Good vs Evil: Intent, Purpose, Beliefs, Values, Shame, and Conscience.
My attempt at explaining how we're responsible for the Good and Evil in the world, and how that happens to come about.
I want to share some observations, thoughts and feelings I had last year after my break-up. Without going into detail, it concerned my behaviour and thought process at the time. It was eye-opening to me, but again I find myself in a familiar spot. It’s something I’m sitting with right now and trying to make sense of further.
I’d like to try and work through my thoughts and understanding about Good and Evil, intent and purpose, shame and conscience, as well as forgiveness means — and how they interconnect. I want to talk specifically about situations that involve people because I realise how important and great we are, but how we are capable of being the downfall of our little world if we allow ourselves to be. My examples are somewhat familiar to me, although they’re not real examples, they get the point across.
Let’s start with Good & Evil:
Whether you believe in God or not, we all know life is a war between Good & Evil, surely? A quick look around the world and it will show and tell you that. Now, it’d be wrong to think that Evil is out there somewhere, in another part of the world or another human, and not part of us — it’s only the Good that we contain, right? That’s a naive thought, is it not? We’re externalising the blame there. Not good.
I believe there is such a thing as God, and his opposite, the Devil. But to me, they’re not people as such. What I mean by this is that “God” & the “Devil” exist in the world. Right, but they’re not “here”. If they exist, it’s not in the physical realm just as most other things do. They need a “vehicle” or a means to act out in the world for the sole reason that they’re not physical beings. Therefore, the war between Good & Evil is spiritual. It takes place on the level of intangibility. God & the Devil act through us as human beings to fight the war in the physical realm — we’re the vehicle. We’re the means.
Okay, so, where and how does Good & Evil manifest itself in the world?
The answer is through us.
We’re all familiar with the story of Adam and Eve, yes? They lived in paradise in total innocence until the serpent — the Devil — enticed them to eat the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. As punishment for their disobedience, God banished them from Paradise. And God said,
"The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever."
We are gifted with self-consciousness. This means we are aware. We are self-aware — of all good and bad. It originates from our ability to think and act freely in the world. And how do we do that? Here’s what I think:
It begins in our thoughts:
We have thoughts we can and cannot control. Sometimes we’re unsure where they come from, and they vary from good to bad to neutral.
Thoughts then flow out of our mouths:
The thoughts go through germination via our words.
Thoughts take final form in our actions:
We actively and decisively bring about these thoughts and words into the world via our actions.
We have a three-step system we go through:
We sit with said thoughts, communicate (to ourselves or others) how they might show up in the world, and then decide whether or not to act them out. Three stages. Three chances we’re given to analyse our potential behaviour — to decide if “Good” or “Evil” will prevail.
But what makes a thought, our words and actions Good or Evil? I’m sure there’s more I’m missing to the equation I’ve drafted up but this is how far I’ve got — I see holes in it but I will share it anyway:
Our Intent.
We think a thought, we speak it into existence, and then we decide or decide not to act it out. To me, intent seems to be one of the deciding factors in how we can judge a thought, a sentence or somebody’s actions. The intent is iterative in some sense and is usually solidified between thought and speech. Intent comes before action because without it the act itself doesn’t have any direction.
An example: We eat because we are hungry. We get a hunger trigger, we think about what we want to eat, and then we make something to eat or we order something. The intent is to cure that feeling of hunger. But if the feeling of hunger wasn’t there, to begin with, we wouldn’t need to make a meal or order something. So, the intent comes before the action.
Now, in an emotionally heightened situation such as excitement, anger, love or sadness, a thought will arise. We will speak a certain set of words as a result of this, and then we’ll act out what we feel following the thoughts and words. The words will have a hint of the intent, but the act will be consumed by the intent itself.
Let me use a really easy and clear way to demonstrate intent:
The thought: I like and appreciate this girl a lot.
The words: “I want to let you know that your small gestures, although small, mean a lot to me.”
The action: To reward that behaviour in some way. Through presence, presents, love, affection, care, kindness, service, etc.
The intent is articulated and decided in that space between the thought and the words.
