Posted by Night Hawke on Nov 16, 2008

So after a week of driving in circles in suburbia I got to thinking, Could a civilization survive on a steady diet of evil? You know the kind of evil I am referring to. The kind where you kill start to kill the kings sons off starting at the eldest until he names you successor, then you kill him and any of the rest. The kind of place where you are only in trouble if your doing things the right way. Where betrayal and deception lead to power & riches? I think you know of the kind of place I speak.

The real question is how long could this place survive? Or how long would it take to fall?

I think the main crux to the first question is to differentiate the Evilness from lawlessness. Evil doesn't mean lawless to me, There can be an order to evil, such as deception & betrayal are reinforced Being an honorable person is a crime. For example look at the parable of the Good Samaritan, in an evil world he would have committed a crime by helping the stranger, however everyone that ignored or even hurt the stranger was not doing anything wrong. That is Evil with law.

So with this in mind I could wager with strong willed leadership an Evil Empire could indeed endure as long as any other. Civilization takes leadership to survive not kindness. In fact most major civilizations that are viewed as just & good are build on the premise of massive evil acts.

As for the second question, the answer for me is simple, an instant. With sudden acts of evil being politically & socially acceptable there is very little stability so there will constantly be massive power shifts & rebellions. This can lead to either more dominate & brutal leadership or a complete collapse of social order into complete chaos.

But if you can fathom the thought of being raised in that society, it is more likely that an extremely vicious leader would rise from the turmoil long before society crumbled. Just like normal societies leadership rise up to change their political structure before they strive to destroy it. An example of this is Martin Luther King jr. He could have lead a Racial revolt against the government but instead he preached for change not violence.