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Question of the Month
Why Do The Evil Still Prosper?
Each answer below receives a book. Apologies to the entrants not included.
Evil can be understood as deliberate behavior that causes unnecessary pain and suffering, including disregarding human dignity. As behaviour of this kind destroys trust and safety in society, it’s natural to ask why it still prospers. The answer cannot be that people do not know what evil is. In most societies, when someone causes harm on purpose the punishment is stronger than if they cause it accidentally. This shows that people understand that intentional harm is more dangerous. Society can only function if people are not constantly afraid of being harmed by others.
So why does evil still succeed? Evil prospers because harm is often not properly addressed and resolved. Wrong actions usually benefit someone, through money, power, or control. When harm is ignored, or not judged fairly, it creates anger and resentment. Even harm that was not intended can lead to revenge. This creates a vicious circle. One harmful action leads to another. Each side justifies its violence by pointing to what happened before. Over time, the original wrong becomes less important, and the amount of suffering increases. So evil continues because it becomes normal and expected. Long-lasting conflicts show this problem clearly. When rules of behaviour, human rights, and ways to reduce violence are ignored, the situation gets worse. Evil will continue to prosper as long as violations of human rights are accepted and conflicts are not solved by fair independent institutions. Condemnation alone is not enough. To stop evil, societies must interrupt cycles of revenge and take responsibility for harm before it grows.
Christoph Hönigsperger
I’ll classify as evil any person who causes harm without remorse in order to achieve their goals, and define prosperity as success in accumulating wealth or power. What is their connection? Either an evil person finds harming others an easy way to become prosperous, or becoming prosperous requires a person to turn evil. I’d argue that in both cases the answer to why there are still evil persons who prosper is the same. It is because society fails to prevent the gaining of benefits from harmful self-serving behavior, and at the same time does too little to promote mutually beneficial actions. Such failures include nonexistent or minimal consequences for harms; loopholes; fragmented responsibility; sayings such as ‘everyone does it’, etc.
This creates a vicious cycle. Once a certain level of prosperity is reached it becomes easier to avoid repercussions when destructive behavior is undertaken, which is favorable to accumulating further wealth/power, which incentivises further violation of socially accepted norms. More people taking advantage of this broken mechanism decreases the likeliness of systemic reform. It is thus easy to see how unethical behavior is rewarded rather than prevented.
Fortunately, there are also cases where this vicious cycle is stopped, and there are people who do stand up to evil. However, often when corrective measures do come, they are too little, too late, especially when what is needed is prevention. The system sometimes facilitates the road of evil to money and power, and sometimes fails in stopping serious harm. In both cases, evil always seems to find the means to accomplish its wishes and reach its own definition of prosperity. And while we know that evil and prosperity should not go together, we still need to find a way to keep them separated. That might prove to be a Sisyphean task.
Alecsandra Ciba, Brussels
Aristotle understood that some values cannot be acquired or bestowed on a person from an external source. Eudaimonia,he says, is always and only the product of one’s own efforts. It’s a state of flourishing that comes from the development of a human being’s highest and most distinctive function: his ability to reason. The evil are ignorant of what’s in their best interests; and so too are many of those who would otherwise oppose them. The latter are warned to desist from obstructing evildoers if they ‘know what’s good for them’; but threats to physical safety speak in the reductive idiom that regards human wellbeing merely as comfort and safety. They ignore the deeper and more permanent wellbeing that comes from integrity. So the evil strive to divide men from the better angels of their nature by appealing to basic survival instincts – that is, by instilling fear.
People possess capacities for empathy, self-control, and altruism. However, these may be cultivated or neglected, valued or devalued. David Hume (1711–76) thought that “reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.” Yet when entirely subjective desires dominate, reason becomes instrumental – harnessed as a mere means to the end of acquiring what we desire, never used to best understand what one ought to desire. Genuine human flourishing and enduring happiness come not from feeding all appetites, but from understanding which appetites are truly beneficial and when they are best satisfied. The evil are never satisfied, despite their excessive acquisitions. In Plato’s dialogue Gorgias, Socrates uses the metaphor of a leaky vessel to describe the soul of a person ruled by selfish desires and appetites. His point is that a soul not in harmony with its own true interests – self-mastery, order, and fellowship – can never be truly satisfied, and will thus seek pleasure after pleasure to fill the void. Thus the evil ‘prosper’ only from the perspective of those ignorant of what makes human life worthwhile.
