Can a thought, desire or fantasy be evil?

I’ll suggest that any given individual nurturing a dark fantasy either will or won’t eventually go on to enact it. The won’ts all won’t ever, and the wills all will eventually, given opportunity, etc. That’s the individual perspective.

But from a societal perspective, the wills represent some fixed but small fraction of all people. Call it 5% just as a WAG to make it concrete. If society knows that 5% of evil fantasizers will at least try to become evil actors, well then it makes a lot of sense for that society to try to shame or otherwise inhibit those kinds of fantasies.

Not because having those fantasies will make most people act on them. But because having those fantasies will cause some few people to act on them. So labeling them evil in the thinking is societally rational. Even if most of the effort spent in suppression is wasted on individual people who would never act on their thoughts, even though they’ve been nurturing them.

That seems pretty well reasoned to me.

Indeed the deaf and blind only happened in my head.

Sorry.

the first person killed somebody through negligent carelessness.

The second person through careful deliberation.

Most of our laws make a difference between the two. I’d argue there is not really a substantial difference. So long as nobody is profiting from the death they caused, I don’t see a essential difference. A difference in intent is also almost impossible to prove so I’d think the point is moot.

At some point a judge and jury should look at that stuff. But at the moment we are decide if we should assemble a court we should look at results.

Having fantasies doesn’t cause anything.

That is not how causality works.

I’d also point out that a lot of “evil” thoughts, desires or fantasies aren’t so much inherently evil as they are a diversion or distortion of a good natural instinct. For instance, anger and violence usually comes out of the natural urge for justice. That’s why you saw so many people lusting for healthcare CEOs to be killed after Luigi shot Brian Thompson last year - it was finally seeing the corporate fat cats get comeuppance and justice, in the minds of many, after those execs had made huge money off of the senseless agony and death of thousands of patients.

Any dictator with half a brain who wants to promote genocide never portrays it as, “Let’s go kill Group XYZ for no good reason because we’re monsters!” It’s always an appeal to goodness, “Group XYZ is subhuman, untermensch and evil and they would kill us and they have done many bad things against us (real or imagined), so we need to enact righteousness and justice and purge them.”

It may be societally rational, but it can be quite hard on, and unfair to, the individuals who would never have become evil actors.

Especially if they’re told not ‘we discourage such fantasies because a few people will try to make them real’ but ‘such fantasies are evil and therefore so are you.’ Even more so if it’s ‘such fantasies are evil and you’re going to Hell’.

And I’m not at all sure that those few who move on to evil action if they get a chance won’t do so anyway, no matter how much their society told them that the fantasy was also evil. Do we have any evidence that telling people their fantasies are evil reduces the percentage who act on them?

I’m going to try and break it down to see if it helps:

Thought: some thing someone thinks about in their head. I thought about mowing the lawn. I thought about a lynching.

Concept: the things people think about. Racism is a concept people can have thoughts about. Being a racist is inherently morally wrong. The concept exists outside your head.

So, people can think about morally wrong things. The thoughts they think about racism (morally wrong) are not necessarily morally wrong. It could be, or you could just be making a movie or writing a book or daydreaming weird stuff or lots of things dealing with the concept of racism.

Belief*: This is where you start to add your own positive or negative or neutral gloss to those concepts. It’s not just academic or daydreaming anymore. If you start believing racism is a good concept, that thought, to me, is morally wrong. It should be at least. You should be on notice that society does or does not support a particular concept, like being a racist. *I don’t wanna get hung up on the word “belief”, just any additional personal thoughts you start adding to the concept to make it apply to yourself or concepts you start to adhere to.

Expressing your thoughts/beliefs: Expressed thoughts can be morally wrong even if they were not when you kept them to yourself. Not always, but sometimes. Circumstances and context and the rest start to matter a lot.

Acting on your thoughts/beliefs: Also can be morally wrong.

This could be way off, but I think it’s helpful to see where the morally wrong labels can start to apply and certainly how tricky it is.

