Magic systems and the problem of evil

When I first started thinking about a ‘good’ magic system, as opposed to one that relies on bargains with darkness, I thought to myself, ‘Under what conditions would the Creator grant power over the elements, animal minds, and inanimate matter?’

I thought the answer would be something like, ‘Having proved yourself able to resist the urge to evil.’

So, we come to the question of, What is Evil?

Evil entered the world (for humans) the first time one of us made a conscious choice to do something bad, for our own… our own what, exactly? To make ourselves feel good (in the absence of other factors, which might mitigate guilt)? How does it make us feel good? By exalting us above what we are, by giving us extra, over and above what we need; we desire to be greater, to have more, than we need (is this a design flaw, or a feature?). The self-absorption that leads us to actions which disadvantage others, we call evil. Without having looked anything up in the Cathechism, it seems to me that the insistence on self-satisfaction (concupiscence) at the expense of others is the foundation of all evil. That in turn dovetails nicely with the current idea that the opposite of love is not hate, but use.

Now, we can have self-seeking which benefits others. The energetic people who create artefacts in the material world, and then seek to sell them to others for resources they couldn’t gather while they were creating, are engaged in something good. They use their talents to solve a problem or decrease entropy in some situation, and they deserve a reward for the hard work they put in (this is the problem with political systems which reject the profit motive – they refuse to acknowledge the value of that particular kind of work). In the process, the world improves in some way, their customers get new and useful stuff, they get the resources exchanged, everyone’s happy.

There is another form of self-seeking which is pathological: when someone has enough, but wants more; when you aren’t satisfied with having the due payment for your own work, but seek to control those who supply you; when you experience so much pleasure (from any source) that the levels you experience are no longer enough, and you desire, in ever increasing measures, more and more pleasures, even as they pale and become ‘routine’. In those cases, individual self-seeking, bloated and monstrous, leads to suffering, resentment, anger; a desire for justice which, denied, warps into revenge. Thus the economy of evil has only two classes – the rulers and the ruled, masters and slaves, takers and makers.

So, it would seem that in that respect, the Buddhists have it right. The solution to suffering is to extirpate desire. How do you do that? By cultivating detachment, so that you at least no longer cause suffering by your own self-seeking. So, how do you cultivate detachment? Ah, there’s the rub!

That’s about as far as I got. I know that meditation is supposed to produce detachment. If you concentrate on nothing – on the ‘sound of one hand clapping’, or the ‘sound of the pines when the wind is still’, you should be able to force your mind to be still, at peace. However, that pre-supposes that there is nothing worth desiring… but there is.

There is one thing in all the universe worth desiring, and even that is not in the universe, except as a trace. That thing is a Person, the One Person after whom we are all measured, no matter how wonderful or strange. That Person is the source of all that is good, true and beautiful, so if you guide your meditation towards contemplation of those things, you may appreciate enough of that Person to quench all desire.

That became the power behind my magic system.