Good and evil are concepts that people have come to understand as being beneficial and detrimental to our well-being.
Nobody desires evil, but because we experience pain when certain phenomena occur, we call those phenomena evil.
Pain is a condition that creates within us a desire to eradicate it. Pain may result from destruction, deterioration or death of a living entity or cells that contribute to the well-being of a living entity.
Suffering is a condition where we feel that we are restricted in our ability to exercise our full potential and, instead of floating in the wind like a balloon that is at its maximum potential, we are like a balloon that bumps along the ground, because we are somewhat deflated. We call this distress. When this condition exists and we are subject to it, we become discouraged and less motivated to eradicate our pain. Even though we may prefer to be free of our distress and the discomfort and burdensome feeling that comes with it, we find ourselves struggling just to cope and maintain our distressed condition rather than being motivated to free ourselves from it.
On the other hand, if something is good, we desire it because we obtain pleasure, feelings that excite, comfort and enhance our experience of our existence. However, not everybody gets to experience an existence that is so full of life and its bountiful pleasures because even though they are aware that such an existences exists, they have not experienced it, and therefore their desire is not so great to motivate themselves to secure this state of existence at all costs.
Attributing evil to suffering comes because we have the ability to identify not only objects but the immaterial and define its characteristics. Whether we care what evil is, well, that is another matter again. Nobody really cares what evil is, but people certainly care about what happens to them, and if suffering is defined as evil, then people care about suffering; so in this respect, people would care about evil, but mostly about avoiding it.
Not everybody would strive to define what is good and what is evil. The only people who are intent on finding definitions for shades of the obvious are those who profit from doing so. Most people understand that suffering is evil but not having to suffer is a better deal. Whereas those who are intent of defining what is good and what is evil are more likely those who want to run other people’s lives.
Oddly enough, some people think it is evil to identify certain actions for what they are, but not evil to punish a person for telling the truth. Examples of this abound everywhere, particularly among those who speak out about someone wearing a shirt that they consider sexist, but keep their mouths shut and say nothing when other people behead victims and rape the innocent and insist of female circumcision. These warped prohibitionists strive to define good and evil. Why? Because they reject the obvious and need to invent a lie so they can deceptively go about their wicked plans. (The link below provides ample examples).
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