I flip the bird at the concept of evil.

The BBQ Pit
21

It’s a war of attrition.

22

What? Wha’d you say?

23

The trouble is that the answer is “yes and no.” Evil sometimes becomes good when it is properly justified. There are some wars that are justified. WWII, on the part of the Allies, was justified. Hell, it was necessary.

The American Civil War is astonishing for having some “good” ideas on both sides. (The South was all tied up with slavery – and that’s bad – but they also had the ideal of national self-determination, and, by and large, we hold that to be good. We recognize South Sudan: why not the Confederate States? If the U.S. can rebel against Great Britain, why can’t the southern states rebel against the Union?)

The thing is that there are no absolutes, no hard-and-fast rules which always apply. There are no unalloyed or perfect “goods” or “evils.”

Also, your post was way too damn long.

24

Exactly.

25

When you flip the bird at the abyss, the abyss flips the bird at you.

26

What if you did a triple gainer off the abyss? Will the judges appreciate that, or is it all about the landing?

27

You gotta stick it.

28

But evil flipped is live. Look:

29

James Toothpaste, geez, get the name right, getting it wrong is ëvil.

30

Mmm, I will have a nit with the south, related to slavery the civil war came also as a result of the Mexican American War, as part of the new territories that became part of the union, California became a reason for the old compromises to fall apart when it decided to not become a slave state.

But IIRC the confederacy had plans to take over Latin America, I do not think an slavery empire like that would had been “the good guys”.

31

With my powers I can turn evil on it’s head!

32

Keep ranting, pizzaguy. Sure, as others have suggested, you’re no Norman Mailer, but Norman Mailer can suck my left one, so there ya go.

33

Agreed: they had a lot more problems than just slavery. They were a ramshackle country, without a guiding governmental philosophy. They wanted states rights, but crafted a constitution that denied the member states a great many decision-making powers. They were a fatally flawed nation.

I’m only noting that the principle of self-government for regions is one we generally admire these days. We largely support Bangladesh’s separation from Pakistan, for example.

This is what I meant by noting that there are very few examples of pure or unalloyed good or evil.

You mention the Mexican War: a very shoddy affair, little more than an outright theft of a very large chunk of land. But modern California came of it, and modern California is a very good thing, a place of leadership in arts and sciences, an economic powerhouse, and one of the bluest of blue states. To what degree is the evil of California’s origin considered to taint or undermine the good things that have come in the years since?

(Is a baby, born of rape, to be considered “evil” because of it?)

Moral philosophy is about as messy as any body of thought could ever be!

34

Don’t ask, I had a feeling it would make more sense in Welsh. :wink:

Anyway, it’s great how the Doper with an antonymic username to the OP posted his screed backwards.

35

(While the OP is too long, it does raise an important issue: Can’t we explain actions we find improper or worse through ignorance, mental illness, or cultural circumstances – no need to attach a meaningless label like “evil,” which simply pushes the issue off the table, and hinders any self-examination?)

36

this right here - I suspect you are asking for a mocking for some masochistic reason.:frowning:

37

Well, this is certainly the most abstract pitting I’ve ever seen.

38

Eh. You’re new.

39

No anchovies, please.

40

Personally, I don’t believe in evil either, but I don’t really get what the whole rant here is about. In any given situation, you always have an optimal choice and a sub-optimal choice. Sometimes, the optimal one seems good, and one of the really sub-optimal choices seems bad, but that’s not always the case. And it’s not really fair to just call people or choices good or evil, because while every choice is the consequence of the motivations, and the perceived outcomes by the individual to further those motivations, still every choice is in the context of all of the choices and random events that led up to that. In fact, the only thing I can see as actually being evil is the concept itself, that some people are inherently irredeemably bad, have and will always have immoral intentions. But that’s the sort of irony that gets lost in the OP; getting worked up over this, rather than using it as an opportunity to grow and help others is sort of missing the point. So, relax a bit, try to get a bigger perspective, and just move on.