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Malice

Badness; esp. wickedness. The desire to injure another person; active ill will or hatred. In later use also, the desire to tease. Malicious conduct; a malicious act or device. Power to harm, harmful action or effect, malignancy; wrongful intention. Oxford Dictionary

As a broad generalised categorisation, ‘malice’ (the desire to hurt another person; active ill will, spite or hatred; a deep resentment) is used here as a ‘catch-all’ word for what one does to others (resentment, anger, hatred, rage, sadism and so on through all the variations such as abhorrence; acerbity; acrimony; aggression; anger; animosity; antagonism; antipathy; aversion; bad blood; temper; bellicosity; belligerence; bile; bitchiness; bitterness; cantankerousness; cattiness; crabbiness; crossness; defamation; despisal; detestation; disgust; dislike; dissatisfaction; enmity; envy; evil; execration; grievance; grudge; grudgingness; hard feelings; harm; hate; hatred; hostility; ill feeling; ill will; ill-nature; ill-temper; inimicalness; irascibility; irritability; loathing; malevolence; malignance; malignity; militancy; moodiness; murder; opposition; peevishness; petulance; pique; querulousness; rancour; repulsion; repugnance; resentment; snideness; spite; spitefulness; spleen; spoiling; stifling; sullenness; testiness; touchiness; umbrage; unfriendliness; unkindness; vengefulness; venom; vindictiveness; warlikeness; wrath).

A study of the animal world quickly alerts one to instinctual fear and aggression operating, and an honest appraisal will admit to it operating in humans as well. As is evidenced in such tests as those carried out by Milgram and others, humans have an active instinct for malice and aggression that requires the point of a gun or severe moral constraint to hopefully keep them in check. That 160,000,000 have died in wars this century alone is surely evidence of the on-going, inherent malice in humans. Curiously it is always someone else who is malicious or has caused us to be malicious back (this is then regarded as a ‘right’ for justice and not as malicious). The acknowledgement of malice within one’s own bosom is an essential prerequisite to begin to eliminate it. Merely ‘watching it’ is a big cop-out from doing something about it in oneself. Merely transcending it to the extent that one believes oneself to be Good, Right, Holy and above it all is to directly contribute to all the mayhem and carnage of the religious wars and persecutions on the planet.

The third alternative is to rid oneself of all of the instinctual passions – an actual extinction, thus freeing oneself from the shackles of moral constraint or the delusion of transcendence.

Freedom from the Human Condition – Happy and Harmless

Peter’s & Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-.  All Rights Reserved.

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