Why does evil exist?

“Why does evil exist?” is an interesting question. The reason it is interesting is because it assumes that evil does exist. I know saying that makes me sound a little full of myself but it’s important to think about. If we took humans out of the universe, would evil exist? The answer is no because as far as we know no other species has consciousness. We humans assign meaning to things. Humans decide if something is good or evil and that makes it a personal experience. No one will have the same idea of what good and evil are. Ethics are relative and therefore good and evil are relative. When I was little, Batman told me that evil had to exist so that good can exist too and that’s kind of true. If everything is always good it loses its meaning and vice versa. Think about it, it really takes a lot of mental power to be thankful for things like food all the time. Food is kind of a given for a lot of people and when you aren’t in need of it in some way you aren’t nearly as grateful which is okay, it just makes that meal a little less good. Same thing happens the other way. Victims of psychological abuse often don’t realize they’re being abused until they’ve already left because it’s a repetitive behavior. I suppose in some ways I agree with batman but I also feel like most things are given too much meaning, money for instance. My mom always says, “Money is the root of all evil.” and that, as I see it, is false. Money is inanimate and can’t physically be evil. What’s evil is the gluttonous and prideful actions of people with excess money. So after blabbering about that I would say that evil exists to help us give meaning and assign emotion to the stimuli around us.