Science Quote by Konrad Lorenz

Two moves happen at once: evil is whatever endangers the good; the good is whatever we perceive as a value. That relocates morality from supernatural absolutes to human valuation and vulnerability. It is programmatic rather than metaphysical: it sketches the field of ethics by the goods we care about and the threats that imperil them. From an ethological lens, values are not arbitrary whims but evolved sensitivities; social animals survive by recognizing signals of safety, kinship, fairness, and care. Good, then, names the patterns that sustain flourishing; evil names forces that corrode those patterns.

Konrad Lorenz, a founder of modern ethology and a Nobel laureate, explored how innate impulses and cultural forms interact in works like On Aggression. He worried that rapid technological and social change can unmoor instincts calibrated for small groups, weakening the inhibitions that once checked violence. Read this way, evil includes mechanisms such as propaganda, dehumanization, and runaway competition that endanger the cooperative structures and ecological balances on which life depends. The emphasis on what we perceive highlights a crucial task: our perception of value can be educated or distorted.

There is an unsettling circularity here, and Lorenz seems to accept it as a feature. If good is what we esteem, then corrupted esteem licenses harm. History shows how perverse value perceptions have justified atrocities; Lorenz himself joined the Nazi Party and later acknowledged the error. The line therefore carries a warning: we must refine perception so that what we call valuable aligns with intersubjective and empirical measures of well-being, such as human dignity, ecological health, and the conditions that let communities endure.

The moral task, on this account, is custodial. Protect the institutions and habits that let shared goods persist, and continually recalibrate our sense of value through dialogue, science, and empathy. Evil appears not as a metaphysical entity but as any pressure that endangers those fragile, life-supporting goods.