Let’s use an example where it could be more of a grey area:
The thought: Should I accept this invite to a work acquaintance's birthday? I know a girl who likes me will be there, but I’m in a relationship.
The words: “Yeah sounds good, looking forward to it.”
The action: You go to the party, and the girl is there. The way you decide to act is dictated by your intent that you agreed with yourself — that space between your thoughts and words.
In this case, it’s a “Yes, I’ll show up”. Now, I haven’t set the intent with this example yet because I’d like to try to make a point about different intent. Right now, it’s neutral. It could go two ways: Good, or bad.
Good intent:
You attend the event and set the intention of attending the birthday to show your appreciation for the acquaintance and have fun yourself. This doesn’t mean that you won’t interact with the girl, or any other girl for that matter, but it means that you understand yourself enough to not stray from your intent. You have an agreement with yourself.
Bad intent:
If you say yes, and you intend to go because you’ve been asked — obviously — but the motivation of that yes is largely helped on by the fact that the girl will be there; your intent is now clouded by your own emotion and selfishness and impulsivity.
So, let’s now discuss what intent is:
“A thing intended; an aim or plan.”
Our intent flavours every action we decide to take. The way we act (most of the time if we’re sensible people) is by following our values, morals and beliefs. This means our intent is directly linked to our values, morals and beliefs. The intent issue is that it is only available to view in its entirety in our mind. Yes, actions can help us figure out the intent of other people, but they can also be misinterpreted. This is what I’d call “perceived intent”.
Perceived intent would be something like this:
We don’t tell our girlfriend about the girl being at the party. Our partner later finds out. Now, our “actual” intent, no matter how pure becomes irrelevant and suffers. The “perceived” intent is more important to our partner, which will now hold negative connotations because we have intentionally left out some detail that would make her think negatively — naturally. Despite having no intentions of anything negative, and remaining loyal and upholding integrity with yourself, not declaring the whole truth now shoves perceived intent at the forefront of the mind. From your partner's view, it’s a perfectly valid question. Is there any need to not include a detail, if your intentions are right, even if it is to protect her feelings? Personally — since observing, learning and thinking about this after my break up — I opt for as much truth as possible. Even if it’s fucking awful to hear. It can be done with finesse and care to not land so harshly. Other times, it just will and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Let’s say the roles are reversed. How would you feel if this was the case with your partner attending a party and she kept that detail from you, only for you to learn about it at a later date? Your initial reaction would be based on their perceived intent of withholding that information, yes? We can all agree on that I hope. Why hide information if there is no bad intent to be hidden?
Jordan Peterson makes the point that if you lie, you don’t get your way. You get the way of the lie. And that corrupts you. And if done over a consistent enough time frame, you lose your grip on reality. And all hell breaks loose.
I’ve lived this in my life, many times. I wonder if you can ever escape it. It’s an ideal, isn’t it? I mean, if we know we’re not capable of this ideal, then we should have the grace and empathy to understand that others cannot and will not attain it either. Again, the deciding factor in which to judge someone when dealing with some kind of betrayal, disappointment, or expectation not being met would have to be the intention.
A tangent but something worth knowing:
Now you might say, “But couldn’t you go out with no harmful intention and succumb to emotion, the environment and your impulsivity?” That is true. How many times we have promised ourselves not to drink alcohol before going out to meet friends and ended up hungover the next day? We’ve all, at least once, entertained the emotion and impulsivity that occurs when the excitement of somebody new comes along and lightens up our lives during stormy times with our partner — be it physical or emotional. It’s easy to succumb to emotion, impulsivity and environment because the time scales for us to act are reduced. Judgement is skewed. It’s easier to do what we feel like in the moment, rather than what we know to be right. It takes a well-put-together person to catch themselves in the moment to consider referring to their values, standards, beliefs, conscience, shame, integrity and sense of loyalty. Three areas that decide this are:
Maturity & Delayed gratification:
How mature are you? I believe that a person’s maturity is directly related to the discomfort they can sit and sort through when something bad happens, or when they do something terrible to another person. Think of that friend who can’t do that. We all fucking have one. They tend to make the same mistakes over and over again. I mean, it might’ve been us at one point, and we catch remnants of the old version of us from time to time.
