What is "The Idea of Evil?"

[dfadsfasdferwer]

there is no such thing as "good" or "evil" nor is there "right" or "wrong". all there really is is "ethical" and "unethical" but even that is so relative. in todays world, we judge based on the law. you kill someone, you're a bad person. but few people think, "WHY did he kill him? Is it because he was provoked? Was he going through a tough time and took it out on someone who tried to help him? Could it be that maybe, just maybe, it wasn't even his fault?" No, it's always, "Look at him, he's a killer!" Even that has a negative meaning now. When our family members who were serving in Iraq or wherever come back, you don't see them put on trail for murder. That's because our government says it's OK. Does anyone but me see a problem with that? The reason for killing should be taken into consideration a hell of a lot more then it is now.  

[allucard88]

I think evil is as evil does like stepping on someones head when they are drowning or pulling the wings off of flys and laughing about it or getting a feeling of joy when you hear of great suffering  

[bluecherry]

Evil comes down to motive, yes you do need to look at things in context (like killing people generally=bad, BUT you have to consider cases such as killing somebody who would have killed you first had you not killed them=NOT bad.) Ethics IS ENTIRELY based on views of good and evil, right and wrong. And Just because everybody both can and does have their own views and opinions which can and do greatly differ -- that doesn't mean they're all equally correct and valid opinions. wink

 

[Nimeton Ei Kukaan]

Quote:

Evil comes down to motive, yes you do need to look at things in context (like killing people generally=bad, BUT you have to consider cases such as killing somebody who would have killed you first had you not killed them=NOT bad.) Ethics IS ENTIRELY based on views of good and evil, right and wrong. And Just because everybody both can and does have their own views and opinions which can and do greatly differ -- that doesn't mean they're all equally correct and valid opinions.

Your logic confuses me.
If the motive is good, but the actions are bad, is it still good?
If the motive is selfish, but the results are good, is it a bad thing?

If a man does a bad thing to another man who would have done bad things upon them, it's good if we follow your logic.
Then again, if we follow your logic you provided in the end of your last message, it's a bad thing.  

[bluecherry]

Confusing? Sorry, I'll be more specific if some things were too vague or maybe pronouns weren't clear enough on what was being referred to or whatever. sweatdrop The thing I mentioned about motive and context was that actually some things that seem bad out of context when you know the whole story, meaning things like why what was done was done for example, it may have well been a justified and therefore perfectly fine thing (like killing somebody in self defense to stop them killing you when you had not done anything to justify them killing you first ((like you attacking them first for example would merit them being justified killing you and you could not then kill them and clam it was "self defense.")) is fine.)

And if the motive for anything is selfish, so long as you do not violate other people's rights, it's good. Really, for another example, if Bob and Ted and George and Martha grow crops to sell for profit in Little Town, a town that was very isolated and had a very difficult time importing perishable goods, and this means there is more food available to other people to purchase to survive -- this is in no way bad at all, in fact, it just shows how selfish motivation really helps make things function. Like say these people growing crops for their own financial benefit had decided that selfish things were "bad" instead for example, and decided they would grow and sell the crops for free. You now have no financial backing to keep this food being grown. The people are loosing money on the deal every time they grow and give out food, so the more food they grow and sell, the quicker they will be unable to keep doing so and then there is no food available to be supplied by them. Little Town will end up suffering as much as Bob, Ted, George, and Martha. Suppose they decided to sell the food at no cost and fund the farms by donation to avoid selfish profiting -- only so many people can and will donate. The donaters in the end will end up either running themselves broke as much as the farmers who have no income, or the donaters would just stop funding the farms once they no longer could without risking their own financial security too much, or people would just essentially end up "donating" the cost of their food purchases any way, as good as just buying them, or you just end up with other people being forced to pay for other people's food if lots of people did it in small amounts. But even if you could make the place run on "donations", or worse, tax funding the farms, some how, bad a system as those are in more then one way, you've still got a few farmers feeding the town most of it's food with no income themselves as they are working on operation costs only, and now these people either will end up unable to afford to live their own lives and keep working the farms or they have to get other jobs too to survive which now still means they have to accept some form of personal income/payment/profit any way and will have less time to work their farms too meaning less food will be produced for the town.

And the end of my previous message was only there to state that I'm sure there are millions of opinions very different from eachother, but essentially, no matter how many people believe two plus two equals anything other then four, that still doesn't mean two plus two equals anything other then four. Or like how an average first grader with no training in music may think the Barney theme song is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but that doesn't mean the song really does have that much technical merit because somebody thinks it's the case - a well trained musician and music critic would have a much more supported opinion on the subject of what songs are really that well written and technically sound and impressive and so on then what that first grader thinks. On the subject at hand of music the first grader's thoughts on the subject just don't carry as much weight as that professional music critic I used in the example.

