Good and evil

[ApeTheDog]

I'm very much torn over this issue. Part of me thinks good and evil are a bad thing, because they allow for suchs things as rich people who celebrate christmas over a festive dinner, giving out nice presents to each other, genuinely thinking they are good people, whilst halfway around the world children are drying of famine. None of us deserve to call ourselves good while we allow this to happen. Sure, what can we do, right? Wrong. We can do so much, but we don't because everybody around us doesn't either. We allow this false idea that 'we're all good people who can't make a difference' stop us from actually thinking for ourselves, and actually BEING good people. This is one thing I dislike about good and evil. I will never think of myself as a good person unless I'm actually doing good - and even then it'll always be relative, because I'm here living in luxury, and not giving any of it away/helping those who need it more.

Another thing is how easy it is to explain things when using those terms, and how wrong, invariably, the conflusion is. The USA enterred World war I because they thought the Germans were killing babies. This is wrong, even if done for a 'good cause', because it spreads that idea that evil exists. It allows for such reasoning as 'the death penalty isn't even tought enough for that scum' and hatred/xenofobia/failure to understand or attempt to understand. It leads to a lot of trouble and stupidity. When evil is allowed as an acceptable answer to a question or a problem, it WILL be used, and very often will result in unfair treatment for the one labeled as evil.

But, as much as I hate good and evil, I find that to dismiss them very much leads to mental instability, and ultimately leads one to become evil. This is the shitty thing, as long as people believe in good and evil, they'll try to keep up the image of being good, so other people wouldn't think they're evil. This is a trick, but ultimately, the result is that people will, through striving for it, make it real. And when you don't believe in it, you don't bother with putting on an act. And that's when you start actually being evil - being rude to people, not believing their good intentions, shouting, fighting, competing all the time, which is not where you want to be either.

Good and evil... what's your idea? Can we learn without good and evil? I think we need it to learn. I think we learn by associating things with good (mommy gives me an applause when I go on the potty! GOOD!) and evil (mommy hits me on the hand when I play on the railroad tracks! BAD!). Can there be evil without good? Is ALL evil misguided good? I think it is.

Perhaps good is nothing more than the act of trying not to be evil. And evil is nothing more than not trying to be good. I think so. But there are the concepts of good and evil as well, which are so dangerous - which lead to complacency, discrimination, fear, wars on terror... that can't be good. I don't know. It's driving me completely nuts and it's alienating me from people when I bring it up because they don't ever think about it. They may not want to.

Anyway, what's your take?

[Biff_Loman]

My my. There's a lot to chew on here.


I will never think of myself as a good person unless I'm actually doing good - and even then it'll always be relative, because I'm here living in luxury, and not giving any of it away/helping those who need it more.

Do you walk into the houses of the developing world and take their food? Tear the crusts of bread from the mouths of starving children? Pollute their water, and deliberately spread pestilence and disease? Do you smother the dying infant, instead of nourishing it?

I expect not. If you are, I would suspect you are a monster from hell. And yet you are right: we benefit from a process that does precisely this.

My point? The main thrust of the questions posed in your post seem to revolve around the gap between good and evil in a psychological (emotional) sense and a philosophical sense. I'm not going to touch on the philosophy of evil to any great extent, since I am not familiar with it.

Humans have an incredible compulsion to think well of ourselves and to think of ourselves as "good" people. Psychologically, we arrive at this conclusion by serving our powerful social instincts. We wish to have honour, preserve human life (unless in defense), distribute resources equitably, and be productive.

"Evil," according to our instincts, would be behaviour that violates normal human emotional responses - such as taking the food from the mouths of pleading, starving children. Such a person is heartless, a sociopath, and our instincts demand that such a person must be stopped.

This goes along with the railway illustration. Imagine five people tied to a railway track. A train is coming, and they will surely perish unless you pull a lever diverting the train. . . onto another track with one person tied to the rails. "Fine, I'll do it," you say, and with good reason.

Now, imagine a similar scenario. Five people are tied to the tracks, off in the distance. You are standing on a bridge over the tracks, along with someone else. His back is turned. If you put your hands on his back and shove hard, he'll fall onto the tracks and be mangled by the train. The train will put on its brakes and stop in time to save the five people.

If you really engaged your brain, chances are that you experienced an emotional response, however slight, to the thought of pushing your companion to his death. If you actually experienced this, I would be surprised if you would do it. The human instinct against homicide is so strong that most of us would falter, or at least deliberate until the moment had passed. Yet I think that any one of us could throw the switch, in reality.

