Introduction
Life is filled with complex realities that we often accept reluctantly—things we recognize as “necessary evils.” These are actions, systems, or emotions that, while problematic or even harmful in some ways, seem unavoidable for society or individuals to function. From government and law to relationships and tolerance, this exploration considers how necessary evils shape human experience and moral understanding. Telling them apart from evils that are less than necessary is generally impossible.
Government
Thomas Paine wrote that society is a good thing and even the best government is a necessary evil. He described tyrannical government as an intolerable evil.
If a good government is a necessary evil, then could organized religion be one as well?
No. The government has to struggle to lay down rules that seem to be best for the people. It is very empirically minded. If organized religion is a necessary evil, then which one? Religion has its rules and doctrines laid out and does not update based on new evidence. The state can function and work without religion—organized or otherwise.
Relationships
If our relationships in general are reasonably good and positive, we will be happy. Happiness comes from the kind of relationships we have.
Love of family and friends is based largely on delusion—you see them as better than they actually are. You look at their faults through unclear lenses. You cannot see how serious the faults are. You project your feelings and notions onto them as if they were theirs. You want to feel mirrored by them instead of letting them fully be their own persons. They feed back your illusions to you.
Relationships are necessary evils insofar as they involve delusion.
Nobody knows how much delusion is happening. If it is light in one case, it could be strong in another.
Evil
When we label someone as bad or evil, it invokes the desire to punish or inflict pain. It would be evil to wish the plague on a person rather than prison—the plague is not clearly connected to any wrong they have done, while prison is. Yet nature and chance give us the opportunity to administer justice. They have more to do with that than we do.
Perhaps the desire will be stronger if the person does seem to be bad. But we can condemn good people. That makes it easy for us to turn off our caring feelings toward them, if any. It is easy, in either case, for us to pretend we don't really want to hurt the evil person, convincing ourselves it is about their behavior, not them. It is easy to imagine we forgive them when we don't see them around. The inexcusable risk is that when we stand face-to-face with them, we may attack them. We may harm them behind their backs—examples include gossip, sending threats, etc.
Judging somebody as evil is reckoned to be necessary; otherwise, you will treat the child-killer the same as the loving young mother. It is evil because it never stops with justice.
Law
Law is a necessary evil for the same reason as authority, perception, morality, mercy, and punishment (and just about everything else!).
A law that penalizes lawbreakers too lightly is not much of a law. A law that doesn't penalize them at all is not a law—it is advice, but not a law.
A law demands obedience from you. When it tells you to be good, it tries to make you good instead of letting you be spontaneously good. It threatens punishment if you disobey. Law is the friend of order, not goodness. It will never be as good as it pretends. Laws are about protecting something, which is why they are about fear. Law is a necessary evil and cannot be something to rejoice in.Judgment
Judgment is declaring that a person has done right or wrong in the moral understanding of these terms.
The alcoholic does not mind too much if somebody tells him to look after his health for his own sake. But if you tell him to look after himself for the sake of his family or children, he will thump you. People will judge but will do their best to hide it.
The person who praises you and avoids saying anything that reflects badly on you is, in fact, judging you indirectly. They have to judge you to leave out the bad stuff. They want to give you the illusion that they are non-judgmental. They are hypocrites. When you are praised and take no joy in it, it is probably because you realize the praise was artificial and latently barbed.
Judging is not nice, but it is a necessary evil; you cannot treat the humanitarian and the tyrant as deserving the best in life.
Punishment
Punishment is needed to make the law a law. The threat of punishment ensures obedience. Punishment is a necessary evil. Somebody suffers. Often, the criminal who is caught suffers while worse offenders go free. You can punish somebody and feel awful that you have to do it. There is no inconsistency. That, again, is another necessary evil.
The good deeds of a criminal can never condone his crime. A doctor who has saved millions of lives should not escape punishment if he murders one person. Punishment is necessary because we cannot create a world where people do good as a license to do evil.
Mercy/Forgiveness
Mercy and forgiveness require judgment of the person as deserving punishment. Then you decide not to punish. Punishment is a necessary evil, so abandoning it is also a necessary evil. But sometimes there are too many crimes or people to punish, and letting some go is necessary. This is not true mercy, which is freely given—it pretends to allow the person to do better, but is actually about refusing to do the right thing by society.
We are talking retributive justice here - ignore restorative justice for that can fail to admit that the person needs to pay for what they did - not just compensate for it.
Reputation: A Thought Experiment
Scenario A: We attribute a significant good deed to a person without knowing for certain that they performed it.
Scenario B: We attribute a crime to a person without knowing for certain that they committed it.
Faced with a choice, most people prefer Scenario A.
This raises an ethical question: Are we willing to risk falsely praising someone in order to avoid the potential harm of falsely accusing someone? If so, it highlights a troubling aspect of how we honor good deeds—we may celebrate what is undeserved, which compromises the integrity of praise. At the same time, we attempt to minimize harm by avoiding false accusations, but in doing so, we acknowledge that our recognition of good can be just as flawed as our judgment of wrongdoing.
There is no point in trying to avoid slandering a good person when you are slandering good by praising evil!
Life
Life is a necessary evil because everything associated with it is. Life is about us making our own version of goodness regardless of real goodness. We only want real good when it suits us. It is about us, not goodness. Human existence on Earth has not been good for the Earth or its creatures. Surely it is better to have a world without man than a world with man who has a nuclear button.
Here are reasons why human life is a necessary evil.
Resource consumption: Human life inevitably uses land, water, and energy, harming ecosystems.
Habitat destruction: Cities, agriculture, and infrastructure displace countless species.
Pollution and climate impact: Human activity produces greenhouse gases, toxins, and waste.
Species extinction: Human expansion directly or indirectly causes biodiversity loss.
Irreversible environmental change: Even minimal survival needs disrupt ecological balance.
Moral ambivalence: Humans also have the unique capacity to mitigate environmental harm, creating a tension between necessity and destruction.
Conclusion: Human life is a necessary evil—unavoidable, impactful, and morally complex.
Happiness - is left to last for a reason
Necessary evil is not something to be celebrated. You do not rejoice when your father dies and leaves you loads of money, even though it means you can now pay for food to stop your children from starving.
If virtually everything is a necessary evil, as we have shown, then happiness is a sin—or not far from it. Happiness is feeling fantastic about all the necessary evil in your existence. It is forgetting how bad it is.
FINALLY
Necessary evil is an inescapable part of existence. It challenges our moral intuitions, tests our tolerance, and exposes the limits of human judgment. Recognizing it allows us to act with humility, restraint, and critical awareness, even if perfection is unattainable. Life is not free of moral compromise, and understanding this is essential to navigating it wisely.