One View of Evil

On Thu, 23 Apr 1998, Earl Wajenberg spouted the following do-gooder hippy communist propaganda:

Good may not always be nice, and evil may have its seductive side, but if good is good, then it's the common thread in justice, love, and mercy, while evil is the aching lack of those things.

Many people believe this, but those same people will then go on to disagree as to exactly what 'good' might be. Millenia of 'holy' wars have proved that humans can reach no common standard of 'good'. The Archangels certainly can't: their moralities vary as much as any two humans picked off the street.

Lucifer realised the truth of this long, long ago. Of course God, the Great Tyrant, wouldn't accept that his own preferences were as arbitrary and subjective as those of anyone else. Justice is no more nor less than imposing your personal standards on another. Mercy is the act of cultivating your enemies: David and Dominic are two Archangels who realise just how pointless *that* is.

Love? We have love down here. Some like it and some don't. I can take it or leave it. We have friendship, and just occasionally we have loyalty. Of course the angels would have you believe otherwise, but then their perceptions are clouded by their own blind love for their oppressors.

So maybe evil is seductive, and maybe it is attractive. But perhaps that is just because 'evil' is exactly 'that which I would do if only I had the courage to disagree with others', and good is 'that which I do because I'm too scared to believe in myself.'

So if canon describes angels in more appealing terms than demons, I think that's largely just inherent in the concepts.

Of course it is. You are 'good', so you self-righteously detest 'evil'. I am free, so I can look at the world without such arbitrary filters.