Or: would you push your best friend off the bridge? What about your spouse? Or would you jump? And yet, I think we would agree that the cost of one life is outweighed by five, all else being equal. But what if it wasn't five? What if it was fifty? How many people would there have to be in order for you to sacrifice a loved one - or yourself?

One's emotions are clearly in conflict with what is "right," in this case.

Unless you want to die, I'll be dipped in shit before I accept the answer that you would actually leap in front of the train to save a group of strangers. It would probably be even harder to throw off a friend or loved one. And so, you and your loved one stand on the bridge and watch the train go by, and x number of people are reduced to hamburger. Options:

1) You accept that you are evil.
2) You accept the fact that you didn't tie the people to tracks and are therefore not really responsible.
3) You realize that neither of the above two are particularly relevant, given that you are pathetically weak in the face of your powerful instincts to live and not commit homicide.

#1 is not psychologically sustainable - and if it is, this discussion is pointless. #2 is a cop-out. I'm going with #3. You are weak. Your weakness is so blatant and so naked that it practically shrieks out its presence. All your moral philosophy, your higher-order thinking, your rationality is cowed before your stupid primate instincts. Admit it. You are a beast - ape or dog; it doesn't matter which.

So, watcha gonna do about it? From my perspective: more numbers:

1) Go with your instincts. Accept that good and evil are more important as psychological constructs. Do whatever it takes to make you feel like you are a good person.
2) Let your philosophy make war upon your instincts and attempt to overcome them. Take the philosopher's path, in the Greco-Roman sense: overcome one's passions and desires and give yourself over to The Will. Live life according to the mind and conquer your human appetites.

[edit] Read The Monument by Colleen Wagner if you would like a (short, very short) play that is relevent to your post.

[Elro]

I will never think of myself as a good person unless I'm actually doing good - and even then it'll always be relative, because I'm here living in luxury, and not giving any of it away/helping those who need it more.

So you're saying you think you're evil if you aren't helping others, and if you help others, you're only slightly evil? Seriously, though, I think there's more of an axis. The extreme good end would be what you seem to be looking towards: purity, and all of that. Except that it seems almost against human nature to be completely pure. As for the extreme evil end, I'd also doubt that humans have that capacity, too. Most lie somewhere between. I think, for example, that I am in general a good person, but not as far to the extreme good end as many people around.



But, as much as I hate good and evil, I find that to dismiss them very much leads to mental instability, and ultimately leads one to become evil.

This is an interesting point. I probably ought to reflect on it more. However, doesn't the idea of light-vs-dark apply here? In other words, without light, there can be no dark ("absence of light"). By the same token, without evil, there can be no good... Hrm. I seem to have somewhat lost my point while trying to spell "absence", but maybe you see where I was going.


Perhaps good is nothing more than the act of trying not to be evil. And evil is nothing more than not trying to be good. I think so. But there are the concepts of good and evil as well, which are so dangerous - which lead to complacency, discrimination, fear, wars on terror... that can't be good. I don't know. It's driving me completely nuts and it's alienating me from people when I bring it up because they don't ever think about it. They may not want to.

Anyway, what's your take?

Aren't good and evil a couple of Jung's archetypes? I haven't looked into his works in detail, but that seems logical. That could account for the concepts of good and evil in society. I think good basically is the absence of evil (absence! absence! For some reason I'm dyslxeic today). I just looked it up in the dictionary.. What garbage. Most, if not all, of the words that defined good were probably derived from good to begin with.

Anyhow, interesting topic. I think the reason most people don't think about it is because they don't ponder such unusual things. I ponder unusual things myself, but even this one escaped me up to now.

[ObstinateBane]

Hmmm,

I'D need more info first.

Like would you classify a police officer that shoots and kills a pedophile priest caught in the act of raping a seven year old kid good or evil?





And the same cop four hours later when he goes home and beats his wife after getting drunk?


Or the religious extremest that blows him/herself up in the name of they're God, in a crowded public place? Would you classify this as good or evil?

Or how bout the strange old woman that kills small animals and grows herbs and then is burned to death because the "Church" calls her a witch? Which one was evil?

Or well I guess I'll stop here. How do you presume to judge what is good or what is evil?

To the poor man the grocery store owner is evil because he lets him starve. The rich man thinks the grocer is good because he always gets him his special grain fed beef.