Terri Murray, London
This question has a rather religious tinge to it and I suspect that the acceptable religious response is that, in the long run, the evil don’t in fact prosper. Some divine intervention – possibly post mortem, certainly decisive – will ensure that the evil doer does not thrive in the end.
The word ‘evil’ carries the connotation of being not just bad but deeply immoral. There is a vast catalogue of wrongdoing that rightly brings condemnation, and if apprehended, punishment, but which cannot accurately be described as evil, since it lacks cruelty or malice aforethought. I think therefore we possibly need to soften the question into, Why do the wrongdoers – the thieves, robbers, cheats, and embezzlers – prosper? And now we observe that this list is a list of crimes against property. This is fitting, as to prosper is usually interpreted as to do well financially rather than to flourish as a human being. The quick answer now, is that since the mechanisms of crime detection, apprehension, and punishment are fallible, and subject to corruption, then some malefactors will slip through and succeed. In short, it’s a lottery, and success in the game is due to luck rather than planning – although the latter might somewhat shorten the odds.
Another somewhat clichéd answer that’s usually attributed to Edmund Burke is evil prospers when good men to do nothing. It is true indeed that if evil acts are not countered, then ipso facto they will succeed. And unresisted evil activity will encourage others to try their hands. But following the great Victorian critic John Ruskin, does evildoing and crime produce wealth ; or is it in fact what he calls illth – the polar opposite of wealth – that is created? Wealth for Ruskin is life, and illth its antithesis – the appropriation of resources that ignores human and environmental flourishing, and leads to the diminution of human thriving. While the evil might appear to prosper, it is not wealth but illth they accumulate.
Steve Foulger, Faversham, Kent
Simple answer: we are tribal. All you need is someone charismatic enough to stoke that tribalism – only it’s called patriotism or nationalism, and its antithesis is called betrayal or treason.
Humans have a tendency to create ingroup-outgroup dynamics, but it’s most obvious in politics. One of the factors that nearly always arises here is that normally rational, intelligent people can become highly emotive and irrational. As someone who has prepared evidence for contractual disputes, I’ve witnessed this numerous times. But we’ve all been guilty at some time.
There are fundamentally two types of leaders: those who bring out the best in us; and those who bring out the worst. The latter stoke and exploit division that’s usually already felt by one group of people against another. It’s how wars are started and then maintained and justified. It is humanity’s Achilles’ heel that we follow cult-like leaders who have developed the seemingly contradictory skill of appearing as saviours while leading entire nations into destructive activities that ultimately serve no one but themselves. Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser once made the point in an interview that evil arose from demonising one group of people as the cause of all the problems and ills of a particular society. History bears this out.
I’ve spent a working lifetime on engineering projects, and the most successful have been where the leaders surround themselves with people of diverse backgrounds and expertise. The least successful are where the ingroup-outgroup dynamic seems to take hold. This isn’t itself evil – but when enacted on the world stage by individuals who have massive armies at their disposal and only sycophants as a bulwark against their egos, destruction on a biblical scale is only a command away.
Paul P Mealing, Melbourne
Evil is to be found everywhere if one looks hard enough. Politicians have built entire careers from it, and this did not start, or stop, with Adolf Hitler. In 1867 John Stuart Mill said in an address to St Andrews University that “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends than that good men should look on and do nothing.” Were it to be so simple, however, it is a certainty that good should have triumphed over evil a very long time ago. As with Hitler, though, if enough lies are told it becomes difficult to distinguish the truth.
Unfortunately in most cases, evil often begins in what people sincerely believe to be for the best. For example, when the German economy was in tatters after the First World War, people believed Hitler when he said he could fix it. Herein lies a problem. Evil still prospers because people continue to believe in politicians and causes for far longer than they should. Perhaps the opposite of evil here is not ‘good’, then, but a certain cynicism.If societies were more cynical, then people might start to realise the cause they thought so wholesome was not what it appeared to be. And then maybe good people would act.
