Evil (Existence Extinguished)

Intellectual discussion, confrontation, and writing not only guide, but also may be the only way to guarantee human survival, and they are the greatest of pleasures. The tools for this marketplace of ideas and cerebral enjoyment are WORDS. However, their use rests atop an Occam’s razor of sorts—they either mirror reality or rape it. Words used to deal with reality are not a matter of opinion, of polls, of a vote, or a matter of historical context. Such words are conceptual representation objectively subsumed by reality. Through our senses, perception, and scientific exploration, these words allow us to accurately understand reality; they represent the truth about reality. They are, then, the foundation for paradigms by which we live our lives. They provide a recipe for us to write and reason about The Singularity, The Evolution of Life, Existence, and Consciousness. The most important ones, we call axioms or laws defining self-evident truth.

This essay is about two of those self-evident words, in fact the two most important to the existence and survival of Homo sapiens: EVIL and PRIME. Words that as Plato remarked decide matters of “life and death.” As will become clear EVIL can be thought of as ANTI-PRIME; they have the same genesis. They hold a Janus-faced symbiotic relationship, though never for beneficial reasons. They are Siamese twins that evolved simultaneously at that nexus in time when Hominids evolved a cerebral cortex capable of consciousness of itself and of its mortality. Together, these conjoined twins (EVIL and PRIME) are synonymous with THE INDIVIDUAL HUMAN BEING.

When I conceptualized PRIME in essays and the book I’m writing, as the ultimate existent subsuming all paradigms of and about human consciousness and existence, I did not formally conceptualize its polar opposite. That archetype of Anti-Prime is, of course, the word EVIL. It alone, of all words available, etymologically integrates the absolute negation of PRIME, hence of existence and consciousness. However, in this exceptional case, Noah Webster’s great book offers little help. It simply states,

1. Anything that causes displeasure, injury, pain, suffering, etc.
2. Moral depravity, wickedness, anything morally bad or wrong.

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