No, I don’t think that’s necessary. Sometimes, indeed often, evil is caused by people who simply don’t care whether a given course of action is evil or not. Take, for example, the example of the owner of a factory. His factory produces chemical X during its production processes; nobody wants X, nobody likes X. If he dumps it in a lake and hopes that no-one notices, that’s definitely evil (especially if people downstream will be drinking the water), but that’s not out of a desire to be a moustache-twirling evil villain—that’s out of a desire to save on the cost of disposing of it properly.
Evil people have the ability to change that they’re evil (If they don’t, the evil is not due to free will).
True. A lot of evil can be changed.
Evil people know they’re being evil.
Again, not necessary. It merely needs to be reasonably possible for evil people to find out whether or not they are being evil. Sometimes, this requires a fair amount of study. Take the example of a large corporation that’s looking for a factory to produce some goods for them. Factory A in Europe says it can produce it for a hundred Euros per item; factory B in China says it can make the same item for fifty Euros per unit. The corporation picks B, and doesn’t go and have a look at the apalling conditions that the factory workers are enduring in a very aggressive attempt to cut costs. (Factory B’s managers will probably claim that it is a wonderful place to work unless someone actually goes there and looks).
I’m not saying that being evil is at all fun. I’m saying that it’s something that some people do; usually, I suspect, because there’s something else they care about more. Most of the time, they’re either not aware that they are being evil (usually because they never bothered to just sit down and think through the consequences of their actions) or the potential benefit to them is high enough that they don’t care about the negative consequences (any action that a company takes to protect a monopoly on a given product or service from fair competition probably falls under here).
No, I don’t think that’s necessary. Sometimes, indeed often, evil is caused by people who simply don’t care whether a given course of action is evil or not. Take, for example, the example of the owner of a factory. His factory produces chemical X during its production processes; nobody wants X, nobody likes X. If he dumps it in a lake and hopes that no-one notices, that’s definitely evil (especially if people downstream will be drinking the water), but that’s not out of a desire to be a moustache-twirling evil villain—that’s out of a desire to save on the cost of disposing of it properly.
True. A lot of evil can be changed.
Again, not necessary. It merely needs to be reasonably possible for evil people to find out whether or not they are being evil. Sometimes, this requires a fair amount of study. Take the example of a large corporation that’s looking for a factory to produce some goods for them. Factory A in Europe says it can produce it for a hundred Euros per item; factory B in China says it can make the same item for fifty Euros per unit. The corporation picks B, and doesn’t go and have a look at the apalling conditions that the factory workers are enduring in a very aggressive attempt to cut costs. (Factory B’s managers will probably claim that it is a wonderful place to work unless someone actually goes there and looks).
I’m not saying that being evil is at all fun. I’m saying that it’s something that some people do; usually, I suspect, because there’s something else they care about more. Most of the time, they’re either not aware that they are being evil (usually because they never bothered to just sit down and think through the consequences of their actions) or the potential benefit to them is high enough that they don’t care about the negative consequences (any action that a company takes to protect a monopoly on a given product or service from fair competition probably falls under here).