Evil
POSTED BY: Geezer
UPDATED: Sunday, October 29, 2006 14:39
VIEWED: 8182
PAGE 7 of 14
Dreamtrove,
thanks for clearing some of that up.
I would truly be interested in knowing what it was Clinton did when he had both houses backing him that was evil - I'm not doubting it out of hand, just truly wondering if this is an idealogical rift or 'evil' that we can agree upon.
I don't think that saying 'there are points in history when you can say the democratic party was eviler than the republican party' is fair. The Democratic party used to be the regressive party. I know that. I could care less about the frigging title of either party, but about their current and recent platforms, and current values. Right now the democratic party is far more progressive than the Republican party, far more adherant to civil rights, far more about the middle class and the poor.
That being said, many democrats are career politicians working corporate agendas. The difference though, no matter how you slice it, is that they depend upon a voter base that cares about civil rights and social justice. They can't continue to hold office if they lose the more progressive wing of their voters...even if they themselves are machiavelian, they do not have the lee-way to do what a Reupblican congress can.
As I understand it, or heard it, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, Johnson lost support from his own party because of vietnam and that was at least part of the reason he didn't run for a second term. I may be wrong here, but I think that's right. I also think its correct that Roosavelt tried to water down the Supreme Court but met with opposition from his own party, and gave up.
You can only stray so far from your platform.
The Bush administration's advantage is that its platform is terror and hate. Hell, when that's what you ran on, your base will let you get away with...well, murder.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Geezer: A few posts ago you defined evil as "...a few people depriving many others of their needs, not for betterment for everybody but for special privileges for a few." Now it's results-oriented, and doesn't depend on the objectives of one's actions, just the effects.
SignyM: There's no inconsistancy between those statements.
Excuse me while I state "Bull!"
Quote:
But I should have expressed my opinion more clearly: Evil is a few people depriving many others of their needs RESULTING IN special privileges of a few.
So many people depriving a few of their needs, RESULTING in special privileges for the many isn't evil? It would be alright for everyone else to rob and kill all the red-heads (just an example folks, I'm not a red-headophobe, and not suggesting any anti-red-head movement) and divide the loot?
On the other hand, although a hypothetical politician's presumed lying caused (in your opinion)hundreds of thousands of deaths with no benefit, would his actions not qualify as evil if they resulted in no special privileges for the few?
Maybe you would like to try expressing your opinion even more clearly next time?
"Keep the Shiny side up"
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Oh yeah, another "timed out" that was... not!
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:I already addressed this at length in a previous post. Maybe you would like to try reading my posts and expressing an opinion or your own, instead of playing the Grand Inqusitor? After all, since YOU brought up the whole concept of "evil" and threw the word around like beads at a Mardi Gras parade, I would presume you have SOME sort of informed opinion about the word that you use so liberally!
Excuse me while I state "Bull!" ...
So many people depriving a few of their needs, RESULTING in special privileges for the many isn't evil? It would be alright for everyone else to rob and kill all the red-heads (just an example folks, I'm not a red-headophobe, and not suggesting any anti-red-head movement) and divide the loot? Maybe you would like to try expressing your opinion even more clearly next time?
Or then again... mebbe not! Possibly you have NO coherent thoughts about your own moral sense. Maybe it's just a random mix of what you were trained into in childhood swirled with stochastic experiences and your momentary psychological state... whether you had just had a good meal and a whiskey, whether childhood symbols were involved, if you had a bad experience in the past with some aspect of a current event... the kind of non-thinking that absolves you from any sort of responsibility for your own moral choices, perhaps?
I noticed that when you don't have a rational reply to something I post- about Lyndon Johnson, for example- you get all snarky and personal.
I think I've made more than enough of an effort to have a reasonable discussion with you and you refuse to be part of it, so at this point I see no reason to reply to your posts.
---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Rolling up a couple of items:
Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
My system presupposes an egalitarian distribuiton of necessities.
So anyone who puts their self-interest ahead of that of the body politic is evil in YOUR system. Okay.
Quote:
Possibly you have NO coherent thoughts about your own moral sense. Maybe it's just a random mix of what you were trained into in childhood swirled with stochastic experiences and your momentary psychological state... whether you had just had a good meal and a whiskey, whether childhood symbols were involved, if you had a bad experience in the past with some aspect of a current event...
And perhaps that's what you are doing also, to a degree. You've been trying to provide an objective, unambiguous, definition of what you consider evil, and have had to repeatedly modify or clarify it in this thread, based on other people's comments. I doubt that you, or anyone else, can come up with such a definition.
Your perception of evil is personal to you, as is every one else's. Regardless of the logical rules you try to apply, it still based to a large degree on your individual mix of childhood training, experience, and psychological state. Since most of us here have basically the same background(dominated by various splinters of the Judeo-christian ideas of morality) we tend to agree, generally, on what is evil. But since we don't have exactly the same background and psychological makeup, we disagree on the details. Perhaps this opinion puts me in the moral relativist camp.
Quote:
I think I've made more than enough of an effort to have a reasonable discussion with you and you refuse to be part of it...
Interesting. I feel like I've gotten a good bit out of it. I noted coming in that I had plenty of questions and not many answers. Now I still have questions but also have more perspectives to consider.
