Evil lies in how you approach these things. With a maximum of suffering to others and a minimum of cost to you and yours.
When your friends are threatened, you would be willing to disregard everything else, no mercy, no means spared, in order to save them. If you had to conquer the world and publicly torture all the offenders to death as a deterrence, so be it.
If your course is justice, you dole it out through pain, fear and death. It may be a Good cause, but pursued through Evil means. An Evil man's solution to world hunger may be to kill all the excess population and then institute a strict regimen of birth control ensuring plenty for everyone else. He is not incapable of subtlety or care, he just considers the cost to anything not within his sphere of interest to be negligible.
Agreed on all points except subtlety; evil is quite capable of subtlety, unless the situation needs evil to be shown in the broadest possible strokes, like Snively Whiplash or similarly cartoonish versions of evil. Subtlety is often key to long-term strategy.
Good points, both of you.
Got me thinking of a literary reference which displays many different motivations of Evil. The Dark One and the Forsaken from
the Wheel of Time.
For those that don't know of the Wheel of Time, it is a fantasy series where time is cyclical, and souls are reborn every few hundred or few thousand years. There is a Creator, who created all existence; people know of him, but do not actively worship him, as he created, then just left things be. The Creator also imprisoned the Dark One outside of creation, so he could not affect the world.
The Dark One: Ultimate embodiment of evil. Though still imprisoned, he does have influence on the world. His ultimate goal is to destroy all of existence (and possibly remake creation according to his own rules).
Ishmael: The "head" of the Forsaken. Prior to turning to the Dark, he was a renowned philosopher and intellectual, and his books were read the world-over. He turned to the Dark after he reasoned out that the battle between the Creator's champion (the Dragon, a soul reborn as a magic-using man to fight the Dark One) and the Dark One had been happening repeatedly for all time, and would continue repeatedly for all time; the Light must win every time to preserve the world, while the Dark One must win only once. Therefore, his logical conclusion was to side with the Dark. He is the only Forsaken to fully understand the Dark One's ultimate goal of total destruction of everything, that creation will cease to be; he embraces this. Many other Forsaken speculate that he is insane, though.
Lanfear: A spurned former-lover of the Dragon; she had seen her relationship with the Dragon as a means to gain power. She is exceedingly jealous of the Dragon's wife. She was a "researcher of magic" and is the one who bored the hole into the Dark One's prison (presumably innocently). She was the first to encounter the Dark One, and gave over to him at that moment.
Demandred: A very successful and well-known magic-user, second only to the Dragon. Second to the Dragon in
everything, and hates the Dragon for it. Born one day after the Dragon, almost as handsome as the Dragon, second most acclaimed man of his time, behind the Dragon. He even had desired the Dragon's wife, before she married the Dragon.
Semirhage: The most renowned healer who could heal someone from the brink of death when other magic-users would fail, and understood the pain a pleasure centers of the brain. She was also a sadist, and would extract pain from the people she healed, and would only heal those she felt society needed. When her sadistic treatments were discovered, she was given a choice to be magically compelled never to inflict pain again, or be cut off from being able to use magic ever again. She fled to the Dark.
Graendal: Expert in the mind and mental illness, she was a known ascetic that eschewed worldly pleasure. Some years after the drilling of the Bore into the Dark One's prison, she realized the world could not live up to her standards, and she became an extreme hedonist.
Aginor: Highly skilled biologist who was banned from performing any genetic engineering after conducting some experiments on animals (no real details of what was done). After turning to the Dark One a few decades later, he engineered the Trollocs and other shadowspawn.
Balthamel: The promise of immortality is what turned him to the Dark One.
Moghedien: A financial consultant who was repeatedly disciplined for ethics violations. She was one of the early turners, but did not openly declare it. She worked as an intelligence officer for the Light, but was actually spying for the Dark One's forces.
Mesaana: Was denied a research position at a magical research university, and was given a teaching position instead. During the War, she was a regional governor in the Dark One's conquered lands, and established schools where children were taught to spy on each other and their parents. Mobs of these children burned down museums, libraries and research facilities. People of all ages were tried before courts entirely made of children, then executed.
Asmodean: The promise of immortality (so he could compose music forever) is why he turned to the Dark.
Rahvin: Turned to the Dark One because of his thirst for Power.
Sammael: When the Dragon was named Commander of the Light, Sammael hated his former friend for losing out, and turned to the Dark One, so he could lead armies to destroy the Dragon.
All of the Forsaken, with the exception of Ishamael, have the desire and belief that they will gain power and rule as kings after the Dark One defeats the Dragon. They all think the Dark One merely plans to rule over the world, and when the Dark One asks one of them to use Balefire (magic that utterly destroys what it touches, to the point of warping reality and causing existence to unravel) that individual abhors the idea.
So, the motivations we have include cold logic of inevitability, jealousy, a desire for an escape from punishment for "banned" proclivities (an thus gaining the freedom to participate in those activities again), disappointment with the imperfections of the world, the promise of immortality, the desire for power, and resentment for being spurned in one form or another.
There isn't enough info on Be'lal to speculate on his motivations for turning to the Dark One.
Edit: Also, upon their release in the end of the Third Age, as the seals on the Bore weaken, nearly all of the Forsaken take extremely subtle actions to place themselves into positions of power. Some through mental manipulation, some through subterfuge, and some are more subtle than others, as fits their personalities. Nearly all are working toward the goal of defeating the Dragon when the Dark One is released, and take steps to sow chaos throughout society. (Chaos in the mundane sense, not the cosmic force).
Some attain their power by usurping positions of power: getting named to the High Council and killing the king; becoming a lover to the ruling queen; fomenting rebellion and killing the king, leaving his loyal supporters with your forged missives providing non-nonsensical orders; causing divisiveness and derision in the one long-standing magic-user organization in the world, etc.
The Dark One also encourages in-fighting between the Forsaken. Which would match up with PvP assassinations within an evil party, but then, the Dark One is also a cosmic force of Evil.
