What is evil

One of the Forums that I occasionally haunt, often has very interesting discussion topics. One of the most interesting of these recently was the question "What is Evil?" Being curious as to what other people thought about the nature of evil I had a look and was genuinely surprised at the sophistication of some of the responses. You had the usual troll answers such anything christian, athiest, muslim etc, and then you had some well thought out definitions. Some of them were amusing, some of them were quite intelligent and fairly easily defendable.
I think the biggest divider between "everyday evil" and "truly evil" is motive. Everyday evil has some justification, some rationalization to explain their actions. True evil is evil for the sake of evil.

To be Truely Evil... One must have style. Do you want to destroy the city with an easily accessible nuke? NO!! You want to destroy it with a large (cumbersome) robot. That is what seperates regular crime from someone that is Truely Evil.

First, everything true evil must understand the conceptions of "good" and "evil". Second, everything true evil must willingly walk down the path of "evil". Third, everything true evil must act in a manner of "evil" in a conscious condition, regardless what´s the outcome. No takebacks, no regrets, no exceptions, no excuses.

To corrupt a thing. To ravage and defile, to twist it into a mockery of what it once was. It seems to have the highest potential for inflicting suffering on an individual who valued the original.

It shouldn't be so stupid or short-sighted that it will self-destruct, so Evil should be ruthlessly selfish, except that it won't kill what it uses/needs to survive.

Evil does not want to self destruct, however by its very nature it cannot create, evil can only destroy. This is not to say all destruction is evil, but it is to say that evil cannot create it can only make a mockery of creation. Evil propagates more evil, that's always important.

But isn't "true evil" basically just being unethical to the n^th degree? Where do we draw the line then?

I would argue that a misunderstanding of good and evil is almost required for something to be evil, few villains consider themselves evil, rather they will view their actions as positive. Sure, Darth Vader caused millions (likely trillions, actually) of deaths, but he did so to advance uniformity and justice throughout almost the entire galaxy, whether the galaxy wanted it his way or not, so he was clearly not evil. [at least in his head]

or as one person put it
The most pure representation of evil I have come across is Iago from Othello. He is astoundingly manipulative, utilizes Machiavellian concepts constantly (and not in a good way), is amazingly deceptive, and does it all in iambic pentameter.

The end result of all the to-ing and fro-ing was this list.
1. It must know good and evil and choose to be evil, consciously committing evil acts.
2. Intelligent enough not to engage in self destructive behaviour or exhaust it's food and/or power.
3. Selfish
4. Malicious-Sadistic.
5. Deceiving/providing false hope.
6. Viral
7. Forcing/deceiving others to do it's will.

However, possibly the most interesting response was
Describing evil, to me, is a little like describing God or unicorns. I don't really believe it exists. I mean, sure, there are people and organizations that have caused untold suffering and death for millions of people, but that does not mean that said entities were/are invested with some sort of metaphysical quality of Evil.

Probably the most well known definition comes from the DnD universe. Here they give 3 variants of evil; Chaotic, Neutral, and interestingly, Lawful Evil. These 3 give you a fairly broad spectrum under the banner of evil based on their work in society. A Lawful Evil person will follow a set in order to get what ever they can get for themselves, probably best defined as Machiavellian. They will be methodical and intentional in their evil. The Neutral Evil person will do evil purely for the sake of it. They will have no honour in their evil as the Lawful person will but also won't vary in their evil. Finally the Chaotic Evil person. These people will do what ever their destructive nature leads them to do.

Any hoo, that was just something to think about during your new year holiday thingos.