Is Evil More Powerful?

When I have tried to be nice, caring, considerate and do the right thing, I have been called "naive" or "a fairy" or "take off the rose tinted specs" or "someday you will come down to earth with a thump" or "wake up and smell the coffee."
How do you define "evil" by the person or by the act they have committed? I think good people do and say bad thing's all the time. People end up in jail are not always bad people. They have made bad choices or have had troubled lives. And I believe in rehabilitating people and our capacity to change and forgive one another.
Life is hard. For me life has been damn hard and I regret so many thing's. I think we are inherently good, but I can see where everyone thinks that "evil" is a strong force. We have the desire to do what is good and just over all.
I think we are just good at lying to ourselves. And that some people think life is just a game and there are winners and losers and that is just the way it goes. It is just business and life is one big competition. You mess up, sorry I have to fire you. You don't pay the mortgage, you cannot keep the house. Your business goes under, you have to start over and find something new. Bureaucracy is a double edged sword, we need law and order but what about our humanity? Can we idly stand by and watch, does that make us guilty for doing nothing? Or do you tell your children at least it is them and not us on the street begging. Look how lucky you are.
All you have to do is turn on the news channel and you think, we can carry on with our lives, will I have desert, i wish I had not drunk so much or had seconds, now i'll have to go burn it off at the gym. We live in excess while children in other countries starve.
But we don't have to be surgeons or soldiers or modern day missionaries or activists to do good. Some people give blood every year and are happy they are doing their bit, doing something, contributing something they don't have to do. I volunteer at a food bank for three hours a week. It does not sound much but I feel good about it.

The only race is the human race.
Music video - Baz Luhrmann - Everybodies Free to wear sunscreen. Link below:

While we are on the subject of evil I would like to bring up a marvellous book that I am sure you all know of by Anthony Burgess. The infamous " A Clockwork Orange."
The anti-hero Alex, is an evil piece of work. He is an evil human being.
His crimes were going to land him in prison. He is remorseless and completely a-moral. Yet the author gives him such a convincing narrative we want to know what will happen to this Mozart listening hedonistic deviant.
We are pulled into the novel by the playful language, the slang that is interspersed with Russian influenced phrases and by the callous crimes this gang parade on every night in a near dystopian future. They embark on rampage style violent sprees. And Alex speaks of rape like it is just gratification like a junkie seeking heroin.
He was not going to stop unless he was caught and imprisoned.
He is all ready on the radar of officials, a doctor visits him at home, an early interventionist to try and deter him from where he is inevitably going - staja. State prison. A murder sees that he is incarcerated indefinitely and the doctor spits in his face before he is led away.
In part two of the novel, Alex the sociopath that he sure and certain encapsulates, befriends the prison preacher and concvinces him he is willing to volunteer for a new rehabilitation technique that will see his early release.
It is a work of fiction, the psychological technique but it draws on behaviourist conditioning. Alex is essentially "conditioned" to be good. At the end of the programme the doctors have trained his mind to not think of evil deeds as he physically becomes unwell and sick at the thought. But deep down Alex does not want to change his ways. He just wants out of jail. And a member of the audience at the psychologists presentation asks is it better to choose to be good and not conditioned to be. He questions that even though the ludovico technique has worked, the doctors have taken away this "victims" freedom of choice or freewill.
Alex is released in part three. Painted to be a victim of the state. He is set up by a man whose wife his gang raped and tortured and committed suicide. In despair that everyone has moved on since staja - his gang and parents have no place for him and that he cannot enjoy not only his malevolent violent ways but his music either as the technique inadvertantly included his beloved symphonies - He attempts suicide himself by jumping out of the window. And when the novel concludes, the technique is reversed and he is free and reverts to his old ways. Burgess uses a vicious thug in order to ask an age old question about Freewill. And stoke our suspicions on psychology apparently being used for good but is it moral to eradicate a persons sense of free will in order to make them a law abiding citizen. When Alex is freed from prison he is not really free. He has been programmed like a robot to not commit crime. Even though he is a wicked piece of work we sympathise with him in parts. As we question the state policing us, as in Owells 1984 but the more prominent philosophical question of free will.

G Orwell,1984. Did anyone notice that in the novel, there is an underclass that do not get monitored: "the proles." Hope lies in this lower class. I think his dystopian vision underestimates the power of protest. Look at the London riots back in 2012. If the people believed surveillance was going to far there would not just be marches and protests but full scale riots. Wars rage today because the people want democracy.

schoolyard bullies and their gang of 5 are very small in a school of 500.

Bullies and those as mentioned in the open post tend to have a face for the public to see, but most people are well aware of psyco bullies. Rest assured while a nut job can make himself look big, that is all for the show. Behind the mask is a very unhappy person who knows not what else to do. Success tends to be vanity led for such people and is not a success at all.
Good people are always in greater numbers. We just do not bang on about ourselves all the time, as a result, people in distress may not realize good people are here.

Not ultimately, but for now it seems to be winning.....

I couldn't agree more with what you said...
Honestly this is the root of my depression.

& I think it's great that you are volunteering every week.
You're giving them your time, which is the most valuable.

Evil is more powerful. I've been a victim of evil doers for a long, long, time and the EVIL continues. It spreads like a virus to anyone close to them. I feel bad for all those exposed to evil doers for they suffer the most.