A decline of values, morals, beliefs, principles and standards:
It’s a fact that society and culture have the biggest effect on shaping these things. We can’t fight that. If you want to change, it takes a certain level of solitude and open-mindedness to remove yourself from this imposed system and recreate or restructure your set of belief systems and operating systems to adhere to. However, based on my experience, we must accept and operate in the world as it is before we can recreate our own. We must have resistance or disdain towards the way things are for us to make a change. If we are at the whim of our society or culture in totality, and it is unhealthy (much like the West is right now), then we’re in trouble.
Take a look around the West. It is weak. First of all, religion has been trending downwards in the UK:
The religion question is voluntary; 94.0% (56.0 million) of usual residents answered the question in 2021, an increase from 92.9% (52.1 million) in 2011.
For the first time in a census of England and Wales, less than half of the population (46.2%, 27.5 million people) described themselves as “Christian”, a 13.1 percentage point decrease from 59.3% (33.3 million) in 2011; despite this decrease, “Christian” remained the most common response to the religion question.
“No religion” was the second most common response, increasing by 12.0 percentage points to 37.2% (22.2 million) from 25.2% (14.1 million) in 2011.
Let’s think what the decline in religion might mean: God is a judge. He acts as a moral judge. He taught principles, shared Commandments and gave us a framework for right and wrong. He embodied high values, standards and beliefs. He chose faith. He held spirit in high regard. Sacrifice was a key component in his word. You get the idea here, yes?
Remove God — or religion as a whole — you are, by default, removing all systems that usually govern behaviour. I am not saying that all who “follow” God are the greatest people in the world and are without sin. And it’s not to say that all those without God are incapable of leading better lives than those who do have God. I am making the point that it does, without a doubt, help orient behaviour.
The other aspect of destabilisation is directed towards men and women. There is — and has been for awhile — an attack on femininity. Look at the sabotage of women’s sports and transgenderism. It blurs the lines between the natural role of the masculine and feminine. Not only does it blur the level of healthy masculine and feminine energy that's required to build and maintain a functioning world, but it isolates us on an individual level. We become so scared about offending someone that we are in a state of stasis when we speak or approach people. Now that the role of women is unclear, men’s place in the world begins to take a hit. It seems women are being coerced into modelling themselves on a watered-down version of men.
One of the biggest areas we see affected is dating. Men are afraid of what women might think about their approach. Women are afraid of the mens approach. Men are being labelled toxic and femininity is losing it’s natural value by being pushed into a masculine role. It isn't by accident. It’s a torturous loop, and it’s tough to get out of due to fear-mongering by the “woke”, “snowflake” generation — helped along by the barrage of media — that puts feelings and scaremongering first. It’s not wonder the dating scene is a mess. When dating becomes corrupted, it truly fucks the idea of having or even aiming for a functional family unit. And when the family unit is compromised, society as a whole suffers.
In 1855, freed slave and statesman Frederick Douglass said:
“It is easier to build strong children than to fix broken men.”
Environment design:
The third part of this tangent touches on the environment. We can have a solid foundation for any relationship we’re always at the mercy — to some extent — of our emotions, impulses, and the influence of other people and environments around which we put ourselves.
The simple answer to any problems we face is to avoid the environment where they appear. Don’t hang around friends who constantly drink if you’re trying to avoid alcohol. Stay away from clubs if you’re a frequent drug user. Delete the food app on your phone if you’re following a diet. Lay out or pack your gym kit the night before so you’re ready to go in the morning. Add fruit to a bowl near your front door so you grab a piece every time you leave and enter. You get the idea.
Willpower is a muscle that can be exercised. But what’s better than relying on your ability to use that muscle? To avoid the environments that promote its use.
With that tangent over, let’s follow the original story and example I wanted to share. Here’s where we left off earlier:
Jordan Peterson makes the point that if you lie, you don’t get your way. You get the way of the lie. And that corrupts you. And if done over a consistent enough time frame, you lose your grip on reality. And all hell breaks loose.
