Evil is fundamentally a lack of empathy and I see no empathy from this man. He’s not a cackling crazy
Hitler figure, but he seems to have a difficult time figuring out just what the problem is with having sex with children and with child slaves, and chooses to dedicate a great deal of mental energy defending the more powerful people in this scenario.
The definition of evil is always … a heated topic, but the common theme usually is that the suffering evil inflicts is not accidental.
In your reply here, you're describing sociopathy. I wouldn't describe Stallman as a sociopath but I could definitely see the arguments for it. But even the most repulsive things I've seen this man say/do never got me to think "Yeah, this dude wants others to suffer".
Edit: And no, I don't think he has a difficult time "figuring out what the problem is".
I think that’s a facile Hollywood idea of evil. People like that exist, but plenty of evil people don’t care about suffering.
A psychologist assigned to the Nuremberg trials put it better than I ever could. “In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trails 1945-1949)
I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
Fair. Putting aside the word itself though, I don't think Stallman lacks empathy.
What he does lack, IMHO, is a huge amount of basic, day-to-day understanding of how the world works. Such as the power dynamics of teenagers in the modern world. Things he's completely incapable of understanding because he chooses to isolate himself and live in an absurdly eccentric way. For fucks sake, have you seen how he browses the internet? [1]
He chooses to live that way because, for him, every single issue seems to be a hill he's ready to die on. It was only a matter of time until the hill was bad enough for this to happen.
Still, I maintain he's not evil, neither by your definition nor mine.
Thus, American justice system is evil? Law knows no empathy. Politics is even worse. Media didn't consider it worth it a split second of thought to gauge impact on life of this man.
