This may belong in Great Debates or elsewhere, also if we’re expecting an epic trash-talking pitting this may not be the thread for us.
Why I bring it here is because I wish to “rant about the world” which is one of the two criterion for The Pit and because I wish for any responders to not feel like they need to hold back when they read what I write here and want to say without any due respect what a moron I am for proposing it.
Evil: a pretty simple and nearly universally accepted concept.
I am often pretty outraged at the world, and am, in general, a pissy asshole. So, why in the world wouldn’t I believe in Evil? I seem to find fault with everything, including all of you, and myself. Well I’ll tell you if you care to hear it. Pull up a chair.
At any given point in my life I have been in situations where I have done (or was tempted to do) something that is wrong, very wrong, or evil.
I remember quite vividly as a child instances where a bunch of fuck-up cowards decided the only way to properly show-off with their bullying was to gang up and ensure there was no sporting chance I could defend myself. In response I often came to school armed, and prepared to defend myself with the spillage of children’s blood. Yep. Seems pretty evil to me. And yet, having been there, I understood why I did it. Because they were doing some pretty evil shit to me too, and had it coming.
And therein lies the problem. Evil doesn’t suddenly become “good” just because it can be justified. And we can justify almost everything we do. Especially those who proclaim to “fight for justice” or “fight for good” with the use of force.
In order to legitimately use force, those we direct it towards have to be “evil”, right?
Okay. So what if we’ve all done shit that’s evil? The USA righteously comes to the aid of people oppressed under a dictator, kills off a bunch of bad guys and some other guys who simply enlisted in the military to feed their family, accidentally bombs a house with a bunch of innocent people in it, and suddenly there are a lot of folks who can rightfully call us the evil people. So if we’re fighting evil, and they’re fighting evil, and the two evils are us, who has the moral high ground?
I could have ended up fucking stabbing some kid whose only crime was to hang around truly greater fuck-up assholes. Just happened to choose the wrong crowd to hang out with. If he happened to be the closest one to me when I finally got fed up with being pushed around, he ends up in the hospital or dead.
Who, in that scenario, is the bad guy?
Seems like everyone is. And again I return to the problem of evil, the concept of evil. People are evil because WE say they are. And of course, we do shit that is evil as well.
Or, in my case, even if we do NOT do the evil in question, it crossed our mind. It was our first reaction. It was the reaction we had to suppress just to get all the way through grade school without stabbing someone. That makes us so good that we’re entitled to call other people evil and punish them for it without mercy?
Not sure I am comfortable with that conclusion.
I do however, recognize good. I am very comfortable with the idea that actions serve an end which is considered “good”. For example, I can give selflessly to charities and literally house someone who is without a job, who is neither a friend or a relative, and I understand these actions have had a positive effect on people, and not by mistake either.
Where I get uncomfortable is the concept of evil. I can point to some examples of evil that are clearly mistakes, actions which meant to serve goodness and backfired, or harmed people along the way. Where the intention was good but the effect was not. I can also see people acting selfishly or in self-defense, a pretty neutral thing in the scheme of things. Someone is not an evil fuck simply because they don’t give to charity and hog all the nachos. They won’t be winning any awards for personality, but they’re not evil fucks either.
And I look at the people who most often commit the crimes and actions society abhors, and I note: Most of these people have been shit on their entire lives. Abusive parents, target of bullying, poor, oppressed by a group, or they have severe mental illness. These are people who have been the victims for so long that they are tired of being the one taking all the crap, and want to help themselves in some way by dishing it out, getting revenge against someone, or treating themselves to something they feel they deserve, by taking it from someone else. After all, no one has bothered to respect their feelings or rights. It is very difficult to find one’s moral compass growing up in such an environment.
Do I forgive and excuse all this behavior? No. But I understand where it comes from.
It generally does not come from a person who wakes up every day and goes “I’m going to try to be the biggest pus-filled dick to every single person I come across, and when I obviously hurt them, I’m going to laugh in their faces.”
