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In the article we read for class, the author said that “evil is in the eye of the beholder,”  So not only is something seen as evil depending on who is viewing it, but the meaning of evil will differ with who is defining it.  It’s hard to explain evil without using the word itself in the definition.  To me, evil is something that is wrong or harmful to yourself or others.  It’s difficult to say with complete sincerity that this is my definition of evil, because something like cheating on a test is wrong, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s evil, although it does apply to my definition.   I would say that torturing someone is evil.  Other modern examples of evil is murder or stealth.

Using this general definition of evil, you could see the past as a series of evil events.  Some of these events have led to great things though.  The Civil War, even though lots of people were killed, which is an “evil” act, eventually helped America become a more unified country, rather than a seperated one between blacks and whites.  Through the eyes of an American, the terrorists of September 11th are evil, but from their point of view, they were doing something good.  They sacrificed themselves for a cause that they believed in and proved a point to America.  Hitler didn’t see anything wrong with what he was doing during WWII, but many people felt, and still feel, that he was evil and all the things he destroyed and all the people killed were an effect of his evil.  Americans can see an event as evil, or a person as being evil, but another group, which may have the same definition of evil, doesn’t view the event or person as evil.

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