I think I grew up much the same way as other people, who grew up white and middle class. Drug use was always evil. Police are your friends always. Need I go on?
Anyway, the older I got, the more I started questioning my beliefs and the world around me. I sometimes wonder if people who are gay don’t all experience this phenomenon. For example, did you know Leonardo da Vinci was a vegetarian?
Anyway, I sometimes wonder now if there really is such a thing as evil. Because I think lawbreakers (just to cite one group) typically fall into three groups: some are desperate or do what they do out of need (one definition of ‘desperate’, for my example); some are ‘sick’ (sociopathy isn’t organic, but could be one example of this); and some are just young and foolish. Actually ‘youthful offender’ laws even take this into consideration. Sadly though, I think very few places in the U.S. at least have youthful offender statutes anymore.
Does anyone else see where my logic is going? And does anyone else agree with me?
A lot of things are simply the absence of something else. But I don’t always see where your logic is going.
Crime is the presence of opportunity and rationalization mixed with the absence or suppression of conscience, depending on its seriousness and local pathology. Drug use is less serious than drug trafficking but both involve elements of opportunity and rationalization. The degree of conscience may differ. Addiction complicates things considerably.
Evil might be the absence of good - I.e. sensible limitations, conscience, people not speaking up when they should know better.
I’m a bit confused on your point. Do you mean you’ve lost faith in the sacred definition of evil - “evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls” or profane - secular acts against humanity?
Or are you questioning that all things labeled “evil” aren’t?
A considerable amount of evil can be described as “misguided good.” The Nazis, for instance, probably genuinely believed that Jews were behind all sorts of conspiracies, were stabbing Germany in the back, operating nefarious plans, etc., and therefore how could one not eliminate them via the Holocaust? Ditto for the fictional Thanos and his goal of wiping out many humans for ecological benefit (a stance which some super-radical environmentalists actually endorse, btw.)
Ditto for KKK, Antifa, neo-Nazis, white-supremacists, etc. - for most of them, at some level, they are probably behaving the way they do because they believe they represent a bulwark of defense of some sort against a threat that needs to be fought.
It doesn’t make the evil any less evil, of course. But it is the sort of drive/motive that is cut from the same zealous cloth as one who wants to do good.
The above thesis is greatly undermined by the massive inhumanity and secrecy shown by the operation. It is possible to believe things one knows to be untrue as an act of convenience. I agree there could be some similarities in drive, though.
I think there is a genuine right and wrong, and not just Joe’s (ungrounded) sense of right and wrong and Sue’s (equally ungrounded) sense of it and so on and so forth. I certainly have my own notions thereof and I’m pretty confident that I have a good, if not perfect, handle on the matter.
I do not think there is…how to put this? Intrinsic evil, a force of evil, people who are “born evil”, or that evil is in some sense "something that people can get away with, as if it were a successfully swiped candy-coated cherry. I tend to agree with those who think of evil as ignorance, error, blundering around in the darkness and doing damage not just to others but to ourselves. That evil is done for failure to understand, not that it is done from understanding it and embracing it.
The spectrum of good and evil is a social construct, much like morality. We have expectations based around that framework, and measure actions against those expectations. We’ve fine-tuned the framework over hundreds of years of enlightenment, a certain situation today would definitely have been handled differently 500 years ago.
I would like to learn if there are similar frameworks in other animal societies, though. If a monkey murders a member of its family, is it ostracized?
I’m pretty sure most of those guys are assholes in other phases of their lives as well, although I wouldn’t lump Antifa in with the others. The people who join the KKK, neo-Nazi groups, Confederacy supporters, etc., are probably highly likely to be the sort who abuse their spouses and children, be bullies, and in general not be nice people. Furthermore, I think joining such groups is an effect rather than a cause. In other words, I believe their are bad people who, because they are assholes, will be drawn to such groups because it gives them an outlet for their anti-social tendencies.
I also think trying to determine whether those people are like that due to nature or nurture misses the point. Whichever is the case, bad people are bad people, and should suffer the consequences of their actions when they break the law, or social ostracism if what they are doing isn’t illegal.
Well, there was this dude who bought up a company that was the sole provider of a life saving drug, then jacked up the price of that drug (that costs pennies to make) to $750 per pill just so he could be richer.
It wasn’t even illegal, he just threatened to take away lifesaving drugs if they didn’t pay him a lot more money.
To clarify my post, I should have said something that is hurtful to other people, rather than something illegal. Their are many cases where the law itself is immoral.
Yes evil exists as a human trait, because it is used to describe the far end of our spectrum of moral behaviour. If you deny it exists then you must also deny the existence of the other parts of that spectrum such as goodness. All these things are defined by language of course but there’s a clear definition of it in each of our minds even if we might disagree on where the boundaries of it are. More interesting though is: does natural evil exist? (By this I mean the disease that painfully kills a child, or a volcano that destroys a city.) Or must evil be driven by intention? And if natural evil exists, what does that say about an omniscient and omnipotent god?
In large part, the definition of evil appears to be somewhat fluid and subjective. The billionaires who put economic pressure on everyone else so that they can have more nice stuff is usually entirely legal but generates a lot of needless misery, which tends to drive a lot of lower-level crime. Is that evil? To me, it feels like it.
To me, the fundamental metric of “evil” is power, especially power over others. There really is no category of detestable action that can be extricated from the power dynamic. So, if you want to objectively classify something as “evil”, measure it first by the power balance involved. Because, almost always, one side is seeing in a positive light what another side calls evil.
I have an issue with this definition. It seems to imply that power over others is evil. To me the primary metric is not power, but whether or not any given action is harmful to others. What happens when we use power as a metric is that the bad guys, who don’t care about such niceties, will use their power in ruthless ways. When the good guys are in charge, however, they will tend to hold back and take it easy on the bad guys. IMHO this is the only reason the Republicans have been able to keep their party from becoming a permanent minority. They use dirty tricks that Democrats refuse to use.
I think “evil” takes it a step further than simple selfish indifference. The “this” that evil people want is often power and control over other people for it’s own sake, often driven by irrational hatred. Nazis and white supremacists didn’t believe they were defending Germany or “white values” or whatever. That is just a means to achieving power.
Apologies if I was too terse. What I meant was that power over other is a defining component of anything that can be characterized as “evil”. Power itself may not be inherently bad, but whenever a situation exposes a significant imbalance of power, it really ought to be looked at carefully, even if there appears to be a voluntary ceding by the submissive side.
In other words, though power imbalances are not on their own “evil”, most of what is characterized as “evil” can be mitigated/minimized by preventing such imbalances from developing ITFP.
In some biblical research, good and evil, as in the fruit of the tree of good and evil of the garden of eden, and like in Hebrew usage in scriptures, the word used for ‘good’ tends to mean pleasing, and in context pleasing to God, while the word evil does have multiple definitions that the primary would be ‘evil’, also includes displeasing. When used together would tend to indicate actions that are either pleasing to God or displeasing.
As such if you can imagine a God who considers us some sort of his children, we can do things that pleases God and things that displease God, in that context, yes evil would exist.
I should have made part of my point clear. I don’t believe people should go around hurting one another, and I certainly believe we should promote human wellbeing.
I just wonder if the traditional notion of evil is sound. As I said, some people are just sick. But human welfare should always guide all our actions (whatever you choose to call it).
I believe that there is indeed evil in the world. LOTS of it. And I believe that there are truly evil people. I will grant that some truly evil people might think that they are not evil, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are.
But I’ll also grant that this is just my belief. Belief in Evil is much like belief in God. One can make compelling arguments to the contrary that are difficult to refute. But my belief remains what it is.