It’s not everyone you come across, even the violent criminals, who lives every moment of every day wanting to harm someone. After trying to make sure the gang doesn’t come after them, and joining for protection, with limited options in the ghetto, the guy who is part of a violent gang sometimes goes home and tries to take care of his family. Got dealt a shitty hand in life.
Does it excuse it? Does it mean we don’t penalize people, and we just let criminals run amok and hurt everyone?
That’s not what I’m getting at. My point is, in a society full of angry, violent, irrational fucks, there’s only so much of a saint most people are strong enough to become. Sure, you get the guy who goes total pacifist and is a zen-like calm in the middle of a shitstorm, but most people aren’t wise enough to reach that conclusion. I get shit on, so I’m going to shit on someone.
It’s not the purest evil. It seems kind of human to me.
Then you get the guys in our society who do the sickest most evil shit imaginable, like become serial killers.
I can’t really wrap my mind around that. It just doesn’t occur to me to do this sort of crap. I don’t know of any sane person who runs around thinking “I’m going to try to kill as many people in as sick a manner as possible before I die.”
I couldn’t even force myself to do it. There’s too much of a buffer against that kind of nonsensical irrational pointless violence built into my brain, and most of us have that buffer, otherwise we wouldn’t be a fucking society.
The exception from the rule is always someone who is a sociopath, someone who very likely is physically fucking incapable of feeling empathy towards others. Someone whose brain is literally formed wrong and can’t do what we do when random thoughts like that zap through it.
Do I think sociopath violent killer guy needs to be spared, for he knows not what he does?
No… I don’t fucking care if he knows what he does. He still did the violent, sick, disgusting, horrifying shit that he did. And I don’t excuse or forgive.
But, I also don’t think to myself that his eventual incarceration, trial, and indefinite detention and/or execution is a triumph of good where everyone wins.
None of it brings back his victims and none of it fixes the broken fucked up brain he had and it ends with yet another victim. Yeah, a victim of suicide is still a victim even when the person does it deliberately. A victim of justice due to crimes the guy committed is still a victim.
It’s like when a guy kills his cheating wife, then pulls the gun on himself and shoots. There’s not one victim of that crime, there are two victims.
I know it fucks with everything you’ve probably been taught about the concept of evil. First reaction I had when I started thinking about it was “OF COURSE there’s evil, haven’t you read what people have DONE to each other? We’re some evil fucking people!”
Yeah. And some people are definitely a lot better than others. So what am I quibbling about? Good versus less good or no good, as opposed to good versus evil?
Possibly. I compare it to “Light” versus “dark”, “hot” versus “cold”.
There’s no such thing as darkness. There’s just less or no light. There’s no such thing as coldness. There’s just less heat energy present, or more.
Good is the same way. It is either present in a person, as potential, to be expressed in their actions and judgments, or it is not.
But evil? An actual, malevolent force, which tries to convince people to do wrong?
I let that one go a while back, along with the silly concept of a seductive Devil trying to trick people into doing bad things.
There was never a Satan following me around trying to steal my soul if only I would commit a random act of stealing someone’s unguarded bicycle. That’s just some crap religious people tried to sell me to get me to straighten up and fly right. There are no supernatural beings who become more powerful or get joyous orgasms if I do something wrong. That’s a laughable and obvious lie.
And it is told to deflect blame. It makes people feel good. Why, it wasn’t me who decided to sleep with a stranger instead of my wife. The Devil tempted me to do it, and gosh darn it, I wasn’t STRONG enough to resist his overpowering temptations! I am a victim! Pity me!
The Devil is a scapegoat, and in some interpretations of what it is, literally a scapegoat, with actual goat legs. Blame the invisible evil tempter-demon man, instead of taking some fucking responsibility for your own actions. Seems legit.
