Moral Certainty Leads to Evil

Now that statement is not a new one, ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions…’ that sort of thing.  But I have been thinking about it recently.

In Hitler’s mind he was not evil.

By that, he was creating a better future for the Germany people. There was no doubt, and in a historical context, he really was. Compare Him, and the Nazi party to the Roman Empire, and or Napoleon, or any historical figure who built ‘an Empire’, there are similarities, and there are atrocities.

Now don’t take that to mean that Hitler wasn’t evil, I am safe in saying that yes, yes he was. But I think their is a lesson that can be learnt from history, none of these men thought they were evil.

I mean Joseph Stalin was. (And that really isn’t a joke, that man was crazy, and I am pretty sure he reveled in it.)

But they all had a very high moralistic opinion of their goals and actions.

And so yes, once you know what is moral and just, that is when you can perform the most heinous acts of evil. Granted evil is subjected, and it’s in the eyes of the perceiver, but I would argue that we should always question our moralistic opinions.

And yes they are opinions, until they are proven fact, which unfortunately we have limited data on.

We grow as individuals, and it’s not a bad thing to question our believes, our values, and even who we are. Not knowing with certainty who you are, what is morally right, allows us to keep from doing something ‘evil’.