I think the way I learned it is that no one chooses evil -- one chooses what one perceives as good (not necessarily moral good here). Maybe a failure of perception? Tunnel vision?
Just a thought. I realize your background in this stuff is far more extensive than mine.
Yes. Nobody chooses evil as such. It is a (mis) perceived good that we choose. It's not to say , "Well he didn't realize what he was doing, there, there, poor, dear." We SHOULD know, for example, that it's gonna take an AWFUL lot of chocolate to make up for having to buy the new clothes the chocolate will require us to buy.
Even when we talk about 'mens rea' I guess the actual 'mens' is "Law? Who cares about the law? It's just hell toodling along AT 75 mph when this porsche can do 115." The fun or convenience of the speed is overvalued and the law is despised. That's culpable.
I think.
"(The ordinary man) has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such thing as free will also.......,
The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It if full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), ti is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad becuse they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.
For example, Mr. Blatchford attacks Christianity because he is mad on one Christian virtue: the merely mystical and almost irrational value of charity. He has a strange idea that he will make it esier to forgive sins by saying that there are no sins to forgive. ...... his mercy would mean mere anarchy."