“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” - Edmund Burke
I have heard this quote used frequently as a call to arms for good people to respond to the manifestation of evil, I think this is a slight misinterpretation, or perhaps an incomplete interpretation.
For evil to prevail, it needs room to do so; people have to perform “bad” actions, and others (typically many more) have to stand by while said actions play out unchecked.
Fear is a great de-motivator, those who choose inaction when prompted to intervene commonly do so out of fear. Fear teaches us to look out for ourselves directly, fear teaches us that the big picture is out of our hands. Fear teaches us that all we can do is react.
This is the grand illusion beset upon us by our fears. This is the illusion that masks the hand of evil from the sight of good. Evil operates in the shadows, evil pollutes all it touches and it does so largely in secret. Evil is the spread of fear and malice; the degradation of trust between passer’s by. As long as people can’t trust each other, evil will prevail. Evil grows fastest where it can’t be seen, and it is easily obscured by a detached demeanor, by a happy face covering up an upset soul that’s well past the ability to cry for help.
How have we come to be this way? To believe that everyone’s problems are their own and that each of us should live in isolation of the troubles of others. If our troubles cannot be shared, what happens when someone is overwhelmed? If we don’t aid each other in the fight against our own darkness what happens to those that lose their battles? Do they become missionaries of darkness? Perhaps even unwittingly spreading mistrust and malice by being the quiet skeptical influence on humanity’s trustworthiness? Perpetuated by way of their developed inability to see the good in people. The truth of the matter is that they are projecting the suffering they have endured onto others, becoming a member of the very population that caused their suffering to begin with. As this process continues, trust across the population degrades, and the stress of being unable to trust converts ever-larger swaths of the population to apathy, detachment, and the suffering of isolation.
Surely it is difficult but who will carry the light to ward off darkness? Who will see that malevolent behavior is merely a manifestation of the weaknesses that we all carry as humans? A just world is a dark world in the absence of compassion. Regardless of our suffering we must do all we can to keep from propagating pain. Let others know our pain, because if we don’t it will twist us until it leaks through the cracks and affects others in a way that perpetuates the cycle.
The only way to combat human suffering is by treating each other excellently whenever possible. If we don’t go out of our way to build trust then the unavoidable degradation of trust caused by the misfortunes of life will eventually undermine our support structures and pave the road for those twisted souls who’ve fallen so far as to wish only to spread their pain to others forcefully.