What is "Good"? And "Evil"?

Maybe we should base it on right and wrong. But even then....

It would be "Right/good" for the planet if suddenly there were about a billion(U.S.system) less people living on it, but to kill that many would be perceived as "Evil/wrong".

[MacGuffin]

A wise puppet once said: "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."

But just cause one suffers does not mean you are evil. We are not slaves to other people's lives.

[ApeTheDog]

Bill_loman:

What you're saying about the emotional reaction is very interesting. I don't go into the house, inflict suffering on the children, all that stuff, but that doesn't cut me free. If I passed a starving child in the street with flies on it's eyes and I could see that it would not survive another day without food, wouldn't it be inhuman of me to walk past it, especially if my wallet was full of money? Of course I would help it. Everybody would.

Yet I don't feel the same urgency/duty to help if this child is a thousand miles away. Is it because in the case of the child in the street, there is a possibility to help, whilst the child across the ocean I simply cannot reach? No. We could easily help everybody if we all really wanted it. We're all going to rebuild the tsunami-flooded areas with a world-wide action. We could set up a similar action for an african country. It's possible. If we all wanted it, we could theoretically end all the suffering in the world in a few years.

The difference is that we don't feel emotionally involved with events that don't affect us. If we walk away from the child, we lose a part of ourself - it cuts into our self-esteem. We become 'person who let another person die', same as with the train scenario where we actually push somebody onto the tracks.

I suppose this also explains things like the holocaust. Where people did not feel emotionally involved, did not think they were evil, be it because they didn't think jewish people were people, and thus they didn't cut into their own flesh and became 'person who let another person die in a gaschamer', or because they did not have another option. (either to die themselves for failure to follow orders, or kill another)

Yes, I suppose that's it. All good and evil is relative to oneself. I can see how a serial killer, who kills all women because he thinks they are evil, can think of himself as a good person - he is doing everybody a favor in his mind - and everybody else can think of him as evil. It's all some kind of self-preservation. And then, even the mother who protects her child with such fierceness - the ultimate example of selfless behavior - does so because she feels the child to be an extension, perhaps the essence, of herself. That explains why a similar reaction can't be provoced by the attack of a child other than her own. And I suppose it means that love is, ultimately, is about loving the other persons effect on yourself.

I'm very reluctant to accept all of this, but I don't see an other explanation. This seems to solve the questions I had. It's a hard nut to crack, and I don't suppose many people would be willing to accept this. Perhaps it would be best to forget all about this - now that I have worked it out inside my mind, hopefully I'll be able to let it rest.

Elro:

What I meanth was that I don't consider myself, as a package, to be good or evil. I don't judge my personality, or that of others, like that. I'm neither. That doesn't mean I don't do good or bad things, but that depends only on the action itself - when I help someone, I'm being good, when I kick someone in the shins, I'm bad - I'm an unlimited amount of people that way, and I don't think all my previous actions should come into play when judging my action at the moment at all.

I don't think that, if mother theresa does something wrong, that she is less wrong than when a klu klux clan member does that same thing. Yet that is something you see a lot, and I think it sterms from the seeing of one person as either good, or evil - rather than as a person who is ultimately always neither, and is always capable of both. It makes people forgive those who are good, and judge those who are bad, and I think this ties in with the self-fulfilling prophecy where, when everybody thinks you're up to no good, you start making it so.

[misutii]

Charity is utterly stupid
I absolutely hate when irrational morons write in my university's newspaper that WE or THE GOVERNMENT should be doing more to help poor countries. Who are these pathetic peasants to tell me what to do? If you want to give all your material wealth away then do it, in fact i'll pay for your fucking one-way plane ticket to africa.

This is the fact: In this world there is limited resources. Thus humanity has two possible options.
1) Everybody is equal, but everybody is poor
2) Most people are poor, but there is a small rich minority.

The second one is much more rational and therefore it is useless and counterproductive to feel guilty and give our resources to corrupt countries thousands of miles away that are just going to use it on ak47s anyway... and even if it was going to the people, giving them the false hope that they can live like us is more mean than giving them no hope at all.

[CapnEnnui]

More rational? You forget that humans created the economy, and that value is something humans have worked out. Before we existed, there wasn't a magically set trade ratio for goods and services.

