Evil

POSTED BY: Geezer
UPDATED: Sunday, October 29, 2006 14:39
VIEWED: 8182
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GEEZER

Monday, October 23, 2006 3:22 PM

"Evil Empire"
"Axis of Evil"
"The Great Satan"
"Evil Islamofascists"
"Evil Crusade against Islam"

So, what is "Evil"?

Mr. Webster's book (Webster's II New Riverside University Dictionary) says:
-adj.1. Morally wrong or bad: WICKED. 2. Causing injury, ruin, or pain: HARMFUL. 3. Marked by or indicating future misfortune: OMINOUS. 4. Reputedly bad or blameworthy: INFAMOUS. 5. Marked by anger or spite: MALICIOUS.

-n 1. A cause of harm, misfortune, or destruction. 2. Something morally reprehensible: WICKEDNESS. 3. An evil power or force. 4. A source or cause of suffering, harm, and destruction.

Hmm. So a tree that falls on you and injures you is "an evil tree"? Or does evil, as opposed to harm, require a moral choice; a decision to act against the prevailing morality?

Is evil relative or absolute? Whould a Mayan who selfishly prevented his child from being sacrificed to insure good crops have been considered evil by the other Maya?

Is a man who cuts off your arm evil? What if he's a doctor and you had gangrene? What if he became a doctor because he enjoys cutting people up and wanted a way to do it legally?

Neo-Nazis think Hitler wasn't evil for causing WWII and the Holocast. Some folk think Truman was evil for A-bombing Japan. During WWII we buddied up to evil Josef Stalin to beat evil Hitler. Is "the lesser of two evils" sometimes actually the only choice?

How do we distinguish "evil" from "wrong", or "mistaken", or "won't understand what I know is right"?

"Keep the Shiny side up"

KANEMAN

Monday, October 23, 2006 3:34 PM

"How do we distinguish "evil" from "wrong", or "mistaken",

Simple,
Sig is usually "wrong"
Ruse is usually "mistaken"
Citz is usually "evil"

Hope this helps.

SIGNYM

Monday, October 23, 2006 3:54 PM

Ok, you're given doors numbered one through nine and you choose number one because it fits your idea of what evil "means", dictionary be damned: Morally wrong or bad- WICKED.

Lets' explore that in detail. I assume that you mean when someone makes a choice against current morality. Does that take the goal into account? The old end/ means question: Is it OK to torture innocents and kill hundred of thousands -even millions- of people for a "wothwhile" goal? It seems to me that every infamous tyrant has some sort of rationalization for their actions that appeals to some praiseworthy ideal. "Creating a better society" usually covers the concept, whether it's "spreading democracy" or "creating a worker's paradise" or "keeping on the righteous path set by (insert your favorite god here)" or even "Sacrificing a few children to make the rains come so we can all eat".

It think fancy-sounding ideals are more or less inevitable, since no tyrant is ever going to gain control by saying outright "I'm going to kill, torture, and rob you for my own benefit."

So, do we set aside stated goals then, and just look at the means and whether it fits into the current moral code (whatever that code is)? Or do we judge actions by some strict standard? ie "The greatest good for the greatest number", and simply decide whether the action was "successful" in that it was accomplished with the least harm?

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

CHRISISALL

Monday, October 23, 2006 4:03 PM

Evil is KNOWING that who you hurt, you do so in the name of the Lord.

Bottom line Chrisisall

RIGHTEOUS9

Monday, October 23, 2006 4:40 PM

Well I'm a liberal, so something like evil is a truly difficult word to label anybody. I certainly wouldn't label another culture evil, or automatically label gangbangers evil, or apply the term "axis of evil" to any nations on the political landscape, at least not as a politician.

So in my posts in the other thread I set out to define conditions as 'evils.' that is things that are "causing injury, ruin, or pain: HARMFUL " I lumped in things that I thought we could commonly agree upon - faccism, murder, disease, poverty and hunger, a race to the destruction of the biosphere, etc.

To answe your question, The tree that falls on a person's head in the woods is not evil. The result is evil. The tree was not concious of its action.

Conciousness itself is another grey area. Choice has to be a factor. Real choice. A gang banger(lame term from suburb guy) in an inner city that can work at Mcdonalds or make some real cash getting in with a gang that distributes drugs, has a choice, and sure, given the same options I would choose mcdonalds - but his cultural lessons are different than mine, his life lessons are different...he believes police to be corrupt and racist, he believes the government to be corrupt and racist...he has reason to believe that he has been barred from opportunity in America, and every reason to believe that those opportunities are also crooked. He didn't get much of an academic education in school, but he got a street education, and he can use it to make something of himself.

