re: bad things
The phenomenon of life is what it is.
I think: We don’t know what it is.
I’m content to let it be a Mystery.
Within the community of life there is joy and there is suffering. There is mostly just Being.
I don’t think any of it merits human value judgments re: “Good” or “Bad” etc. Not even the suffering.
Suffering, infirmity, death . . . are part of the phenomenon in regard to which human conceptions like The Source, The Essence, The Purpose, The Morality, etc. are irrelevant because they can’t be known.
I, personally, would not label any of it Bad.
* * * *
What we can understand, somewhat, is human society. Within it I think we’re justified in labeling some things as bad (with a small ‘b’).
In nature you sometimes see species blooms. You could say they are ecologically bad. Small ‘b’ bad, because they are temporary. Ecological balances get restored.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmful_algal_bloom
The human species bloom is ecologically problematic, for sure. It’s also likely to be temporary, but, meanwhile, it has had social ramifications that are causing an awful lot of unnecessary human suffering — in addition to the ecological disturbance. Bad, bad, bad, but still small ‘b’ because I think it’s just a consequence of an aberrant period that will be, from the standpoint of natural history, brief. If it arose over five thousand years and it dissipates over five thousand years, well, that’s just an eyeblink. If it takes nature a hundred thousand years or a million years to fully recover from this particular species bloom and its unusual and idiosyncratic impact (human “development”) . . . well, recovery has happened before and nature doesn’t “care,” it just is what it is and will remain so.
* * * *
Clearly animals do suffer, but I think humans Suffer. It’s magnified in proportion to how our consciousness is magnified. Maybe that idiosyncratic characteristic is going to make us unfit for long-term survival. The saga may be written that our attempt to assuage our anxiety (the cocoons of culture and development) ultimately did us in due to social insanity and ecological disruption. The story ended badly. The writer will conclude: “That was one misbegotten species!”