Here’s a personal example — which was incredibly shitty of me:
During a 7-10 day break with my ex-lady, I slept with another woman. When I did eventually mention this to my girlfriend, I did it with bad intent. We were drunk, and arguing, and I went into unnecessary detail about it and the tone I said it with was pretty fucking ruthless. The intent could be considered “Evil” at the very least. I told her to hurt her, essentially. The place it was coming from was not from integrity or love or softness.
This is a perfect example of how intent matters. The result would’ve still resulted in catastrophe, upset and sadness but my delivery would have made a massive difference. Not only for her but for how I felt about myself afterwards.
This brings me to the next part of the equation:
Conscience:
“an inner feeling or voice viewed as acting as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one's behaviour.”
Shame:
“a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behaviour.”
These things show us where we have strayed from what we know to be right based on our values, standards, and beliefs.
When I was thinking about how told my ex-lady about the other person, long after the relationship ended, I felt an enormous amount of shame because during this time I was trying to mould and reshape a new version of myself. I like to think I’ve grown from it in many ways. God knows I’ve gone through what went wrong with a fine-tooth comb and extracted pieces of anything of value that I could. But that shame was something I couldn’t shake. First of all, the shame I felt for making another person feel that way. Who the fuck am I to do that? And even worse, to do it to somebody I was meant to love? Secondly, it didn’t align with my standards and my estimation of myself. The reason I bring this up here is because I have felt this shame again recently based on words. This means that I have betrayed the values, beliefs and morals that I think I hold myself accountable to. The great thing about this (not that anything feels great about the situation at all) is that the realisation happened for me within a matter of days, instead of months like last time.
Let’s go back to the earlier examples about hiding intent from our partner. Imagine you’re standing at the party, you’re having a good time but you are fully aware that you’ve hidden the fact this girl is there to somebody you care about. She might even text you and ask how it’s going and who’s there. Again, it’s hidden by choice. Despite that, the night goes on and all is well. It doesn’t matter at this point if you do betray your values and integrity by involving yourself with this girl or not. Because you’re left with the shame of not telling the truth and your conscience is a bit of a brutal bastard to battle with when it comes to things like this. We’ve all been in this position before.
I wrote down 9 things I’d learned in 2022 and one of them was inspired by this exact thing I am talking about above:
“Do everything you can to protect the reputation you have with yourself. It’s easy to contaminate your conscience.”
I mentioned God earlier in the post. To connect this idea back to Him, I came up with an interesting way to think of the purpose of our Conscience that I think is an idea worth thinking about. I say,
“The conscience acts as God’s diary about the right and wrong in our life.”
Now is a good time to talk about Forgiveness:
It has taken me a while to forgive myself for what I did and the way I handled it. Let’s think about it for a second. If your partner fucks you over in some way or makes a stupid remark that’s hurtful — the course of action necessary is up to you — but how you will react will depend on your evaluation of their intent. They’re human, and just as capable as you are to fuck up. Empathy and forgiveness are needed here. Look at God. Look at the impossible ideals we’re asked to live up to and constantly fall short of. Yet we’re able to ask for and seek forgiveness and love and understanding. We should treat others and ourselves the same way. And I say that because I am not so sure God is separate from us.
I started this piece by talking about intangibles:
Intangibles:
“Incapable of being touched. Having no physical existence.” Values, standards, beliefs, and philosophies of life, essentially. I truly believe that this is how we are influenced in our journey. And Good & Evil comes to life through us. We are the gatekeepers of Good and Evil. What we allow to flourish in the world based on those categories of intangible assets that we possess as humans, is up to us. And we have to monitor this by watching our thoughts, being careful and deliberate with our words, and actions filled with good intent.
We are in service to Good or Evil, God or the Devil, other people & ourselves. I want to leave you with this thought, considering what has been said above and the stories and examples mentioned — This encapsulates the importance of intent:
Philippians 2:1-4
So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his interests but also to the interests of others.
I’ve written this piece as a reminder to myself, as well as a way to clear my thoughts. I wanted to share it with you as a potential framework — one that I am trying to use more often but do not always successfully adhere to — in the hope that it helps you in some small way during your life while dealing with yourself and the people you care about. Because people are important. As are you.
I will leave you with this:
Every day we decide which spirit to feed:
The Good. Or, the Evil.
What will we nudge towards victory today?
Intent is a principality