Here's how I think about it.
At my most introspective, I can explain all of my motivations in terms of things I either hope for, or things I fear. I might even simplify this further to say simply that I am motivated purely by my desire.
In other words, desire is the only motivating force that I am consciously aware of - that I have any direct evidence of.
But when I look out upon the world, I see lots of other people and things doing things and taking action. Birds chirping, rain falling, planets revolving, etc.
And presumably, those things are all moved by some motivating force as well. We provide names for some of these forces, like gravity.
And we generally don't presume these other forces to possess sentience.
But we know for a fact that we ourselves possess sentience, and most of us are pretty darn sure that other animals possess sentience as well.
And I think it's a pretty good assumption, that, for those animals with sentience, that the only thing motivating them, like myself, is desire.
But we haven't found any motivating force that is specifically responsible for sentience.
And so, it seems to me, like we have no good reason to try to distinguish between non-sentient motivational forces, and sentient ones, or, therefore, to presume that some motivational forces are sentient while others are not.
And so it seems like we ought to presume that all motivational forces are like our own. Which is to say, it seems like we ought to presume that all motivational forces are sentient, and driven purely by desire.
So that means that the feelings of hope, fear, and desire that motivate our own actions are presumably present in all physical interactions, like gravity and electromagnetic force.
But where does "evil" fit into all of this?
And I think the answer is that we use the term "evil" to refer to the things we fear - in particular, the things we fear A LOT. Especially if it is something we fear, which we don't know if we will recover from.
For example, I might fear or dread my morning workout, because it is a form of suffering. But my fear is mitigated, because I know I will come out the other side feeling good. And that's why I don't call it "evil".
But anyway, I suspect that hope and fear and happiness and suffering are probably just the fundamental building blocks of all force and motivation in the universe.
And "evil" is just whatever seems especially, irrecoverably scary, to a particular sentient perspective.
