HARM AND EVIL IS INTERNALISED BETTER THAN GOOD
Premise 1: Humans have limited cognitive and emotional resources to allocate
attention and memory.
Premise 2: Negative events (harm, danger, pain) have a higher evolutionary
significance for survival than positive events.
Premise 3: Human memory and attention are biased toward negative events—a
phenomenon supported by psychological research (e.g., the negativity bias).
Premise 4: Happiness is inherently unpredictable and diffuse; it does not
provide immediate or obvious cues for future action in the same way that harm
avoidance does.
Conclusion: Therefore, humans naturally fear harm more than they actively seek happiness, because harm has a more reliable and memorable impact on behavior and survival than happiness does.
Humans by nature then do not merely remember negative experiences. They internalize them, integrating harm and suffering into their sense of self and worldview. They hold on to them which prolongs and empowers the suffering. That is warped devotion. When we endure pain or witness wrongdoing, these experiences become part of our mental schema, shaping how we interpret future events and guiding our decisions. This internalization amplifies the salience of harm compared to happiness, which often passes without leaving a lasting imprint. In this way, our mental life becomes a repository for negative experiences, reinforcing our natural inclination to fear harm more than we pursue the unpredictable and fleeting moments of joy.
The internalising of good is an insult to good for the strongest power is given to evil.
THE ARGUMENT
How humans can internalise moral concepts (like good and evil)
1 Neuroplasticity enables value-encoding
The brain forms and strengthens neural pathways based on repeated experiences, emotions, and decisions. Moral evaluations can become “built in” through repeated activation, forming intuitive responses.
2 Emotional conditioning
Experiences paired with strong emotions (e.g., guilt, empathy, pride, fear) become internalised more deeply. This happens regardless of whether the emotion comes from personal actions or witnessing others’ actions.
3 Social learning
Humans automatically learn norms by observing approval/disapproval, rewards/punishments, and role models. This process shapes internal moral frameworks even if not consciously chosen.
4 Language shaping thought
Moral concepts acquired through language give structure to otherwise vague intuitions. Naming actions as “good” or “evil” helps us categorise and internalise them.
5 Identity formation
People tend to internalise values that improve self-coherence: “What kind of person am I?” Once integrated into identity, values operate automatically.
6 Cognitive empathy and simulation
Humans naturally simulate others’ perspectives, making others’ suffering or flourishing feel partly personal. This drives internal moral intuitions because the boundary between self and other is psychologically permeable.
7 Implicit pattern detection
Humans recognise patterns of cause and effect (e.g., harming others tends to have social or emotional costs). These patterns internalise into intuitive beliefs about what is good or harmful.
8 Why humans are inherent internalisers
Evolutionary advantage and internalising norms helps groups cooperate, increasing survival odds. Innate tendencies toward empathy, fairness, and reciprocity promote group stability.
9 Cognitive economy
Internalised rules reduce the need for constant deliberation. Automatic moral judgments are faster and require less cognitive load.
10 Need for belonging
Humans have strong motivational systems to align with group norms. Internalising values reduces social friction and risk of exclusion.
11 Predictive processing
The brain is a prediction engine; internalised values help predict others’ behaviour. Shared moral concepts make the social world more navigable.
12 Existential meaning-making
Humans seek frameworks that explain who they are and how they should live. Internalising moral concepts helps impose structure on existential uncertainty.
If there is a soul, it is conceptually plausible that part of its function could be to internalise what morally or existentially matters. This doesn’t assert that it does, only that it could, based on how people experience meaning, transformation, and moral depth. There could be other levels to us - not a soul as such. They could cause internalising on their own or contribute to it.