Good vs. Evil: Are They Really Balanced?

Great Debates
1

Conventional wisdom would say good and bad are equally balanced in the universe. You know, the whole karma/ying-yang thing. But, I wonder…doesn’t bad have a tremendous advantage?

a) It is so much easier to do wrong than right. Thus, I see a natural inclination in nature (and people) towards evil. Apples don’t fall up! It takes energy to keep order in the universe. Things break down. You don’t pay your mechanic to break your car for you! Thus, evil is cheap and easy. Good is much harder to achieve.

b) Once a wrong is done, it is done. Even if one is caught, they can never really undo what’s been done. Good may prevail, but at the price of suffering through a lot of evil before good comes out. Very few things in life are 100% reversible. (Once again, the entropy effect rears its ugly head.)

c) Good can be used for evil purposes. People can lure you in with their kindness. It can be used as a cloak for evil with no warning signs. Good is at the mercy of evil.

Thus, if I had to redraw the classic “ying-yang” icon, it’d probably be 3/4 dark, 1/4 light (assuming light as the good side of life). So, what did the great philosophers of the world have to say about this, if anything? (What the heck did Aristotle and Plato do all their lives, anyhow?) And, more importantly, what says the SD masses?

Ok, now I’ve got ya all depressed, right? Well…TGIF!
Feeling blue hoo-hoo,

  • Jinx :frowning:
2

[QUOTE=Jinx]
Conventional wisdom would say good and bad are equally balanced in the universe.
[/QUOTE]

Oh, really? I’d say most “conventional wisdom” would disagree with that.

3

Good and bad are subjective terms. What’s good to you may be bad to someone else. Also your whole “in the universe” thing kinda bothers me, unless you’re considering the segement of humanity you interact with the universe.

Also, it’s yin (not ying) - yang. Just sayin’… :slight_smile:

4

Good and bad aren’t light switches you turn on and off, they’re degrees all the way from purest good to darkest evil. A more accurate yin-yang symbol would have a gradual fade, with most of the color being shades of grey, and only the very tips being white or black.

5

[QUOTE=Jinx]
a) It is so much easier to do wrong than right. Thus, I see a natural inclination in nature (and people) towards evil. Apples don’t fall up! It takes energy to keep order in the universe. Things break down. You don’t pay your mechanic to break your car for you! Thus, evil is cheap and easy. Good is much harder to achieve.
[/QUOTE]

I think your notion of good and evil in relation to ‘nature’ is rather too simple. Order is not ‘good’ and chaos is not ‘evil’ - in fact as far as nature is concerned good and evil don’t exist, they’re purely human constructs. If anything I’d suggest there was too much balance in the universe - it’s far harder to do anything (whether perceived as good or evil) than to do nothing (most things in the universe don’t do anything, they just ‘are’). :confused:

Also, in the same way in which good can be used to finally commit evil, so evil can be used to finally commit good. This is kind of the whole basis of the Just War theory.

OB

6

Schopenhauer, who was a bitter misanthrope, and gets more credit then is wholesome because he was such a good writer, answered this very question like this:
*“Compare the suffering of an animal that hunted and eaten with the joy of the animal eating him. That is the ratio of good and bad in the world” . *

Of course, Schopenhauer didn’t have access to modern nature documentaries. You only have to see footage of animals eating plants, animals lounging about, relaxing in the sun, and playing and frolicking and friendly licking each others ears, to know his argument is bullshit.

7

I’m not sure whether what the OP is getting at is really a matter of Good vs. Evil or if it’s more accurately described as Construction vs. Destruction, or Order vs. Chaos. You’re not the first person to point out that is much easier to destroy than to create, to tear down than to build. And yet, the marvel is that things do get built, civilization exists, and the constructive forces of creation do, in many places, hold their own against the destructive forces.

Or, as someone has said, put a spoonful of pure water in a gallon of sewage and you have sewage. Put a spoonful of sewage in a gallon of pure water and you have sewage.

Or, as G. K. Chesterton has a character say in his novel The Man Who Was Thursday:

8

I’m going to stick my neck out here and come down on the side of Good. I realize this is a controversial decision and will probably make me very unpopular here on the board, but I’ve studied the matter thoroughly, I have thought about it carefully, I have experienced both Good and Evil personally, and I can cite studies in peer-reviewed journals.

Therefore I choose Good over Evil.

Let the chips fall where they may.

9

[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
Therefore I choose Good over Evil.

[/QUOTE]
Blasphemy!

10

I suppose really it depends where you draw the middle balance line.

As for me, I reckon that while I think that most people have some general level of minor evil about them, most people are generally ok sometimes too. I think i’d pretty much have to come down on Good, because in general, we seem to work.

11

Current thinking on utilising game theory to analyze social behaviour seems to indicate that mostly altruistic or else tit-for-tat strategies win out more over time than strictly selfish strategies. Based on what I’ve read, I’d say positive actually has it over negative when summed up (in those things to which we can properly ascribe labels like Good and Evil i.e. human actions, as opposed to neutral Nature)

12

As a Discordian I’m gravely offended by your equation of good with order and chaos with evil! (Not really.) Systems have a tendency to break down, that’s the way the universe goes. There’s nothing evil about that, nor does it necessarily mean all of man’s endeavors are in vain or any such melodrama.

I don’t find good and evil particularly useful ways of looking at the world, so I’m not really sure how to answer tJinx’s question. Is it easier to do wrong than right? I’m not really sure. Malice is an active thing and I don’t think it’s my nature to be malicious. People have flaws and are often short-sighted, fearful and selfish, among other things. While those things cause a lot of harm, calling them evil obscures what they are in my opinion.

