Evil Is Choosing Against Reality

This paper proposes a structural definition of evil as the repeated choice against reality when reality is available. Rather than treating evil as an essence, motive, or moral category, the analysis reframes it as a relational pattern: a system becomes misaligned when it consistently selects interpretations, actions, or narratives that contradict what is real. In a relational ontology, reality is the set of stable patterns that remain coherent across perspectives. Choosing against reality therefore produces instability, distortion, and harm—not as an intention, but as an inevitable consequence of misalignment. This account explains why denial, self deception, manipulation, and destructive behavior share a common structure: each requires turning away from what is true in order to preserve an unstable internal state. By defining evil as anti reality rather than anti goodness, the paper offers a minimal, non theological, and cross domain framework for understanding moral drift as a pattern of relational refusal.