Predator and Prey......Good and Evil?

While googling I came across one of Alley's old posts concerning rapists, which Buffalo had replied to in his straight from the hip yet philosophical manner, which led to a discussion concerning the nature of evil. One camp suggests that evil people are simply born such, while the other suggests they become that way thru societal or family influences.
Well, I am so tempted to think that evil is a force that is balanced equally by good, and most would accept that as the ying and yang of existence, but I believe that the concepts of good and evil exist only as perception in the mind of humans. The deer flees the wolf not because he sees the wolf as a force of evil, but as a predator, out to kill and eat him, which is neither good nor bad. The force of good does not produce a warm spring day while evil whips up a category five hurricane; it's just weather. The flawless skin is not a product of good any more than the melanoma is a product of evil.


Depending on brain development and upbringing, there are so many factors that influence how a person perceives the world around him and reacts to it. I tend to believe there are many conditions that the human brain becomes hard-wired for, including sexual orientation, and I would be willing to bet that sociopaths also suffer from some deficit in the womb, although it can be seen all around us how children can be raised to have utterly no empathy at all. Still, the evidence exists in abundance that children raised in conditions of despair manage somehow to rise above it all to become healthy, empathetic adults who do not follow in the footsteps of their families and peers. So where does this evil come from?

Like I have already suggested, evil is perception. Even behaviors that in some societies or different times were considered evil are now thought of as benign or harmless. There will never come a time in which serial killers and rapists will be considered normal, but in the country of Iraq, there was a whole sect of muslims that considered the terror of Sadam Hussein to be nothing more than the way it should be. I speak of a large segment of the Sunni population in and around Bagdad. The power and influence these people enjoyed under the protection of their benefactor came at the price of oppression of all other sects in Iraq. The Shiites considered him evil, yet they also view the U.S. as the Great Satan. So, evil CAN be relative.

But, let's be honest here. Does it really matter what created the evil once the damage is done? Yes, we should open our eyes to how this evil was created, but hindsight, even 20/20, does not fix the evil that has already sprung forth. As long as we ignore the lessons we are taught, we are doomed to repeat them. So, we need to pay attention or continue to suffer the consequences. But I suggest it is an utter waste to turn the other cheek in the interests of goodness and charity and not deal with evil as it manifests itself. If we are the deer, we need protection from the wolf, and it makes no difference if our wolves are good or evil, they are wolves.