On Evil — Post 2: Nature Doesn’t Apologize

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“Nature is pliable, obedient. And the logos that governs it has no reason to do evil. It knows no evil, does none, and causes harm to nothing. It dictates all beginnings and all endings.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6:1

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I want to start with a nature analogy that will help me keep my initial argument against evil simple—because it is, until it isn’t.

Ray Dalio writes about an experience he had in Principles, a not uncommon scene from nature: hyenas taking down a young wildebeest.

Not pleasant. The blood, noise, and violence would make anyone—much less a hedge fund manager from southern New England—want to look away.

But Dalio—a student of patterns and history—just sits with it: this is nature optimizing for the whole, not the individual. The wildebeest suffers, but the hyenas eat. The ecosystem holds. It’s not a bad thing; it’s just how it functions. They rarely wait for their food to die of old age before they dig in.

We may feel bad for the baby wildebeest, but we can’t call the hyenas evil for performing their role in nature.

They were hungry. They found food. They ate.

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That’s the moment I want to pull on—that emotional response. The discomfort is exactly where the thinking needs to happen. Where we jump from event to response, skipping right on by the reason.

The Stoics, when dealing with a person, would say: look again. Not to excuse the action or minimize the suffering. But to ask the harder question—are they operating outside of nature, or are they, like the hyenas, acting in accordance with their nature? With a logic shaped by instinct, ignorance, and circumstance.

Marcus isn’t being naive in Meditations 6:1.

He’s being precise.

He’s saying nature has no reason to do evil. It knows no evil.

What we call evil isn’t some force operating against nature. It’s something we’ve layered on top of it. A label. A judgment. A way of ending the conversation instead of coping with an uncomfortable feeling we arrive at in the face of something outside of our control, or perhaps there’s an attachment that’s seemingly come under attack.

The young wildebeest is eaten. A close friend gets a diagnosis. Our favorite lamp gets stolen while we sleep.

But on the other hand, we kill a snake because it’s in the flower garden stopping for shade.

“It scared us. We reacted. Then we reasoned our way into: it doesn’t belong here. It could be poisonous.”

We rationalize other less-than-desirable behaviors with you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.

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The nature analogy is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. Saying someone acted in accordance with their nature—shaped by ignorance, by circumstance, by a broken internal logic—is not the same as saying they bear no responsibility.

I’m not speaking of absolution. I’m talking about accuracy.

Your “bad” is their “good,” or at least they’re indifferent—perhaps unaware. One person thinks the feral cats need to be fed and have shelters built. The other thinks the cats are a nuisance and the shelters are litter. Another drives by thinking about feeding their dogs without even noticing.

The hyenas don’t apologize because they don’t have the capacity for moral reflection. People do—and that difference matters. It’s what makes accountability possible. But accountability and the label “evil” are not the same thing. One is useful. One just makes us feel better.

Dalio’s point—and I think Marcus would agree—is that nature optimizes for the whole, not the individual.

That’s not a comfort. It’s a fact. And facts don’t care whether we find them comforting.

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Here’s a fact I don’t think people like to grasp: even though it looks like shopping centers, highways, and cities packed so tight people can’t move—it’s nature. Our nature.

We carry an us-and-them mindset that treats driving cars and using forks as evidence that we somehow aren’t animals.

Those jumps in reasoning are fundamentally human. But should we stop there, or examine it? Why do we get so confident in our models that one out-of-place event can make the whole thing collapse?

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At the end of the day, when we call something evil, we’re not illuminating it. We’re filing it away. We’re saying this is beyond understanding—and in doing so, we exempt ourselves from the work of actually understanding it.

Something I picked up has stuck with me here. When someone does or says something that pulls me out of my usual state—hurts me, angers me, unsettles me—the practice is to stop and ask: what is the most generous interpretation of their action?

That’s usually the right one. Not the easiest. Not the most satisfying. But the most accurate.

The hyenas don’t need a label. Neither does the person who hurt you, as much as it might feel like they do.

What they need—what we need—is the harder question.

The one Marcus asked himself, in Book 10.

“Learn to ask of all actions, ‘Why are they doing that?’ Starting with your own.” — Meditations 10:37

Plain truth. Rough edges.

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A Question for You

Keep it small—an argument, a betrayal, a moment you still replay. When you called it “evil” (or “mean,” or “broken”), what’s one “why” question you didn’t ask at the time—and what answer do you think you’d get if you asked it now?