There’s no devil. There are no demons waiting in the wings to possess you and force you to say fucked up shit and overpower you and force you to commit crimes which can only be stopped by an exorcism. That’s bullcrap. And even more laughable is a divine and all powerful God figure who allows such a thing to happen and judges you evil afterward. How, pray tell, does the ultimate arbiter of good and evil judge you after you’ve had your free will removed? Whatever myths there are about Demons and devils and Satan are just stories which personify badness to allow children to understand right from wrong. Except, in my view, it causes them to misunderstand right and wrong.
They will believe that the only thoughts they’ll ever have are good thoughts because they’re good people, and the only times they’ll ever do bad things are because of some invisible nigh-omnipotent supernatural demigod out there putting nasty thoughts in their heads and forcing them to do wrong. Oh sure, they’ll know that’s a line of bullshit, but they’ll cling to it like a security blanket and confess their sins through big crocodile tears and say how much of a victim they are for falling prey to this imaginary devil, and hope everyone will cheer for them as they heroically battle their inner demons just to not be a giant turd to everyone every single second of every day. Wow you didn’t kill anyone today, here’s your fucking medal. How heroic.
It is all just a crutch, an excuse, a way of shifting blame. There are no devils and demons and Satans corrupting us. You know who is responsible for the impressive stream of acts of sub-human garbage that humans have committed throughout history? I have seen the enemy and it is us. There’s no one else to blame. That’s why we invented mister Invisible Tempter Man so we would have someone to blame.
And if I truly believed that therefore humanity was just a bunch of irredeemable hateful fucks, then the only logical conclusion is that mass shootings aren’t so bad after all.
But that’s also bullshit. It is not black and white.
None of you are so glowingly awesome that you’ve never thought of doing or have never committed an act that we would pretty much all consider wrong or evil.
None of you are so irredeemably fucked up that you never did something right. And yet here we are, flawed and grey, condemning one another for not being perfect, and using that as an excuse to fuck with each other.
I don’t see a whole lot of moral high ground there.
I also don’t whitewash it all away and say you’re all as fucked up as the next guy. It’s not binary and it’s not whitewashed either. Complicated shit, I know.
I look at theft and I see someone who more than likely is struggling to survive. Or I see someone with a compulsive personality who has serious issues. I don’t see a whole lot of hateful fucks who just want to watch the world burn. I also don’t advocate either letting them all go free, nor do I believe we should burn them all at the stake.
I see someone who went to jail to pay their debt to society as having a tough road ahead reintegrating with a society of supposed law-abiders who have nothing kind to say to them and hate them with a passion because it is socially acceptable to do so. After all, they are the bad guys, right? We’re supposed to hate the bad guys! Don’t tell me I can’t hate on some fucking bad guys, it makes me feel morally superior after I just shagged my secretary.
Fuck that noise.
I have noticed something about humanity: We just looooove to feel morally fucking superior to some other human beings. And we just love to use that supposed moral high ground to piss all over them and make them miserable. We’re clearly more evolved than those evil fucks. We’re the good guys! That means we’re entitled to be dicks, right?
…
Finding “bad guys” to piss on is part of the reason why our society is so fucked up.
Those who make mistakes and break the law can’t ever come back. They might get a fair trial, they might even pay their dues in prison and regain their freedom. But, will they ever be given a fair chance again by “honest” society? Probably not, because now, they’re evil fucks and we have a moral duty to shit all over them.
Look, homeless guys. Everyone knows they’re only homeless because they’re lazy and drug-addicted booze hounds. If they had some gumption they wouldn’t be homeless. Hey, that makes me feel morally superior because I have a job. Let’s all piss on them and cackle with glee as welfare gets cut by morally righteous budget hawks. Yes! Good guys win again! Fuck the homeless! They’re nasty and smelly and all alone, so that makes them acceptable targets! Moral superiority meter… rising.
Hey look, gay people! THE BIBLE SAYZ THATS EBIL. Fuck those guys! Let’s make their lives as miserable as possible while waxing poetic about how baby jesus cries every time a male kisses another male on the cheek, so that makes it all okay to treat them like sub-human pond scum.
Moral superiority meter… rising!