 

[Nimeton Ei Kukaan]

Okay. That did help a little, but I still don't understand the difference between good and evil you are trying to show here.

I still can see only selfish actions that do good to only you or do good to a whole group of people.

Everyone is selfish 24/7 no matter what. People live and try to avoid suffering at all cost. If you do an "unselfish" act, it's still selfsih, because you feel good for doing it. Anything you do with even the smallest benefit to you, be it enjoyment, happiness, money, food, anything really, makes you selfsih. And it's natural thing.

Natural things are "good". Unnatural things are "evil". Now let's look at the natural things. They follow the physical laws. Now, the universe we live in has "decided" these laws, and since there can't be anything opposing the physical laws, there really can't be a thing called "evil".
Only benefit. When two benefits meet, it's the power that decides the outcome.

We shouldn't really use the words good and evil, but think more about benefit against benefit.
The evolution works from this base, survival is tied to the individual's benefit. Eat or be eaten, do your best to survive or give up.

Good and evil are something humans made up to explain their own actions. "I was possessed by the Devil! Otherwise I wouldn't have done it!"
"She's full of the God's holy power!".
Honor to the one the honor belongs to. Take the resposibility of your own actions and don't try to blame it on some non-existing big bad guy or the invisible man sitting on the edge of a cloud.  

[bluecherry]

True, pretty much all things are done selfishly. 3nodding Not a bad thing either. However, there are sort of, I guess you could say, more and less selfish things - or perhaps more directly and less directly selfish things. Like very directly - eating to continue your own life for example, less directly selfish but still quite selfish - your a little hungry, but not that bad and a friend you value very much is REALLY hungry, like to the point of passing out almost, so since you value your friend's well being you decide to give them the sandwich now and eat later yourself (the friend may or may not pay you back depending on how you view the situation), since you stand to benefit more from protecting the valuable friend by giving him that sandwhich now then how much you'd benefit from that slight sensation in your stomach being placated, and then less directly selfish still, to the point where I draw the line of it's no longer enough to be good but in fact crosses the line into bad - you have a sandwich, you're hungry, but a random homeless guy comes up to you and you give him the sandwich instead. The homeless guy is in no immediate danger of starving and clearly is the type that is homeless due directly to his own faults (he's spending all his time and money on drugs/alcohol it's evident perhaps) and you yourself are diabetic or hypoglycemic or some other medical condition that requires you to eat at certain times/amounts or you'll have problems, but you give the guy the sandwich any way with no idea when you'll next get a chance to eat because you want to be thought of as having done a "good deed." See the problem with this last scenario and why it's only superficially selfish is because the only thing you get from it is in the eyes of other people. You are putting too much value in other people's - just random other people with no connection to you - opinions and judgments as to what is "good." Your own health in this case is far more important to your life then what just general society may think of you. And it's not even like that homeless guy was somebody you were kind of "investing" in by giving him the sandwich, thinking he'd appreciate it that much, owe you and pay you back, or for getting that one sandwich from you have that much in his life change so that he may end up making more out of himself and his time.
But not to mention, the same can be aid of "natural." All things possible are "natural", they have to be, they exist within the "natural" universe and it's natural laws. Some things though are more and less directly natural, like a robot is less directly natural for being the result of conscious beings purposefully rearranging elements to do new things they could not before, and a hunk of iron in the ground is more directly natural as it's sort of in a default mode, it's like that from no thinking, purposeful thing acting upon it to change it. But, it's a logical fallacy to say that being any more natural (or more directly natural) is necessarily, because of that alone, any better. wink Really, again, this is all just a semantic debate over whether or not you are willing to label benefits as "good" and hindrances as "bad." Again I agree that people need to see and accept the responsibility for their own actions and stop looking for some "magical" type thing(s) to pass the buck onto for making decisions and doing things for them. My argument for labeling the beneficial things, particularly those most directly beneficial, as "good" and those too indirectly and superficially beneficial as "bad" is not intended as a scapegoat or to turn the world into any sort of "magical" thing, but in fact directly meant to be about the opposite of that - having people see and accept responsibility for their own actions. You do something very directly selfishly beneficial, know it's "good" - you are doing good, be proud of your actions and keep it up. You do things giving up your best interests, instead putting more value on what other people ,who in no direct way mean anything to you, think - that's bad. See it , admit it, know it's "bad" and accept responsibility for having done these foolish irrational things and start working to change your ways because to keep following this path, and the more consistently you follow it, of "unselfish" (or very indirectly selfish by putting more value on general society's opinions then your own life and direct values) ways will lead you to ruins, you'll have nothing left to you at all in the end but the "positive feelings" of having done these things other people approve of, having given up everything else to that end of other people and other people's judgments.