ETA: @thorny_locust 2 posts up …

I doubt there is much such evidence.

My point was mostly explaining how & why societies and religions come to (mostly pointlessly IMO) demonize thought, not deed.

It’s them making what’s essentially a slippery slope argument: we dare not tolerate any bad thoughts because they will inevitably lead to (some) bad actions.

It’s largely bunk, but a form of bunk that many people & societies readily accept as valid logic.

Ahh, I love her.

I do have intrusive thoughts fairly often. Fortunately I married a guy who eats intrusive thoughts for breakfast so I’m usually able to back that train up before it becomes OCD.

These thoughts aren’t usually pleasurable (in an OCD context.) I once, due to an ill–advised Facebook post by a friend, had repeated intrusive thoughts about what it would be like to be burned alive. It went on this way for a couple of months and I couldn’t sleep and was just constantly in a state of panic (because I have a very vivid imagination.) Eventually I just sat down and decided to do my own exposure intervention - I wrote down my thoughts repeatedly in a journal, over and over, in as much horrifying and vivid detail as possible, until the thoughts became boring and I could sleep again. It’s not even the only time I’ve used that technique - it works a charm.

How do you know that torture has no evolutionary basis? We’ve certainty been doing it a long time. How do you know fantasizing about torture is a red flag if never acted upon, when we have no research on people who fantasize about torture but don’t torture?

You seem to be saying evolutionary fantasies (like I presume rape or screwing fourteen year olds) are fine but it’s somehow worse if it’s not biologically rational. But the truth about sexuality is we have no idea where our weird-ass desires come from. Freud was extremely wrong about this. The truth is what we find sexy is probably a fair amount of nature/nurture. And also a fair amount of having nothing actually to do with what we’re fantasizing about. To take a common example, a woman’s rape fantasy bears zero resemblance to an actual sexual assault - and it can’t resemble sexual assault, under any circumstances whatsoever, because she controls every facet of the experience. Therefore it’s almost meaningless to call it a rape fantasy, and is why erotica writers use phrases like “non-con” or “dub-con.” But try to explain this to the guys trying to justify rape culture mythology.

Then there’s the fact that most people don’t even necessarily want their fantasies to come true. I’m personally fairly deep into aspects of BDSM but I have no real desire to impose this framework on my current relationship. It’s just there for me and me alone and my readers if I ever publish. I’m sure it’s way better to fantasize about than to actually do, anyhow.

I find it interesting that you’d make an exception for fiction writers. As a fiction writer a lot of what I do is fantasize, in really specific, personally entertaining ways. I enjoy gritty sex and violence, lovingly eviscerating rapists and other symbols of the patriarchy, and farfetched, sexy kidnapping plots, and for some reason I write about prisons, a lot. And torture. It’s not that I find these things good in real life - in fact I had to do a lot of research to put together some of these scenes and I found a lot of it, like the stuff about Gitmo, personally horrifying – but controlling every aspect of a situation, especially one that kind of frightens you, and turning it over in your head and capturing just that perfect detail to cause just that feeling, well, I imagine a lot of people have a similar impulse, even if they can’t write. And I can tell you with 100% honesty I enjoy killing the shit out of people sometimes – in my very detailed imagination. The fact that I do it using words other people can read – I mean is that objectively better somehow?

I think it’s weirder if you’re doing it with someone you know - but hell, even Stephen King murdered a guy he knew in one of his books (the guy that hit him with his van.) And I know a lot of writers who draw from people they know in real life. Not my style - I don’t know enough spies or killers - but anyway. It’s terrific fun. You should try it.

As a Buddhist I struggle with this one, both because I’m a writer but also because I don’t believe people can control their thoughts. They can choose to redirect their thoughts with practice but I don’t know that anyone can just stop thinking about something. I do think there’s something to the idea that if you nurture a thought it can make it more likely to become an action, but I see that as an individual moral choice, not something where I would impose my own morality on someone else.