Why should we help out other governments? It's simple: we fucked them over. Africa is poor and hungry because of us, not because they're stupid and they've always been poor and hungry. Southeast Asia and Latin America are examples of places we have corrupted in order to subjugate it and include it in the "Free" market. If everybody was equal, it'd be literally impossible for everybody to be poor. After all, poor only exists if rich exists, so saying everyone would be poor is completely irrational and without logical foundation. Now, I'm no supporter of communism or complete conformity and equality. However, a redistribution of wealth is desperately needed, maybe even a change in how economics works. As it is today, economics is based on growth, so whoever can consume more resources comes out more powerful. This promotes the destruction of the planet, which stupid people who are incapable of thinking about the future don't realize. This is important because our species depends on the resources of the environment. As resources like water and oil begin to slowly decline, our population on the planet continues to grow exponentially.
But that's besides the point, and a completely different issue entirely. The reason people do and SHOULD feel guilty is that the western world (West Europe and the USA) completely dominated other countries, like an off-shoring of slave labor (or maybe more accurately, sharecropping) Sure, these 10 year olds are happy to be paid 12 cents an hour, but that's because their country is so shitty and poor. The reason America and other first-world countries are rich is because "developing" countries continue to be dirt poor, and have very very few opportunities. If you're born in a mud shack in Jakarta, you have no chance of getting anywhere. Is it their fault for being born there? Do you deserve to be born in a rich country, where success is essentially guarunteed? Would you be making mad bank as an Indian peasant born into a family of 15, with few educational opportunities and almost no opportunities to pull yourself out of poverty?
Other countries are corrupt because we have exported our culture, and our economic system. They didn't have the concept of "mass consumption" before western culture came and introduced it to them by dominating them. Now, they try desperately to catch up, because otherwise they become poorer and poorer. In doing so, they have horrible human conditions, burn the rainforests, are led by corrupt governments, but still provide us with dirt cheap resources so we can continue to live as fat, ignorant people. Like it or not, your lifestyle depends heavily on the "pathetic peasants" of the world.

[ApeTheDog]

Charity is utterly stupid
I absolutely hate when irrational morons write in my university's newspaper that WE or THE GOVERNMENT should be doing more to help poor countries. Who are these pathetic peasants to tell me what to do? If you want to give all your material wealth away then do it, in fact i'll pay for your fucking one-way plane ticket to africa.

This is the fact: In this world there is limited resources. Thus humanity has two possible options.
1) Everybody is equal, but everybody is poor
2) Most people are poor, but there is a small rich minority.

The second one is much more rational and therefore it is useless and counterproductive to feel guilty and give our resources to corrupt countries thousands of miles away that are just going to use it on ak47s anyway... and even if it was going to the people, giving them the false hope that they can live like us is more mean than giving them no hope at all.

The second one is much more rational, you say? Yet you give no arguments at all to support that claim. Why is it important that there is a small, rich minority?

Keep in mind that wealth is a relative thing. The poor people of today would have been the rich people of last century. And in the stone age, you were rich if you owned 4 rocks with a sharp edge and a piece of flint. What you call 'everybody being poor' has the same meaning as 'everybody being rich'.

Now the world as you mention it has limited resources, and I think it is rational to entitle everybody to exactly the same amount of that. However, I know that this is not a workeable option. There needs to be a reward for work being done to further society - doctors, inventors, they all deserve compensation for what they do for society.

The thing that is wrong, however, is letting people starve. it's like playing a game of paintball - you're allowed to give it all you've got in order to win, but when somebody gets a paintball in their eye and they're hurt, you have to stop firing at them. Yet this is what the civilised world is doing to the third world. They're dying, and we just kick them in the shins whilst they're down. Not only do we not help them, but we're effectively ruining the agricultural trade in their countries by dumping our government-subsidised vegetables on their market, our major corporations move out into their world and take advantage of their poverty by bleeing the workdforce into doing labor that is being paid far below what they deserve. We are responsable, if not because we like to pat ourselves on the back for being so civilised and superior, then because our forefathers caused most of their problems. Fuck it. We have to help them because we can. It is what we would want somebody to do for us, if we were in their situation, too.

[nBT]

good and evil are invented to keep us somehow out of trouble. what i dont like is the irrational focussing on good and evil. the judgement you pass onto others. is x evil bexause he [chain of 'good' deeds]. im sure human minds can bend any evil into good and vice versa. then theres perversion of rules. the rules that were a low standard anyway.

good and evill are in acts. not in thoughts. you cant kill a person by thought. hate does breed murder though. love is also in acts. sitting behind a tv all day is an act too.

biff_loman example is an example of love.
theres no good an evil involved in you jumping in front of a train. to save x people. theres also no good and evil involved if you hit your kid cuz he didnt obey (love) you. (yeah neighbours may think otherwise). love is selflessness. now that is something the world did not understand.

for an act of love you need faith.
meh im christian do i need to tell more?

[Garyincinci]

Good and evil are simply perspectives. Nothing more, nothing less. Everything either is or is not. Good and evil is simply the western thought process of duality which is flawed in every aspect. Good / evil, right / wrong.

If a man breaks into your home late at night while you're sleeping and steals from you...let's say your cash, your jewelry and your car. This is evil correct?

What if that same man takes the cash, jewelry and car, sells the jewelry and car and then takes the money to pay for open heart surgery on his 7 year old daughter who has a hole in her heart and he can't afford to have it fixed. He has no insurance, he has no job, and there is no form of welfare available to him. This is evil and good? How can something be both? It can not...something can NOT be two things, it is only what it is. Good and evil are simply labels we put on things as a general means of indentification.

[Garyincinci]

good and evill are in acts. not in thoughts. you cant kill a person by thought. hate does breed murder though. love is also in acts. sitting behind a tv all day is an act too.
Jesus said (paraphrased) that the man who thinks of commited adultry in his head is already guilty of the sin. A man does not have to inact the event for it to be held against him, only think of inacting the event.

[Geoff]

Interesting point. We are talking here, I suppose about 'Mens Rea' (guilty mind) in a legal sense. It is indeed needed for a criminal offence, but not for a civil one (where it merely matters if you caused harm, not whether you intended to).

So the law (well, English Law anyway) agrees with the mind being an important factor when deciding if a criminal act has taken place.

In this instance, the words attributed to Jesus are entirely sensible.

-Geoff

[Boneca]

As a reply to the first post - I have thought of this issue many times before.

The concept of "good" seems to be only a way of patting your own back - "I went to church last Sunday/donated to some charity/helped an old woman cross the street, so therefore I'm a good person and don't have to worry about such things".
The problem with "good" and "evil" is that they are relative, and subjective. However much you try, you can always find a way to say that you aren't good enough (because there are still children in Africa starving), and vice versa, however evil you are, you can always make up an excuse for being good ("I killed the baby quickly, so it didn't suffer!").
So is there really any point at all in using these terms?

At the same time, as you say, most of us have an innate (or is it?) wish to be "good". For people like me, who think too much, this is a nightmare. Common sense says that it is a good act to save as many people's lives as possible. Yet we know that this planet is overpopulated...what does common sense say to that? :ph34r:

I would like to help charities, but I don't know if it is the right way to go. Will donating money to Charity X really help the world, or will it only serve to ease my conscience and take my mind off the real issues?
Heck, why do we even have a conscience?

As always when pondering these issues, I end up with more questions that I had to start with. :p
It is very interesting to read what other people think about this though. My thinking is stuck, so perhaps someone will help push it a bit further.

[Dman]

How about this: if you are directly harming another individual specifically by your actions alone, with intent to harm, you are evil. If you witness another doing this, and you have the capacity to stop them but you don't, you are an a-hole, but not evil. End of story.

[Garyincinci]

How about this: if you are directly harming another individual specifically by your actions alone, with intent to harm, you are evil.

Doesn't hold up when you consider war. War is not evil. The Veterans of world war 2 who fought for the freedom from nazi tyranny were not evil. The germans who believed that they where purging the world were not evil (they just had a different concept of Darwinism).

You can not define evil because evil is not some object or physical manifestation (although my sister would probably fit the bill). There is not a good or evil. Only our perception of right and wrong. What we believe to be wrong (and sometimes even simply different) we label evil.

[Geoff]

War bypasses our social mores on good vs evil.

A large proportion of the actions are considered intrinsically evil - killing, destruction of personal property, disruption of trade to create intentional starvation etc etc.

But suddenly there is a greater good that forgives those individual acts. Of course, for many individuals the greater good (in the eyes of the society) does not overwhelm their personal doubts and objections.

It must surely be the reason why War sits so poorly with the major religions and moral/ethical guidance we found our societies on. Most religions forbid murder, yet that question is never really asked when it comes down to survival (even if that makes you the aggressor for the 'greater good').