 

[FritzLloyd]

HoofFoot

Okay. That did help a little, but I still don't understand the difference between good and evil you are trying to show here.

I still can see only selfish actions that do good to only you or do good to a whole group of people.

Everyone is selfish 24/7 no matter what. People live and try to avoid suffering at all cost. If you do an "unselfish" act, it's still selfsih, because you feel good for doing it. Anything you do with even the smallest benefit to you, be it enjoyment, happiness, money, food, anything really, makes you selfsih. And it's natural thing.

Natural things are "good". Unnatural things are "evil". Now let's look at the natural things. They follow the physical laws. Now, the universe we live in has "decided" these laws, and since there can't be anything opposing the physical laws, there really can't be a thing called "evil".
Only benefit. When two benefits meet, it's the power that decides the outcome.

We shouldn't really use the words good and evil, but think more about benefit against benefit.
The evolution works from this base, survival is tied to the individual's benefit. Eat or be eaten, do your best to survive or give up.

Good and evil are something humans made up to explain their own actions. "I was possessed by the Devil! Otherwise I wouldn't have done it!"
"She's full of the God's holy power!".
Honor to the one the honor belongs to. Take the resposibility of your own actions and don't try to blame it on some non-existing big bad guy or the invisible man sitting on the edge of a cloud.

I generally agree with this. The concepts of good and evil are based on moral ideals that were created by religion and a sense of tradition. Everyone growing up was taught by their parents the difference between good and evil, just as they were taught by their parents, and so on and so forth. That's why nowadays good and evil generally define anything in today's world, because that sense of morality has been hammered into the mind of humanity over the past couple of millenia. If that had not occured, if humans had not become so interested in morality, we would probably be making decisions based on our own natural instincts rather than our sense of morality. This is actually how I try to live, according to my instincts rather than my sense of morality. Does that make me a bad person? I don't think so. I think it just means I'm human and I'm following the instincts nature saw fit to grant me. Anyone agree or disagree?

~Fritz  

[bluecherry]

I have a challenge to one of your premises. ninja You claim morality is exclusively based upon religion. Long ago religion almost exclusively dictated to people what morality was, however, not everybody, especially in present times more than ever as far as I know, is religious. Do all people who do not follow a religion claim to have no moral standards? Nope. I know plenty of people, myself included, who do consider themselves very moral while holding standards of morality that at least in several ways do not fit any religion that they were raised upon and/or was the standard that most of the society they lived in espoused and tried to make them believe and conform to. Where then do these morals come from without breaking down into calling morality all naught but subjective? Plenty of us hold that you can get morality from rationality, morality of what is proper for intelligent life in reality based upon how to best seek and most likely obtain the best possible life. Sort of similar to what you claim to do in life actually without going so far as to break down into pure "hedonistic 'pleasure' centralization" only and/or above all else. ("pleasure" not being the same as "happiness." Pleasure in this case means more like lower, quicker, cheaper, simpler happinesses - like an ice cream cone for example - as opposed to bigger, better, higher quality and longer lasting happinesses - like writing a novel you are very proud of. Pleasure is nice and all, but not the most important and/or only thing. Also, I mean not focusing purely on physical pleasures alone, which while also nice to have, if not pared with mental significance, only brings fleeting joys. And on a last note, no, I don't mean to say everybody should be like clones with identical interests even and everything nor do I mean to say in getting a good life for yourself you are required to screw over the rest of the world. You can give your friend part of your candy bar in exchange for some of their Skittles if you want, you don't at all figure "oh look! Somebody who is not me would be benefiting from this idea! I must not do it!" lol )
On top of that is the assumptions that religion necessarily had the people who wrote the religions moral sections basically pull the ideas on morals out of thin air. Morality in religion had to come from some other source first to get in the books. You can either say that the writers had goals and thoughts at that time already for "morality" and added them in (quite possibly to get people to do what they wanted them to do, maybe to coerce things out of them, like money, or maybe because some of the things actually made a little sense to them at the time. Like for example, I forget exactly, at the moment, but I think it's the Jewish religion which includes something about not eating pork. At the time, it's worth noting that people didn't have the germ theory of disease and people who ate pigs would have them improperly cooked and get sick and since nobody knew why any way, they told people to get them to stop "god says eating pigs is bad! you get sick as a punishment" or perhaps the inclusion in most about murder being bad was to discourage people going about and killing other people willynilly because people quite easily could get away with it back then with their poor crime investigation abilities and with people all dropping like flies society can't stabilize itself enough to make any kind of progress) or else, something else I don't think you intended to imply but kind of did, religion would have to be true if the ideas for morals in the books were not pulled from thin air or had other motives behind them from the writers.

 

[every1lafs]

The word "evil" implies judgment, and a certain viewpoint. Therefore, from that given viewpoint (sounds kinda judeo-christian, if you ask me), the answer would have to be Yes, "evil" exists.

Now, from a less euro-centric perspective, is there immorality and wickedness? Probably... but it becomes harder to personify it. There are evil deeds, evil intentions, but Evil the noun? Hmmm...  

[bluecherry]

Heh, the problem there is , I wish I could remember the name of this fallacy right now, but it looks like you may be looking to treat a concept, "evil", like a concrete. I think using evil as a noun can sort of be like looking at the sum total of evil deeds and intentions and motives and all that collectively.

 

[C0Dy_626]

evil is only the uknown things that no 1 is used so we call it evil out of fear  

[bluecherry]

While many people are stupid and do do that, not all things called "evil" are not understood. Actually, things I would call evil I generally do so only after I DO understand them all too well.

 

[Buroabenteuer]

Considering the idea that morality is largely subjective, one then must assume, operating under this assumption, that evil is then a subjective label to be given certain concepts such as actions, people, or even realms of the mind such as ideas and motivations that violate a certain moral standard to a certain abstract degree. The question there is, what is the line between wrong and evil, if there has to be one.


I personally believe that basic human morality is usually based around what is either beneficial or detrimental to the perscribed social group, and that universalized human morality could be based upon that which is either beneficial or detrimental to humanity in general. One might define the two as micro and macro human morality, respectively.


Considering the common usages of the concept "evil" within various cultures, the term is often broken down to define either a singular action, or a person's moral condition in general. One might then assume that on a singular basis, an action is evil when it is morally "wrong" to a uniquely large degree. To describe a person however, the term tends to refer to their overall motives and frame of mind.



On the micro scale, what is usually considered "wrong" is what is counterproductive to the general synergy of one's society. Therefore, an evil action on the micro scale is that which causes a singularly large degree of damage to the synergy of those within a society. Murdering someone violates the trust that people have in the basic functions of society, which is in part to provide safety and peaceful coexistence to those within it, and causes a level of fundamental discord within the fabric of that society that people commonly refer to the act as "evil" within certain societies.
An evil person, however, is a far more abstract idea, since this delves into the realm of the mind, which is in large part unaccessible to those on the outside who would label one evil. I would venture a guess that one might consider an evil person to be one whose motivations are fundamentally at odds with peaceful/ordered coexistence with the society they live in. Within our own society, a person who strives to murder as many people as possible, with the goal being simply to take lives, could be considered "evil" to our society, since the right to live peacefully is a concept held dear to those within modern western societies (forgive the assumption that all of us here live in the same society, but if serves my point of simplicity in the here and now). This concept of evil within motivation and/or intent can be generalized to other societies as well, such as ancient nomadic Mongolian society for example. The nomads who lived and hunted on the Mongolian steppes believed that when they died, their souls were contained fundamentally within a certain spear they always kept on their person: a long, slender spear with horse-hair tufts at the blade that they called their "spirit banner". Within that society, running around splattering your own blood on other people's spirit banners would have been considered quite evil, as doing so was a defilement of the soul's container and ruined another man's afterlife possibly, and thus one who's motivation was to bleed on spirit banners would be considered an evil person.



Conversely, on the macro scale, the only real difference is that the peace and harmony taken into consideration is that of the entire species. While the switch in moral orientation is simple, once there its a different story. There are a few constants within human morality, such as killing without justification laid out by the society, or theft in many cases, but there seems always to be that odd society out that seems to be turned on its head from the perspective of the other societies, and it creates discontinuities within generalized human morality that makes taking the concept to the extremes of "evil" a difficult one. However, a few examples do come to mind, such as an action that kills off all of humanity, or a person whose consistent intent is to achieve such an end. Though, I think Ive written freaking too much and I tire of it, soooo, you can pretty much figure out the rest. xd  

[bluecherry]

You've treated the subjectivity of morality as a given. Not everybody (even plenty of non-religious people) agrees morality is subjective though. In a system of morality that is said to be objective, evil exists for sure and it doesn't give a flying fruitcake what the person doing or saying something may believe about what morality and evil are or are not. It's still just a concept and isn't a solid concrete thing that you can walk up to and hold a chunk of or anything, but it is something that is often clear cut yes and no (though taken in context of course and there are things that can be due to context good for one person and bad or another. Not all things are such of course in these said objective morality systems of course, but some are and some aren't.)