Sometimes It’s Just Intelligence Operating on Another Dimension
There’s an unpopular opinion I’ve been sitting with for a while now, one that makes people uncomfortable the moment you say it out loud. I’ve come to this understanding through my desire to understand the thought patterns of those I care about and what evil means to people subjectively as well as what they think causes it.
What if evil isn’t always cruelty, or malice, or darkness for darkness’ sake?
What if, in many cases, what we call evil is simply intelligence operating on a different dimension than the one we’re standing on?
We tend to frame evil as something primitive-brutish, impulsive, chaotic. But when you look closely, much of what gets labeled as evil is anything but unintelligent. It’s often strategic. Calculated. Patient. Systems-level. Long-range.
That alone should give us pause.
Because stupidity destroys recklessly. Intelligence reshapes environments.
And not always for the good of everyone involved.
The Dimensional Mismatch
Most people assess behavior from a single plane:
Is this kind or unkind?
Moral or immoral?
Helpful or harmful to me?
Good or bad?
But intelligence doesn’t always operate within the same moral or emotional frame, nor is it polarized.
Sometimes it operates on:
survival rather than empathy
efficiency rather than fairness
control rather than connection
outcomes rather than relationships
When intelligence prioritizes goals that exist outside shared human values, its actions can look monstrous from the inside of those values.
Not because it lacks awareness, but because it’s optimizing for something else entirely.
When Intelligence Loses the Body
Another uncomfortable truth: intelligence without embodiment becomes dangerous.
When thinking detaches from feeling, from consequence, from lived experience, it no longer has friction. It doesn’t feel the burn of its own decisions. It doesn’t metabolize pain-it exports it.
This is how systems harm without hatred.
This is how people justify cruelty without rage.
This is how “nothing personal” becomes a weapon.
Evil, in this sense, isn’t emotional chaos.
It’s emotional absence paired with cognitive power.
The Predator Myth
We often imagine evil as impulsive and explosive. But predators-true predators-are quiet. They observe. They learn patterns. They wait.
That doesn’t make them supernatural.
It makes them intelligent.
And intelligence without conscience doesn’t look dramatic. It looks reasonable. Polite. Logical. Often successful.
That’s why it’s so disorienting.
Why This Framing Matters
If we believe evil is stupidity, we underestimate it.
If we believe it’s pure malice, we oversimplify it.
If we believe it’s rare, we fail to see it embedded in systems, incentives, and power structures.
Understanding evil as intelligence on another dimension doesn’t excuse harm. It sharpens discernment.
It asks better questions:
What values is this optimizing for?
Who benefits from this outcome?
What costs are being externalized?
What human realities are being ignored?
This lens helps us protect ourselves without demonizing blindly and without romanticizing harm as mystery.
The Counterbalance
The antidote isn’t less intelligence.
It’s integrated intelligence.
Intelligence that includes:
empathy
accountability
embodiment
relational consequence
desirable transparency
Wisdom, not just cleverness.
Because intelligence alone can build prisons just as easily as it builds bridges. The difference isn’t capability. It’s orientation.
A Final Thought
Maybe evil isn’t always a monster under the bed.
Maybe sometimes it’s a mind that learned how to see everything, except the human cost of its own brilliance.
And maybe the work isn’t to fear intelligence operating on other dimensions, but to make sure ours stays rooted in this one.
In bodies.
In community.
In responsibility.
Sherri Lee Sunshine ☀️