (Millennial) developer at game developer OMGPop refusing to accept a job offer from mega-developer Zygna after the startup was acquired. He had specific job-related reasons to refuse, but eventually translated them into a more expansive moral reason: Zygna is Evil.

As the source article on Gamasutra points out, there is a willing rejection in business to describe businesses or the business world or the pursuit of profit as Evil. Indeed, a business and it's employees are pursuing survival, usually, and we do not want to punish that. With an insight that is just what might be expected from a Millennial, he defines Evil in terms of "destroying one's own ecosystem," endangering the survival of others and even of itself.

I call this a Millennial view of the world because of its assumption of interdependence, that everything has to work together for Good to happen. It's not a perspective that I would have come up with, certainly. I consider evil in terms of malice, of intentional effort in pursuit of personal goals where the well-being of others is disregarded or actively opposed. In his formulation, evil can be independent of active intention.

Which isn't to say that it's better nor worse than my definition. His could punish "Evil" based on unintended consequences; mine could ignore longer-term dangers because, hey, who could have known? (Was the 2008 financial crisis due to Evil? Discuss.) It is useful to consider alternatives, and the distinct shared experiences of each generation can yield new ways of examining old - ancient!- problems.

In any case, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Crisis ending with some punished under a definition of Evil much like this Millennial one - or the next High defining its inevitable Enemies of the State in similar terms.