I believe in moral non-objectivism, meaning that I don’t see good and evil as independent virtues. As far as I’m concerned, they only exist in our minds, and it’s their utility that makes them true.
With no two minds being the same, good and evil differ between individuals. Someone out there is convinced that oranges are good and tangeringes are evil. Still, there are patterns; people’s convictions can be categorized, if crudely. When I labor with this issue, I divide people into three types. Three models of good and evil.
Model One is concerned with individuals. Users of this model believe that good individuals should be rewarded, and evil individuals punished. In every scenario, they look for a hero and a villain, a victim and a perpetrator. If those parties aren’t distinguishable, Model One users become uneasy. Some may invent a villain just for the comfort of casting blame.
What makes someone a good or bad person is variable. Different people within Model One have different values. It’s not those values, but rather the individualist mindset itself, that defines the model.
Model Two is concerned with ideas. Users of this model don’t search for villains, but for the evil embedded in society. Rather than cheer on heroes, they praise movements of good. They also monitor their own behavior closely, because they know that even decent people can serve evil structures.
Models One and Two seldom get along politically. See if this sounds familiar: A man and a woman are discussing sexism in their workplace. The woman explains how her coworkers’ sex jokes and macho jargon create an inhospitable environment for her. The man listens with building impatience until he exclaims: “I’m not a bad guy!”
In this scenario, the woman was a Model Two user, and the man a Model One user. She was discussing a structural issue, which he misconstrued as a judgment of his character. In the interface between Models Two and One, “Feminism is good, and sexism is evil” often translates into “Women are good, and men are evil.”
(Once again, models aren’t value-based. Model Two isn’t in itself feminist, just structuralist.)