Schrödinger's Cat: Both Evil and Good Until Observed

*For those of you who are not familiar with Schrödinger's Cat, click here.

Unless characters from stories that are poorly written and clichéd count, there is no absolute for good or evil. Every action can be interpreted as either good or evil. From a technical standpoint, someone could measure the responses of observers to an action executed by a nondescript subject, and maybe then could we measure the “evilness” or “goodness” of an action. However, with an infinite amount of variables, such as the subject’s gender, race, or religion, and the differences in reactions of observers and their own personal descriptors, there will never, ever be an action that elicits the exact same response from every single human being that there ever is, was, or will be. To put it simply, there is never any pure evil or good; there are only shades of grey that might appear to be white or appear to be black – it all depends on the observer.

For conflicts between two (or more) people/groups of people, it’s never an example of “Good vs. Evil”. It’s only a conflict of people who believe in a different type of good/evil. For instance, the war on terror is a fairly accurate example of this. While most people disagree with the ideals of the militant groups in the Middle East, there still are those who are in those said groups who truly believe that their actions are good, and that the west is evil. Even if you exclude these people, there are still many who see the terrorists as simply misguided and not evil.

In a society without emotion there might truly be no good or evil, but at what cost? Emotion is what makes humans people. Without emotion, we’re simply drones that do whatever lets us conform; we see it in George Orwell’s 1984 – people with suppressed emotions are not productive, and it is counter-intuitive to the development of the human race.

Eliminating all that is evil is possible, if you’re willing to commit mass murder and possibly genocide. Since all good and evil is relative to the observer, and there’s nothing that every person believes is evil, there’s no way to remove all evil without ruining someone’s day. A notable individual that tried to exterminate all evil was Hitler. He is, most likely, the most evil person by today’s standards; however, in the 30s and 40s, there were many Nazis and Nazi sympathizers who saw Hitler as a role model of sorts.

The Oxford Dictionary defines “Evil” as “Profoundly immoral and malevolent”, and “Good” as “That which is morally right; righteousness.”

Seems pretty clear-cut and straightforward, right?

If you answered yes, you probably haven’t read anything I’ve written up to this point.

To summarize:

- There is no absolute good or evil; only what is perceived to be good or evil.

- The only way to have no good nor evil is to have a society without emotion; however, the one who made this society have no emotion can be considered to be evil.

- You can’t get rid of all evil in the world without being considered evil by anyone, anywhere, and in any time.