to harm anybody comes from whatever reason…
I don’t see any contradiction. Please point it out.
And yes, the definition of good reason is important.
No conjecture required, that’s his position. Your example motive is much harder to argue. He was born into wealth, and therefore power. Terrorizing us does not bring him any closer to “ruling” Saudi Arabia.
I disagree, I think that’s overstating the case. And of course, whether the culture believes it or not, I disagree with the premise.
<hand raised>
Please explain that. (And can you do so without quoting Rand? Not that you must, I just wondered if you could…)
Hard to say, have to think about it.
But I do know for certain than not all selfish acts are evil.
stoid
In the buddhist scheme of things, there isn’t really any such thing as evil, just delusion. All bad things that happen are due to delusions, we do bad things because of our inability to comprehend how things really are. All delusion originates from one (or more) of three sources: greed, anger, or stupidity.
Stoid:
Rand? You mean Ayn Rand, the author? Why, did she say something to that effect herself?
OK, I will explain, and will definitely not include any Ayn Rand quotes 
Let me introduce my assistant, Joe Strawman. Joe thinks that it is evil to start off with a primary consideration for your own personal happiness.
Joe: It is! If you start off with that kind of selfish attitude, you’re going to end up exploiting people, using them for your own personal advantage.
Me: Why?
Joe: Because all you care about is your own happiness.
Me: I see. OK, let’s assume it’s true. What’s wrong with it?
Joe: What’s wrong with it?! What’s wrong with it is that you’re using people as a means to an end. It is a form of hurting people!
Me: But it will make me happy to do that?
Joe: Because all you care about is your own happiness!
Me: So I will be a happy person, hurting them?
Joe: You won’t care that you hurt them. If you cared about their happiness, you wouldn’t want to hurt them, but since you only care about your own self, hey, why not? (You selfish evil person!)
Me: OK, let’s assume this is true as well. So I am a happy evil selfish person who exploits and hurts people. Yet you advise against me being like this – why?
Joe: Why? Because it is evil, you idiot!
Me: What’s wrong with being evil, if I’m happy? (Why don’t you join me in my selfish evil ways and be happy too?)
Joe: You may think you are happy being like this, but you aren’t really, you are going to end up lonely and miserable with no friends. I am much happier with a genuine love for other people and the sense of connectedness and community that comes from being concerned with others.
Me: OK, I’m convinced.
Joe: You…you are? Great!
Me: Yeah, I want the greater happiness you just described, the happiness of love and connectedness and all that.
Joe: I knew you’d see…
Me: Because I’m selfish and I want to be happy.
Joe: uh…wait a minute! What?
Me: Because I’m concerned primarily with my own happiness, I will seek love and community and connectedness and will be concerned with others, for these things will make me happy, which is my central and selfishly-defined primary goal here.
Joe: Well…uh…but you should want to be like that for its own sake even if it didn’t make you happy!
Me: Why?
Joe: Because…because, well, umm, God wants you to be like that.
Me: Your point being? (accepting the God premise and your claims about what God wants for the sake of argument once again)
Joe: You should do what God wants!
Me: Why?
Joe: Don’t you care what God wants?
Me: Why would I? I’m selfish, remember?
Joe: Well, don’t you care about getting into heaven?
Me: Would that make me happier than not getting into heaven?
Joe: (not liking where this is going) You should want to get into heaven for its own sake!
Me: Why?
(etc)
Any questions?
I kinda figured you’d go somewhere like that.
But the erroneous assumption is that the same things make everybody happy, as well as the erroneous assumption that everyone will agree on what actions will bring about the desired results.
stoid
My take on this is pretty simplistic, and probably can be picked apart fairly easily, but I’m going to offer it anyway. If nothing else, I can get some more posts listed by my name and further my goal of being a Doper regular…
Evil is something that takes more than it gives. If a person molests a child, then they have received what? A moments satisfaction (to what I consider a rather twisted desire) in comparison to their victim, who will have a lifetime of pain and regret of the incident. A murderer will acheive what? Money, power, some sort of satisfactory impulse, while the victim has lost every single deed, thought, and desire that they had or may have had. A thief will gather excess wealth for themselves, but at the expense of another, of somebody who has actually earned it, and who will have lost it unneccesarily. An act can be evil without the person commiting the act being evil, though regardless of intent a person should be held accountable for thier actions.
Basically my (not very well expressed) point, is that I think evil people are the result of selfishness, while evil actions can be the result of either selfishness or misguided intentions.
Stoid:
Well, I guess I do believe that on the big stuff we, as a species, are hard-wired to obtain our happiness in similar ways. The second clause is a lot trickier.
Not that it matters much. Telling everyone to seek out their own individual happiness while sharing conventional wisdom about what makes most people happy may not lead everyone to the socially intercompatible / good citizenship / good person type of conclusion that we’d like them to reach, but it’s the best recipe available.
The others (“do what other people want you to do” / “do your duty as ‘society’ defines it” / “obey the following behavioral recipe’s prescription for good and proscription of bad”) have much bigger flaws, central among them being the lack of a tool for assessing whether their content is itself evil. The urge towards individual happiness is the ultimate tool with which to perform such an assessment.
(It is, in fact, the voice of God.)
I do hate to use the “e-word”, but maybe it can better be described to come from not selfishness but instead a lack of empathy? They’re related, but not exactly the same thing.
The best definition of evil that I can think of is to disregard the rights of others. That does
seem to cover why some people would think selfishness is evil. I think that Objectivists would also find it acceptable.(i.e., I have a right to “life,
liberty, and the pursuit of property” but you do not, or it does not matter if you do).
So there you go folks, after 10,00 years of debate I have answered the question of “What
is evil?”, I hope you are all grateful.
Adding to my previous post:
Imagine any act of evil, no matter how small (i.e. stealing a candy bar) to how large (i.e.
the Holocaust). They involve the disregard of the rights of others, and are not nescasarily
selfish (not in the sense that most people ascribe of me!me!me! selfishness). Tens of
millions of people were systematically starved to death in Russia in China by people who
honestly believed that they were making a sacrifice for the greater good. You could
classify the Holocaust there, even Hitler believed he was going to create a better world.
All evil is connected by the fact that one person has decided that you do not have the right
to “Life, Liberty, and Property”, and that that person has the right to expropriate any of
those rights from you.
I believe Zsofia’s an d Muab’Dib’s explanations are inside and outside surfaces of each other. And I tend to agree with them in effect (that these things, lack of empathy and the expression of it, lack of respect for the rights of others), but not causally.
I think the causal analysis has to address the importance and validity we attach (or don’t attach) to what we feel, as I strongly believe it is a deafness to the voice of our own emotions that makes lack of empathy possible), and, because I am a sociologist at heart, I don’t believe a widespread pattern of something so personal could occur without also being an interwoven part of our political systems, i.e., that our structures in some way reward that deafness and/or punish attunedness or sensitivity as undesirable.