Paul Dakers, Crieff, Perth and Kinross
Those whom Kant described as having an ‘evil will’ are forever linked with such atrocities as the Holocaust, the Gulag, ethnic cleansing, and the dehumanisation of all who incur their wrath. To prosper, in their eyes, is to successfully engineer their abominable obsessions. Absolutely necessary for this is the mobilisation of many people, their acquiescence and conformity, and a pervasive fear of reprisals for failure to give allegiance, no matter how repugnant the ideology or duties are. Indeed, there will be many who can be relied upon to give unquestioning obedience no matter how morally bankrupt their leaders. Others may be persuaded by such means as nationalistic propaganda, or by the exercise of what De Maistre called supernatural authority. Those determined to implement their evil predispositions will flourish in particular within a climate of moral skepticism or moral relativism. Even Protagoras already argued that whatever is considered right for a particular society is to be shared and endorsed by those in it.
However, John Gray has reminded us that Hobbes and the early liberals viewed government “as a shelter from the worst of evils, civil war and a reversion to nature.” The fundamental values of any government should embrace a respect for the autonomy of the individual and a duty of care extending to all citizens. Any abrogation of these responsibilities will be to invite those of an evil disposition to take advantage of the vulnerable and disadvantaged.
The Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesal wrote, “the duty of the survivor is to bear testimony. You have to warn people that these things happen, that evil can be unleashed.” A salutary warning from history indeed. But even in liberal democratic societies, evil people will feel emboldened when good men do nothing; when civic-mindedness becomes subordinated to either excessive tribalism or individualism; when Kant’s injunction to treat all humans as ends and never merely as means is ignored or forgotten. Such failures will invariably facilitate the creation of a realm of opportunities in which evil people will continue to prosper.
David Cope, Telford
The term ‘evil’ is an abstraction expressed through actualities. For instance, we could think of a tiger running down a gazelle for something to eat as ‘evil’ given the violence involved.The gazelle would certainly see it that way – much as we would if some desperate person stabbed us to get what’s in our wallet. But that’s not the kind of ‘prospering’ we’re talking about, right? We’re talking about prospering in high places. This seems clear, given that people who do evil in low places generally see their ‘prosperity’ dissipate in a jail cell. Their evil (if it can always be called ‘evil’) often comes out of desperation – much like a tiger running down a gazelle. It’s the evil of ambition we’re interested in here, and the way it prospers regardless of who gets rolled over. There’s also evil at work in the way we turn the ambitious into celebrities. Name your millionaire, or billionaire.
But what is there that allows evil to prosper? It’s rooted in an abstraction sold to us: the notion that if everyone seeks maximum benefit, it will all work out in the end. I call this ‘the metaphysics of power’. Think divine right. Think Adam Smith and the Culture of More that emerged from his ideals. Evil prospers because we’re having a hard time evolving beyond the metaphysics of power to a balance between expectations and the resources available (I call this ‘the metaphysics of efficiency’).
Think about it: how could we possibly have a handful of people feasting at the table while the rest of us fight for the crumbs, and not expect problems? How can any of us embrace a dog-eat-dog/every-man-for-themselves ideology, then ask “Why is this happening to me?” when someone holds a gun to our head while hijacking our car? Evil prospers because it’s top down and we allow it to flow.
D.E. Tarkington, Bellevue, NE
To a biologist, evil prospers because evolution optimizes survival traits rather than morality. In evolutionary terms, aggression, deception, dominance, tribalism, and exploitation are not moral failures; they’re adaptive strategies that work in environments of scarcity and threat. What we label ‘evil’ today often picks out these ancient strategies operating in modern societies. Evolution rewards immediate payoff, not long-term systemic stability, meaning that a cheat can outcompete cooperators in the short run. A ruthless individual may gain resources faster than an ethical one. Selection does not care that such strategies eventually undermine trust, institutions, or civilizations. By contrast, cooperation, empathy, and fairness evolve only when supported by social factors like kin selection, reciprocal altruism, punishment of defectors, and stable groups. These traits are powerful, but they require time, memory, and enforcement. Modern societies amplify this mismatch. Evolution never equipped us with instinctive brakes for power, abstract harm, or delayed consequences.
So in Darwinian terms, evil prospers because it’s genetically built-in, fast, and energetically cheap. Goodness prospers only when cultures deliberately engineer conditions that protect cooperation from exploitation. That is to say, evolution explains why evil can thrive, but it does not justify it. Morality begins where humans stop simply obeying their evolutionary design.
Mehrdad Nadji, Coral Gables, Florida
In 1973 Erich Fromm said in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness that writing about aggression was harder than he had expected. He soon realised that to avoid a distorted view he needed knowledge from many fields, including neurophysiology, animal psychology, palaeontology, and anthropology. To understand why evil continues to prosper, I believe we must follow Fromm’s example and think across those fields, as evil does not arise from a single source but from many interconnected ones. Psychology identifies negative personality traits which are commonly found and can foster harmful behaviour under certain conditions. Neuroscience suggests that differences in brain function may weaken self-control or empathy in some people. Evolutionary theory helps explain Fromm’s concept of ‘benign aggression’ as an adaptive response related to survival. At the social level, institutions often reward destructive behaviour (ie war), and foster what Fromm called ‘malignant aggression’ – a socially conditioned drive to dominate and exploit. As Hannah Arendt observed, bureaucratic systems diffuse responsibility, allowing ordinary people to commit wrongdoing while feeling innocent. Søren Kierkegaard argued that boredom can push individuals to transgress in search of stimulation.
These perspectives reveal how biology, psychology, and society can all reinforce evil tendencies. Yet they do not explain why evil succeeds despite our awareness of its consequences. Why do people repeat actions they know will cause harm?
I suspect a deeper motivation must be at work. Sigmund Freud proposed that, alongside the life instinct (eros), humans also possess an unconscious drive toward self-destruction (thanatos). Although controversial, the idea remains compelling because it captures familiar patterns – people returning to abusive relationships, societies repeating violent conflicts. This tendency has long been noted by writers, from Ecclesiastes, which observes humanity’s constant return to injustice, to Friedrich Nietzsche’s reflections on self-sabotage, Sophocles’ tragic figures who knowingly walk toward ruin, and the Buddha’s teaching that we remain trapped in cycles of suffering through ignorance and craving. Evil, then, persists not because we fail to understand it, but because a part of the human psyche is drawn to destruction – an impulse strengthened by social systems. Fromm was more hopeful than Freud, but they agreed that while evil may never be eradicated, its power can be restrained.
Milda Varniene, Vilnius, Lithuania
We’re not talking here about terrible natural events. Neither do we refer to evil in the religious sense of a malevolent force in the world. So let’s replace ‘the evil’ with ‘people who repeatedly do bad things’. Do they prosper, and if so, why?
The resources we all need to flourish are finite. We have to struggle to access them. Would there still be people repeatedly doing bad things in a world of infinite plenty, where if something you own is taken or broken a perfect replacement snaps into existence? Would they prosper? The bad things done in that world would result not from any shortage of resources and goods, but from some perceived need for power or status. But these needs for power and status are turbocharged when brought into our real world of competition for resources. Such competition takes place within societal and political structure, almost all of which involve hierarchies. That seems to be the nub the issue. Bad actions for status or limited resources are often are undertaken with impunity as a result of a weakness in community institutions. Often they fail to bring the culprit to justice because of possible repercussions resulting from a power imbalance. That’s one reason why whistleblowers within organisations are so important, alongside independent regulators and journalists: they offer ways in which bad actors can be exposed and dealt with so that the evil do not always prosper. Bad actors will continue to thrive when ordinary people lack the power or the independent structures to bring their behaviour to light, or where a society or elite does not care.
Peter Keeble, London
‘Evil’ has been there from the beginning – it simply wasn’t recognized as such. Later, with the development of society, above the natural base layer were placed social, cultural, and ideological superstructures, in which everything belonging to nature was reorganized and assigned a different name. One of these things is ‘evil’. Thus, the problem does not lie in the fact that evil blossoms, but why this thing that blossoms is called ‘evil’.
This leads us to another question: What is good, and what is evil? Clearly, these labels were determined in the social layer, far from their initial natural forms. Society has assigned the labels ‘good’ and ‘evil’ precisely within the framework of its own ‘regulatory manual’; and whatever deviates from this manual and so drives the system toward chaos has been called ‘evil’. For example, it’s determined that society gives its benefits at a price – work (effort, or sacrifice) – meaning people must spend energy to obtain society’s benefits. Any action (theft, murder, fraud, etc) used to obtain benefits without paying the price destabilizes the system; hence it is called ‘evil’ and must be minimized. But the laws of the nature layer cannot be fought with the laws of the social layer.