I'm not sure at which point I start to call him evil for his choices. It's entirely possible that he never reaches a place where such a term should describe him. This is case by case though - it requires that the parameters for right and wrong are agreed upon by him and those judging him. He might cause evil, as most of the culture defines it, but if to him evil is something else, then that is the real problem, and that is where society failed to provide an environment in which he could develop our standardized sense of right and wrong.

And really, this same problem arises when I attempt to call anybody in the Bush administration evil, because it is quite possible they are socially underdeveloped in this area of understanding. It could be that they either have an entirely different idea of what evil is(their political enemies) than the majority of Americans, or they don't believe in evil or morality at all(complete sociopaths), except for as a powerful word in rhetoric.

But what they would tell us, or sell to us, is that they agree hunger is bad, faccism is bad, too much polution is bad, mass death is bad..etc. When their actions cause more of the things that they tell us are bad, I can only take their word for it that they understand the difference, and I must conclude that they are either aware that they are perpetrating evil on the world and don't care, or aren't interested at all in the results of their policy where they don't pertain to politics. It is their agreement on what is evil, coupled with their indiference or malice when making policy, that makes they them evil, as I define it.

I will even admit to the complications of a democratic nation. Clinton said that as president he hoped he did more good than harm. The reality is American Government is a balancing act. Things that do some good also cause harm to other things.

Bush has definitely done some good....for the top 1 percent of this country, at the expense of the rest of us. So lets use another common paradigm to see whether or not this is in line with standard American Values. "The needs of the many outweighs the needs of the few" - Spock -

nope...I don't think he can claim he's done more good than harm, if he's done any "good" at all, based on our cultural standards.

CHRISISALL

Monday, October 23, 2006 4:53 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Righteous9:
"The needs of the many outweighs the needs of the few"

Careful trainee, that sounds mighty socialist to this 1%-er!

Chrisisall

CITIZEN

Monday, October 23, 2006 5:11 PM

It is socialist, socialism is always evil, so selfish is good?

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.

RIGHTEOUS9

Monday, October 23, 2006 5:12 PM

And in this post I will debate myself for one second.

I think that most people can agree that as I ended my last post "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few," but I have a couple doubts about that.

Mostly because of one of the most powerful memes out there, that doing anything for the sake of your family is somehow noble. This can justify just about anything we do in this country. America's communities are not strong communities(I'm generalizing). The family structure is THE unit, and all actions taken by family members are supposed to prioritize in that way.

One of the recently indicted republicans said that he did what he did for his family.

Culturally speaking, doing something for your family in this country is a profound good, trumping so much. This tenet is a problem. Not because family should not be important, but because this great effort of responsibility, providing one's family with every damned thing you can, above and beyond their needs and to hell with everything else, is actually iresponsible in the bigger picture.

And if I could be Doctor Spock for a second, providing great material wealth is not providing your family with everything it should. Your children should learn a concience. They should learn empathy and they should learn sacrifice, and they should be able to see the rest of the world beyond their nose, and beyond their own family room. Showing them that wealth is the end-all-be-all, that family is the only important tie, is a dangerous paradigm that we've taken too far in this country.

As it is, I do not believe it is evil to think only of your family. It is after all a cultural norm. But again, taken to its extremes this perspective can result in great evils, and the question is whether our society should continue to look upon providing for one's own family as selflessnes.

RIGHTEOUS9

Monday, October 23, 2006 5:18 PM

to respond to you Crisisall, I don't think that the view of the 'needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few' has to be taken as socialist.

The very muscle behind capitalism is that it is more succesful at including the many and improving the many than is communism.

I happen to believe that unregulated capitalism is no longer capitalism, and I happen to believe that social programs actually foster capitalism. I believe in a free-market system, just not a corporafaccist one that kills competition rather than enables it.

CHRISISALL

Monday, October 23, 2006 5:20 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
It is socialist, socialism is always evil, so selfish is good?

Being filthy rich, as I am, yeah, selfish is good.
Am I selfish to breath air?
Am I selfish when I buy the last Sunday paper?
Am I selfish when I lay off 27,000 workers because I can get slaves in Communist China to work for 98% less money?

Big-hearted Capitalist Pig Chrisisall

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