It seems to me that we have a good vs evil system that is taught by society, that is overriden by basic primeval traits we brought with us from our ancestors -warfare - albeit codified by such thing as the geneva convention.

All of which is very strange - why is it OK, really, to shoot someone with a bullet so that they suffer massive internal damage and die, but not to gas them with a poisonous substance. Hypocrisy of the highest order, really. And one where you can not apply any common sense good vs evil argument.

-Geoff

[Garyincinci]

And if there is fate, someone being murdered was "ordained" by a higher power / fate / karma / whatever. If it is "meant to be" it can not be evil, it only is.

In a world without fate or a god there can be no good or evil in the universal sense. If there are no higher methods of judgement beyond our own laws, then good and evil are simply labels used for socially acceptable / inacceptable behaiviour, not necessarily a true set of universal meaning.

The only way that good and evil could possibly exist would be in a universe which has a god which is not omnipitant (a god that can see the future requires a universe with fate / destiny). This idealogy requires free will for man. Fate does not allow for free will and therefore can not be a possibility. This would indicate that we are created by a god who is curious as to the results. At the end of the experiment there may be a "reward" of some gift, perhaps eternal life. Then and only then could a system of good and evil have any meaning.

[joft]

I don't think it's very expedient to try and speak of good and evil on religious terms. Religion basically brings in subjectivity and arbitrary rules which are impossible to reason out from a human perspective.

My philosophy is that "good" is affected by many factors: desirability of the short term outcomes, desirability of the long term outcomes, adverse outcomes, knowledge of the possibilities of each of those outcomes, knowledge of alternatives, knowledge of the consequences of inaction, and so many more.

Also, failing to acknowledge something as selfish as convenience as a valid part of the equation would be naive. Convenience has a lot to do with proximity. For instance, consider a homeless child who is asking for money for food at a bus stop or something that you go by near where you live. Do you consider giving something to help? If you do, what about the literally hundreds of millions of starving children elsewhere on our planet? Do you feel guilty that after giving that kid a few dollars, you go to the movie store and spend twice as much renting a few movies to watch for entertainment, when you could have given it to that kid, or to someone who would use it to feed kids overseas? Would you give up all luxuries until there was no more hunger in the world? Yet, do you think the people in those countries would really care about you cancelling your cable?

misutii's statement however was more than just naive, it was ignorant to the extent that it offends me. First of all, there are alternatives to giving currency to the governments of nations that they can use to buy weapons instead of feeding their people. Secondly, I doubt the people getting medication that saves their lives from something like diarrhea, or the people getting the ability to clean some water to drink so they don't have to drink water with urine and feces in it, or the people getting food to feed their children who have a less than 50% chance of living, are going to confuse those life saving things with a false hope that they can immediately become rich "first world" country citizens.

Finally, if you think charity is so stupid, then you better scold your parents for paying for anything for you as you grew up, for giving you a place to live, or for even breast feeding you when you were an infant. Where do you draw the line between people who really are incapable of providing for themselves and those who would just have a difficult time doing it? Did you earn your living when you were 10 years old? Many children in low and middle income nations do from even younger ages. Difficult, manual labor, life threatening to children who aren't even being fed well, at the age of 6. It's happening all over the world, in the the vast majority of the world's population. Why should we take care of the elderly or put them in retirement homes? Why don't they just realize they've stopped being productive and kill themselves so as not to be a burden to us? Or I suppose that any decent human being would have saved up enough money over the years to pay for the rest of their life, given they don't even know how long they'll live after they retire?

Whether you think charity is stupid or not, it is necessary, and has been for the entire history of mankind.

[Garyincinci]

I don't think it's very expedient to try and speak of good and evil on religious terms. Religion basically brings in subjectivity and arbitrary rules which are impossible to reason out from a human perspective.


I do not believe that the two can be discussed independantly when religion is responsible for the majority of what people consider to be good and evil.

[misutii]

Why should we help out other governments? It's simple: we fucked them over. Africa is poor and hungry because of us, not because they're stupid and they've always been poor and hungry. Southeast Asia and Latin America are examples of places we have corrupted in order to subjugate it and include it in the "Free" market.

"We" fucked them up? Again with this "we"? No no my friend, i can truthfully tell you that i was nowhere near earth when Hernan Cortes touched foot in Mexico. Blaming people for the actions of their ancestors is not rational. I'm guessing we should give African Americans slave reparations as well? In fact why don't we find out how many people's families were fucked over in the past and give them reparations as well? And in the meantime let's find every person who ever had a relative who committed a crime and make 'them' pay for their relative's crime.