Another argument relates to human nature. A human being, from birth and childhood – when society has not yet acted to shape him – is born with ‘bad’ instincts: to cry, deceive, steal; to cause mischief in order to get what he wants. The adult human occasionally attempts to return to his origin by stripping away the social superstructures, not because he intentionally acts to make evil blossom.
To conclude, it is not evil that still prospers, but the system we have built which labels as ‘evil’ something that, by its natural essence, will blossom. So evil will continue to blossom until we remodel the social system to see beyond good and evil.
Sotir Mekshi, Gjirokastra, Albania
Concepts of good and evil are beyond the concerns of the universe. They’re merely part of humanity’s attempt to impose order on the random chaos. Humans are storytellers at heart, and desire an end to life where good triumphs over evil. But, since good and evil are human constructs, different societies have different views on what constitutes evil. Consider Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, where many countries had empires across the world. Empires are currently considered evil, but many otherwise law-abiding, decent people in that period felt proud to be in a country with an empire – without really wanting the cruelty unleashed on the peoples of colonised countries.
In the enlightened twenty-first century, many Europeans and others supported the Iraq war, with leaders at the time describing Saddam Hussein as ‘evil’ as a justification. But the aerial bombings and subsequent invasion resulted in much loss of innocent life, which was then followed by the deaths of thousands more in the subsequent rise of ISIS. Many in the West, including myself, consider ISIS a fundamentally evil organisation. However, otherwise decent and law-abiding people left safe homes and secure jobs to join it. They obviously didn’t believe that ISIS, or indeed themselves, were evil. This shows that evil is not an ‘objective universal’, but exists only in the human psyche. Until all societies agree on what constitutes evil, it will continue to prosper. But even if that longed-for state occurs, evil in the form of murder, rape and child abuse will continue, because that is the way that some humans, sadly, derive their gratification.
Philip Brown, Bury St Edmunds
It would be most surprising, if the evil did not prosper relative to the good. They use both good and evil means to achieve their own ends while the good are confined to using only good means and to striving for good ends, which often forward the interests of others, not their own.The good may even sacrifice their own interests to promote those of others. The evil concentrate on what advances them.
The real question is, why do the good not adopt the wicked methods and goals of the evil and prosper like them? Why do they confine themselves to good means and ends, when doing so is obviously disadvantageous? Different reasons apply to different people. Some believe that the reward in another life will be so great as to outweigh any disadvantages in this life. Of course the good may have strange ideas about what it actually means to do good, and those affected may not always welcome their help. The forces of evolution have predisposed all of us to care for kin. But the good may have a broader outlook than the evil, and care for a wider variety of people, not just their immediate family. The good may have a greater capacity than the wicked to feel the distress of another, which may be due to innate qualities or to upbringing. Whatever the cause, that sensitivity will hinder the good in the pursuit of their own interests. So if you choose to be good, you may have to resign yourself to seeing the evil prosper, often at the expense of yourself or those for whom you care.
Allen Shaw, Harewood, Leeds
I answer from my lowly nobody tower:
The cliché is true, men forever thirst for power.
Yet worse than this is society’s curse
When ordinary folk exalt in vote and verse
The ascent of evil across the universe.
Common men applaud, prostrate, obey
At the feet of those who’ve gone astray;
Perhaps in envy, perhaps in fear.
Always in ignorance, they cower then cheer.
Thus the evil prosper, the wicked duly rise:
Out of the blind man’s vacant open eyes,
Through ballot box or smug indifference.
In apathy, tyranny, or hallowed democracy,
Those in power control the occluded mind
To profit in gold and glory, greed and war
Leaving the subjugated world far behind.
Only once the masses open education’s door
Will the bad among us prosper no more.
Bianca Laleh, Totnes, Devon
Next Question of the Month
The next question is: What’s a Good Thousand-Year Plan? Please give and justify your answer in less than 400 words. The prize is a semi-random book from our book mountain. Subject lines should be marked ‘Question of the Month’, and must be received by 22nd June 2026. If you want a chance of getting a book, please include your physical address.
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