Some guy killed someone in an armed robbery, he’s getting executed. Fuck that guy! Laugh at how he’s going to get what he deserves! No empathy for him, he’s an evil fuck. Killing him is therefore a sacrifice to the gods of awesome, and we should have a kegger to celebrate. Moral superiority meter… RISING!!!
I live in a state which allows executions, so fuck those assholes in other states that don’t!
Moral superiority meter rising!
I live in a state which doesn’t allow executions, so fuck those assholes in states that do!
MORAL SUPERIORITY METER RISING!!!
What I see, in general, are a bunch of flawed people on both ends of the spectrum. The haves will largely ignore the have nots, and the injustices they have to suffer through, largely due to what the masters of society do with their power. And then one day, one of the have nots will snap, and he’s the bad guy. Roast him! String him up! It’s socially acceptable to root for his suffering because he’s evil and I’m good.
Hey, we used to burn witches. I’m sure that felt really good too. And we were such moral people for doing it.
Paragons of virtue we are not, and we take entirely too much joy out of watching our supposed enemies fail and lose and die.
That’s why I’m not all that thoroughly impressed with the “good guys”. Everyone seems to think they are the good guy, and considers a bunch of other people evil, for one reason or another, which of course makes it socially acceptable to shit all over them.
To me, there’s good to be found, potentially, in humanity. And in individual persons. I do not believe everyone who ends up being labeled “evil” was doomed since birth to end up as such.
I think proper medical advancements and treatments could allow us to identify potentially threatening sociopaths early on. Maybe even fix those genes before it turns into a fucked up adult. I don’t think if evil was a real thing it is something we could cure by switching around some chromosomes.
I think the people who turn to drugs and crime and violence to get by in society were not born to steal and be addicted and hate and commit atrocities. And that means not every one of those people is an irredeemable piece of trash.
I don’t think the masses of people who take pleasure in their suffering are as bad as the violent criminals, but I don’t consider them bastions of holiness either.
And in spite of all their flaws, and my own cynical outlook, and my bitter asshole personality, I find it tragic when every single one of those people meet an unfortunate event, and it ends up causing them to suffer.
I don’t see anyone winning when someone suffers. I don’t see that as a triumph of good over evil.
**Good **would be that person not having committed the crime in the first place. Good would be a society who wants to prevent that shit from happening rather than reveling in the pure awesome bacon-flavored glory which is enjoying the unfortunate fucked up fate that will soon be suffered by that evil guy we can publicly shame. Good would be not even having to execute or incarcerate people in the first place or at the very least having a place for people to go when they’ve suffered, done wrong, and want a chance to be one of the people in law abiding society again, without being shit on constantly by everyone.
Good would be… better than what we have.
And evil… I don’t agree even exists. Even in the delusions of sociopaths who literally believe in the concept of evil and believe that killing people earns them some kind of negative karma points redeemable in hell for one free horsey ride or something.
I consider those people to be ignorant, sick, confused, and fucked up.
But I have just gotten to the point where I think, just like so many other people, they have latched onto some wrong, imaginary fucking thing, and want to belong to something and want to be famous, and if we had gotten to them sooner, their fate might not have been to be the ignorant hateful loner who wants to kill everybody.
Maybe this is all just some stupid long-winded hippie crap. Feel free to tell me so.
Feel free to tell me that the rapist who went to jail deserves to fry and how dare I suggest he’s not an evil fuck.
I’m saying there’s very little that is good about him. I’m not defending his ass. I’m just saying he, like a drug addict, is a victim of his own shortcomings, he’s about to get punished for what he did, and I’m not saying we shouldn’t. I’m just saying we don’t win anything when we hate him or wish for him to suffer. That’s just the trauma and the perfectly natural feelings of wanting some kind of retribution.
Natural doesn’t mean good or holy, though. And people we call “evil” are not pawns of Satan nor are they monsters. They too are flawed human beings who are more flawed than we are and have done some really stupid shit.
Anyway. Leave your reaction here if it pleases you.