13

If good is so successful, why is it that in almost any human organization, it’s the assholes who are at the top, running the show?

14

[QUOTE=Evil Captor]
If good is so successful, why is it that in almost any human organization, it’s the assholes who are at the top, running the show?
[/QUOTE]

That’s because it’s not good that is successful but rather, in our limited human experience, it is order that is successful. It just happens that those with the firmest grip on what order is also happen to be assholes who are able to successfully impose their world view on those less ordered than themselves. There’s a reason why anarchy as a political ideology hasn’t been successful into the modern era - human beings crave order, but in larger societies, that order needs to imposed from the top down.

OB

15

I agree that Evil vs. Good is not a terribly useful way to look at the world. The biggest problem is that for any Good you can name, an Evil result can be found and for every Evil you can name, a Good can result.

The real difficulty comes in assigning to quality of Good or Evil in each case. So while the herbivore mentioned previously are enjoying munching leaves, how do the leaves feel about things? I’d wager plants think carnivores are heroes of Good while herbovores are the very devils of nightmare!

-Eben

16

[QUOTE=Jinx]
Conventional wisdom would say good and bad are equally balanced in the universe.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t know if it’s conventional wisdom, but I have encountered the idea before, particularly in fantasy fiction, that good and evil (or the “light side” and the “dark side,” or whatever you want to call them) are, or should be, in balance. But I’m dubious. Does that mean it’s good for good and evil to be balanced?

What happens if Good gets too powerful? The balance must be restored! Somebody kick a puppy!

If I understand correctly, the two “opposing forces” in the yin-yang concept aren’t really “good” and “evil” as many of us think of the concepts, though maybe they’re like the “good Kirk” and the “evil Kirk” from that Star Trek episode where the transporter malfunctioned and separated Kirk into two separate halves.

17

[QUOTE=Thudlow Boink]
I don’t know if it’s conventional wisdom, but I have encountered the idea before, particularly in fantasy fiction, that good and evil (or the “light side” and the “dark side,” or whatever you want to call them) are, or should be, in balance. But I’m dubious. Does that mean it’s good for good and evil to be balanced?

What happens if Good gets too powerful? The balance must be restored! Somebody kick a puppy!
[/QUOTE]
Ha; I read a novel built on the theory that good and evil must balance or the universe is doomed, Villains by Necessity. Since the good guys will never believe that the triumph of Good will lead to disaster, the forces of evil have to save the world by restoring Evil to it’s former glory.

[QUOTE=Jinx]
a) It is so much easier to do wrong than right. Thus, I see a natural inclination in nature (and people) towards evil. Apples don’t fall up! It takes energy to keep order in the universe. Things break down. You don’t pay your mechanic to break your car for you! Thus, evil is cheap and easy. Good is much harder to achieve.
[/quote]
It’s strategy versus tactics. Evil/chaos/destruction does tend to be easy - in the short run. In the long run, good/constructiveness/order tends to prevail. Lying, cheating, stealing, murdering tends to be easier in the short run - until you get caught by the cops, run into someone stronger than you, etc. As a rule, in the long term, societies that are free-er, more just, more constructive tend to do better than those that are the opposite.

[QUOTE=Jinx]
c) Good can be used for evil purposes. People can lure you in with their kindness. It can be used as a cloak for evil with no warning signs. Good is at the mercy of evil.
[/quote]
And evil is dependent upon good. Some sort of society of demons would be horribly unstable and prone to self destruction. The stronger evil gets, the more it undercuts itself; until you get societies like the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany or Pol Pot’s Cambodia, that grind themselves down to collapse or impotence.

[QUOTE=Jinx]
Thus, if I had to redraw the classic “ying-yang” icon, it’d probably be 3/4 dark, 1/4 light (assuming light as the good side of life).
[/QUOTE]
IMHO, if the majority of humanity were evil ( or malignant or whatever word you want to use ), we wouldn’t have a civilization, or much of anything else for long in historical terms. The majority of people, the majority of time, have to behave in a benevolent or at least indifferent fashion in order to keep society from consuming itself. This is due to the very fact you mention earlier; that it’s easier to destroy than create, or preserve.

To use a single example, how long would cities last if every single citizen were a vandal ? The cops can’t be everywhere; if everyone was just waiting for the chance to toss a rock through a window or start a fire or gouge holes in things, cities would be reduced to ruins with great speed.

18

If evil were more powerful than good, we’d all be dead.

Since we’re alive, that proves that good is more powerful that evil.

19

[QUOTE=Jinx]
Conventional wisdom would say good and bad are equally balanced in the universe. You know, the whole karma/ying-yang thing. But, I wonder…doesn’t bad have a tremendous advantage?
[/QUOTE]

In the short term, yes, but not in the long term. Society only works if most people are good most of the time. Else you have anarchy. Sure you can be evil for a while, but who’s going to look after you in your old age? Are you even going to live to reach old age? Or is some evil youngster going to take advantage of your weakness? It’s actually in people’s long term best interest to be good.

20

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
To use a single example, how long would cities last if every single citizen were a vandal ? The cops can’t be everywhere; if everyone was just waiting for the chance to toss a rock through a window or start a fire or gouge holes in things, cities would be reduced to ruins with great speed.
[/QUOTE]

Indeed, there wouldn’t be any cops or infrastructure maintenance or anything of that type. If anybody other than the very strongest wanted to survive, it’s likely they would have to strike some kind of uneasy detente and cooperate.