Not all fantasies are created equal. Some are common because they align with evolved drives—like mating competition or attraction to post-pubescent traits. That doesn’t make them moral, but it does explain why they’re widespread. Torture-for-pleasure fantasies are different: they’re rare, lack any clear evolutionary purpose, and appear far more often in people with dangerous psychological profiles. Historically, torture was strategic, not erotic.

You’re right—fantasy alone isn’t guilt, but not all fantasies carry the same statistical risk. Common ones, like rape roleplay or BDSM, usually have clear boundaries and consensual control. Chronic violent sadistic fantasies, on the other hand, show up disproportionately in forensic and clinical populations. That’s why they’re a red flag: not because thought equals action, but because some thoughts are more predictive of harm than others. This is one of them.

Peer-reviewed research:

Yay research! Such a rarity these days. I’ll check it out.

So you don’t think there is any meaningful difference between accidents and murders? We shouldn’t treat them any differently from each other?

In the case of fiction writers, there is a clear objective outworking of the development of the fantasy - there’s a reason why they pursue it and they know that reason isn’t to fulfill the fantasy by enacting it.

A person fantasising about something, without that end goal, could (I think) be argued to be working themself up to do it.

One of the fundamental ideas of Buddhism is not to cause suffering to other beings, either in thought or in deed. Meditation involves practising bringing wandering thoughts back to the breath and to the body again and again. In this way, thoughts can be restrained and controlled.
Taking pleasure in the suffering of beings—whether humans or animals—even if “only” in the imagination, is diametrically opposed to Buddhist teaching. Western psychology also takes a highly critical view of the enjoyment of cruel fantasies. One wonders whether it is possible to develop trust in a person who is known to indulge in fantasies of torture, rape or else.

I think “you killed someone (without profit or hate motive) should carry 1 range of punishment.

I find it ridiculous I’ll get more punishment when I kill someone in a bar fight than when I do so driving drunkenly home from that same bar.

I think we give too much leeway to “accidents”.

Where in the range your punishment falls could be different. But I think that everyone who kills somebody else (by accident or not) should see the inside of a jail cell. Esp. overconfident, reckless, inept, distracted drivers get away with literal murder.

How do we know? Or do we know?

You can argue that; but it’s not necessarily true. They may just find the fantasy fun as a fantasy, while being genuinely repelled by any idea of doing it in real life.

Would you? People go to prison for vehicular manslaughter.

It’s a different crime from deliberate murder. And I think that, barring evidence of intent to kill, killing someone in a bar fight is also generally charged and punished as some form of reckless manslaugher, not as murder.

But the person who accidentally knocked something off the stairs, while behaving in a fashion that wouldn’t have been expected to knock anything off the stairs onto someone else, I wouldn’t expect to be charged at all. The person who’s deliberately throwing things off the roof with the intention just of getting them down to ground level but without checking if there’s anyone below, I’d expect to be charged with some version of manslaughter. The person who aims the rock at somebody’s head or drops it six stories into a thick crowd I’d expect to be charged with murder. And I’d expect the penalties to be different.

I think that’s one of the most absurd positions I have seen someone earnestly argue on this board, at least for a good long while.

Indulge me. Here are the two scenarios again; please suggest a level of punishment/response that you think would be uniformly appropriate for both of them:

Honestly, this ‘everything is the same’ argument sounds like “if I use a knife to cut an apple in half, it’s apparently OK, but when I use the same knife to cut a baby in half, everyone starts screaming. What’s up with that?”

Because decades of studies show they’re vanishingly rare outside of dangerous personality profiles. They’re not just another harmless kink.

So all the people kinky in that fashion (with safe words, and sometimes in long-term relationships) are genuinely dangerous? Plus everybody who read Shades of Grey, or anything similar, and enjoyed it?

And (genuine question) do those studies ask large numbers of randomly selected people while including complete and reliable guarantees of anonymity, or are they done on people already having/exhibiting difficulties, or in circumstances in which the people asked aren’t sure there won’t be consequences to their answering honestly?