Awareness

It is important to remember that anything you can do to expand your awareness will automatically counter evil. Be gentle when you are tempted to be harsh. Pay attention when you are tempted to turn a blind eye. Accept that the negativity you are feeling belongs to you when you are tempted to blame someone else.
Personal transformation on this level is the highest way to combat evil. The more conscious you become, the more you come into balance. Once balanced, you can choose to reject destruction; your awareness expands beyond the immediate hurt to see that evolution is eternal and therefore eternally possible.
We would all agree that anger gives rise to many evil acts, not anger per se, but anger that has become trapped. If your awareness is open and free, anger flows through it. This applies both to rage generated inside yourself when you feel victimized, and anger that comes from outside, in the form of an attack.
Both are meant to leave when their job is done. Anger's work is to alert your defense systems. Aggression and defense are part of the survival repertoire of almost every species that must compete to mate, find food, and occupy territory. Festering, it feeds on itself and eventually breaks out in violence.
Every living system that goes out of balance attempts to right itself. Despite all the talk about human beings being innately violent, aren't we also innately gentle? The evidence for both is equally strong.
Adapted from The Deeper Wound: Recovering the Soul from Fear and Suffering, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books, 2001).