Wisdom is understanding the consequences of your decisions as you make them. Morality is nothing more then elevated understanding, based on a greater knowledge of true self interest.
And all of us fail. We need to understand this. We might fail daily across a lifetime. This is no reason to quit trying.
Evil begins when we call failure other than what it is, when you rationalize it, and then routinize it.
Without honesty, there is no self to protect. Or perhaps I should say the gate closes and remains shut. You turn into a machine, operating at the behest of invisible mechanisms, whirring seamlessly and uninterrupted in the background.