"Keep the Shiny side up"
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:Quote:
Originally posted by Cavalier:Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
But I should have expressed my opinion more clearly: Evil is a few people depriving many others of their needs RESULTING IN special privileges of a few.
As I understand this argument, if two men vote to rob a third, this cannot be evil. After all, the majority of people involved benefited.
Similarly, discrimination against members of a minority group benefits members of the majority.
And what about acts that did not bring any benefit to anybody?
I suspect the honest definition of "evil" would be "a person or act I really dislike".
Nah... credit me with a little more thought than THAT!
Are the two men and their families starving? Are the majority depriving a minority of basic needs to meet their "requirements" for luxury and ease? My system presupposes an egalitarian distribuiton of necessities.
I was questioning the definition you proposed, which said nothing about the prior distribution of resources. The definition was purely majoritarian: An act is evil if it hurts more people than it helps.
It may be that your opinion is not accurately stated by the definition given above, in which case I can only guess what it is. I suspect your views to be egalitarian: An act is evil if it leaves people more varied in their good or bad fortune. By this argument, the poor may virtuously steal from the rich, as this will lead to less variation among people. Is this your view? If not what is it?
Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Now I know the first thing that libertarians will say is... "But that destroys individual effort! Because if people get what they need regardless of effort, then nobody will do anything!" That's a false assumption of human character. Humans actually have a NEED to be productive because it gives them a sense of control over their environment. I think what destroys individual effort more than anything is to have to labor under someone else's direction and then have the fruits of your labor taken away for someone else's benefit. Nothing destroys the work ethic like slavery. But that's a whole 'nother discussion.
I believe the libertarian belief would be that an act is evil if it interferes with someone else’s control over his life and his possessions. Many might allow such an act as punishment for a similar offence against another.
The objection you predicted strikes me as being one from economics. People respond to incentives, so if you destroy their incentives to do X, you get less X. Everyday experience suggests to me that this argument is correct: people do respond to threats of punishment and hopes of reward. You are in effect arguing that this is not so, and I would like to see what evidence leads you think that.
That said, this is a side issue. Even if a society you considered free of evil was impossible, this would not prove your concept of evil useless. We cannot achieve absolute zero, but the concept is still useful.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I happen to have my own definition, which is firmly based in Pope John XXIII-era Catholicism. But as they say "Your results may vary". And altho I think I can make a coherent case for my ideas of "good" and "evil"' I'm not sure it's really productive to discuss our individual concepts. All we would do is agree on the prevailing mind-set. Or.. not. Maybe we have some Zeusists around!
So perhaps the best way to look at the concept is from a functional/ historical perspective. I come back to the idea of good and evil as an overarching tool of enforcing conformity, and back to the necessity of getting the people to whom applies to "buy into" such a system. In other words, it has to offer something, if only a place in heaven.
So speculating further, one of the interesting things I've noticed about social power- whether military, economic, communications, ideological- is that it inevitably concentrates. The wealthy use their wealth to gather wealth and arms, the well-armed gather greater armies and loot, and ALL of the powerful eventually "shape" the message of "good" (or lawful) to become support for the leader and "evil" (or unlawful) to become opposition. There is no difference betwe
en the Sun God Pharaoh, the Son of God (in the form of the Pope) and the Sun King... the leaders ally themselves with the deities and the moral code as handed down from the gods (or, in the current mind-set of capitalism, as handed down by Nature, which dictates a dog-eat-dog society).
So is there a natural countervening force? I think there are several. Social control and conformity can simply be imposed by fear, whether it is fear of the leader or fear an enemy. (The smart leader creates an enemy, even if none exist.) But there's another countervening force, and that is technology and specialization. It seems to me that as societies become more and more complex... and as the required tasks become too complex to whip people into performing them... the concept of who is due a reward has to become more inclusive.
What say you?
---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Cavalier - is that you HK? I didn't want to assume.
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
In other words, instead of arguing whose puppet strings are prettier, look at the hands holding the strings.
Anybody up for that?
Rue- I'm pretty sure it's not HK.
---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
OOOKAAAYYY ...
I'll need to think about your post.
I was thinking of good and evil from a neurological/ evolutionary perspective. Any interaction that causes the release of oxytocin in roughly 80% of people is 'good'.
Added: Here is my thinking. However neurology generates a signal that 'feels good' or 'feels bad', it does do that for all sorts of survival behavior. Hunger and thirst feel bad, eating and drinking feel good. So 'good' and 'bad' are tied to species survival.
In terms of interaction between members of the same species, there are different survival strategies for different species.
For large carnivores like tigers, it's good to have a large territory, therefore they are internally motivated to establish and hold the best and largest area they can. OTOH for birds it's good to share sitting on eggs and keeping them warm, therefore they are motivated to do that.
Primates are positively motivated to cooperate and to reward cooperators. Chimps select good cooperators to befriend, many primates 'punish' cheaters, refuse 'unfair' rewards etc. There seems to be an internal primate system that rewards most individuals for 'good' with the good feelings oxytocin brings. OTOH 'evil' leads to feelings of isolation and stress.
People who have a choice and interact to generate oxytocin are good, those who chose other are evil.
Which leads me to consider that this system selects for evil people. They garner wealth and power over others rather than the rewards of oxytocin. This system selects for them, therefore this system selects for evil people.
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME