I've meditated for quite a while about this very question... Rather than copy and paste my blog post about my findings, I'll summarize them here. (If you want to look at the long version, which goes a lot more into the "why" then look for the one titled "Evil." The link is in my signature.)
My view of why the collective consciousness exists is so that it can experience everything. Part of everything is having an individual based awareness, so parts of Consciousness separates itself and is identified by the ego. From the collective consciousness perspective, suffering is just another experience, but from an ego-based perspective, suffering is evil.
The question, though, is from the perspective of the collective consciousness, should we, as ego-based individuals, strive for peace or continue to allow suffering to happen? Well, even with the perspective that suffering is just another experience to Consciousness, I believe that we should work towards peace, because let's face it, Consciousness has been through enough suffering already, and there has to be a reason why we don't like it.
