Compared with the past, how is the balance between good and evil nowadays?
If there really such things as good and evil… maybe they’re just compassion vs ego
Much better than it used to be. The present is bad, but the past was outright vile. Slavery is no longer the norm, nor is genocide. Women are treated like human beings in many places. Religion is weaker than it’s been in recorded history. And so on.
There are ethical systems that make the world better in my opinion, and those that don’t. Call them Good and Evil, or Ethical System Grouping A and Ethical System Grouping B; either way they are indeed different.
I vote for compassion vs ego. Compassionate people consider the feelings and needs of others and try to help with the problems of our world. While the ego says I, I, I, am the one who is more worthy, more intelligence, my beliefs are the true ones, my needs go first. But then all of us possess a little of both traits.
By that you mean the balance now is leaning towards good then? I tend to agree.
The evil nowadays are not as vile as the pasts, but the good is not as glorified either.
In the past we had legendary selfless deeds done by heroes and religious figures, and people then must’ve taken them by heart cuz there was no mass-media so the legend must be spread out mouth2mouth… woops, now that i’ve said it, i think the people in the past mightve just exaggerated the stories… cuz the evil was so evil that a bit of good wouldve amazed them… thats just me tho
I believe that the evil of modern times greatly exceeds that of ancient times and the middle ages. In fact, I find it tough to imagine how anyone would dispute the fact. The crimes committed by the Nazi regime, the Soviet regime, the Maoist regime, and many others during the twentieth century exceed ancient crimes by a great magnitude. Furthermore, these modern regimes had a much more callous attitude. For instance, if the Ancient Persians were killing somebody, it was because they honestly believed that the person should die. The Soviets, on the other hand, often killed many persons merely for convenience. For example, if a jail was full and they wanted to arrest some more persons, they just killed whoever was in the jail.
Likewise, I believe that some persons in the distant past achieved good deeds far greater than anything that anyone achieves today. To cite one fairly minor example, they paid more attention to spelling and punctuation.
Only because there are more people to kill. A thousand or more years ago and they would have barely raised eyebrows.
Oh, please. That’s somehow worse than killing someone because you want to round up all the women as sex slaves, so you kill the men and children ? Or killing an entire harem of a few hundred women so you can collect a new set ? Or killing an entire city to intimidate others ?
I see no reason to believe that. They were products of a far more morally and technologically backwards world, and had neither the background nor the tools necessary to do the kind of good that can be accomplished now. Or to be inclined to try.
Sorry about that. I, honestly, don’t speak English. It’s my second language. Not a good excuse though.
Actually, that’s a VERY GOOD excuse. ITR Champion has been here long enough to realize that.
As for your question, it is my belief that the two are shifting from their traditional imbalance toward Evil to one toward Good and the modern interpretations of various religions might have something to do with it. Most of the most popular religions, as well as non-religions like Humanism and non-philosophies, like the very popular, but unorganized, “Gee, being a jerk is not a positive lifestyle,” tend more Good than Evil.
If anything, the ancients would look at modern techniques and go “Cool! Can we borrow that?”
I’ve never seen a convincing argument that this wasn’t the best time in human history to be alive, just a lot of romantic nonsense.
I intended the comment about spelling to be a little joke, but not a totally frivolous one. In fact, the people of earlier eras devoted far more of their effort to communicating with each other, and it paid off. St. Francis of Assisi could even communicate with animals, while I don’t know anyone alive today who could accomplish such a thing.
Now as for serious intellectual arguments that the past featured morality superior to that of the present, I certainly don’t expect anyone to put my own posts in that category. I could, however, suggest books by Gertrude Himmelfarb, Hilaire Belloc, and C. S. Lewis. You might agree or disagree with them, but you certainly can’t dismiss them as “romantic nonsense”.
Bryan, I’m as big a fan of dsimissing stuff as “romantic nonsense” as the next guy but, as a student of history. especially that of medicine and science, I find any comparison between the past and the present that does not take into account their advances to be nonsensical. The invention of antibiotics alone is enough for me to say that the present is better than the past.
Said opinion is tempered, if only a bit, by my being my age and having a youth (when it counted) where herpes, chlamidia, and, especially, AIDS weren’t a problem.
Joke told by my wife upon learning that a doctor at her clinic was having problems selling her house in Peoria, IL in the early 80s:
People wonder why I’ve stayed married for 30 years. Why SHE’S stayed married is a different question, and her, not my, looks have so little to do with it I don’t know. The girl could STILL do better.
I’m starting to think I had too many negatives in my earlier post for clarity, because I also regard the present as far better than the past.
Rephrashing: “I’ve never seen a convincing argument that the past was better than the present; just a lot of romantic nonsense.”
Okay, Lewis produced ANGLICAN nonsense. 
Honest, I’m so “good” at dismissing what I don’t agree with as “romantic” (or most any other adjective) nonsense that I can do it blindfolded. :rolleyes:
However, I see attacks on a new person’s spelling as something which is both completely irrelevant and will reduce significantly the likelihood that they will join our merry band of cultural snobs. I try to hold off on dissing them until they have at least paid their dues.
I can communicate with my dogs just fine. There are millions more like me alive today.
Then you should rephrase it, my friend. As it is it’s a cut and paste of your initial argument for most people who cannot, because they haven’t fought their way through academic arguments, are inexperienced in parsing them. What you meant to say to people who cannot interpret it is something like: “I’ve never seen a convincing argument that the past was better than the present. What I have seen is just a lot of romantic nonsense which does not take into account any true advances we all enjoy. Anybody who says the past was better can bite me.” 
Yeah, some don’t not use even less!
I get the joke. No harm done.
Can anyone give me an example of how the past has superior morality?
Perhaps the evils of today are so obscured that we cannot distinguish them from good. Or today’s evil is actually worse because we have new standards on what is considered great evil by but did it anyway. For example, in the past, a flourishing civilization is not that evil to ignore a neighboring village plagued by famine, they don’t have TV yet. Hope you get the point.
What about Cesar Milan, the Dog Whisperer? He trains humans, and he rehabilitates dogs!
Yes, suuuure he could. :rolleyes:
While I’m hopeful that humanity is moving toward something better and posters are offering good reasons for their views, I don’t find the categories of good and evil meaningful and I don’t think there is a real way to measure how much of either there is in the world. My view is that people are basically people, and while their circumstances and capabilities certainly change over the course of history, I’m not sure their innate goodness or evilness (if such things exist) is changed.
I don’t think “compassion vs. ego” is a good substitute here, either. People can do compassionate things or good things for egotistical reasons, and the results of egotism are not necessarily bad, nor are the results of compassion necessarily good.