And you talk of these places as if they held innocent pacifistic cultures. *clears throat* Let's begin with the 'innocent' civilizations of Central America... number one the aztecs. Apparently an innocent peace loving people whose culture was utterly destroyed by evil greedy white man...

REALITY: The aztecs practiced human sacrifice, had a severe class system and subjugated nearby cultures ruthlessly themselves. The reason Cortes was able to conquer the Aztec empire with 1000 Europeans was because the Aztecs mistreated the neighbours they subjugated, and those neighbours saw fit to seek revenge by aiding Cortes.
REALITY: There was RICH and POOR in the Aztec Empire before Europeans arrived. Of course it was defined differently but it was there. This goes for many civilizations conquered in Asia and Africa as well. Europeans were successful because they had superior technology and tactics, not because they were more ruthless. If the Aztec, African and Asian civilizations that Europeans conquered had better technology and tactics than Europeans, then they would have done the same thing as Europeans. It is part of human nature, it's why there is skyscrapers, elevators and cars.

The individual is more important than the group, the individual wants to better him/herself. There has to be a small rich minority because:
1) we don't have the technology to have everyone be rich
2) we don't have the resources to have everyone be rich
3) Humanity can only move towards gaining those 2 goals at the moment by having small sections of its population be technologically advanced.

There is no inherent goodness in humanity, welcome to reality. Asians, Africans and Aztecs would be doing the same thing to you that we are doing to them if they could. It is human nature. It sucks that people have to starve but they have to starve so that we can progress. Survival of the fittest as one of my good intp friends once said...

And just so that i don't sound like an utter asshole, if you have a better RATIONAL solution, then please go ahead, but the solution must be practical enough that you will be able to convince the majority to implement it. I was once like you guys, a nice innocent idealist... and then reality hit me and it hurt like hell... i'm just trying to prepare you guys and you have my admirance if you can dodge it.

[joft]

"We" fucked them up? Again with this "we"? No no my friend, i can truthfully tell you that i was nowhere near earth when Hernan Cortes touched foot in Mexico. Blaming people for the actions of their ancestors is not rational. I'm guessing we should give African Americans slave reparations as well? In fact why don't we find out how many people's families were fucked over in the past and give them reparations as well? And in the meantime let's find every person who ever had a relative who committed a crime and make 'them' pay for their relative's crime. I'm addressing this all at once because it's not an argument I made or completely agree with. I think it's wrong to approach the issue in terms of anyone being required to help anyone else for any reason. So I kind of disagree with CapnEnnui. However, I would like to point out how you hypocritically think yourself to be worthy of consideration as an individual and not as part of a collective; you are not responsible for your ancestor's or country's or civilization's actions... and yet, you use EXTREMELY widespread judgments of other entire civilizations and all of their inhabitants. See Exhibit B:


And you talk of these places as if they held innocent pacifistic cultures. *clears throat* Let's begin with the 'innocent' civilizations of Central America... number one the aztecs. Apparently an innocent peace loving people whose culture was utterly destroyed by evil greedy white man...

REALITY: The aztecs practiced human sacrifice, had a severe class system and subjugated nearby cultures ruthlessly themselves. Blah blah.
REALITY: There was RICH and POOR in the Aztec Empire before Europeans arrived. Blah blah. Would you by any chance happen to be a Jared Diamond fan? Well, anyway... As you so eloquently put it later in your post, apparently "There is no inherent goodness in humanity." So these societies were just being consistent, that's all!


The individual is more important than the group, the individual wants to better him/herself. Now here you've resorted to spouting completely arbitrary and unconnected statements. Why is the individual more important than the group? Because the individual seeks self-improvement? Do you mean all individuals, or only certain individuals? If all individuals, then do not all groups consist entirely of individuals who seek self-improvement and therefore all groups are important too? If only certain, then did you mean to say that some individuals (those that seek self-improvement) are more important than the group? And seeing as all groups are merely made up of individuals, does it not stand to reason that you are saying some few individuals are more important than other many individuals? This would fit the pattern of the world, seeing as those individuals who, according to you, do not seek self-improvement (and are therefore poor, according to you), make up the vast majority.

Let's take your interesting theory and apply it some more to the real world. Now, do you not think that it's possible for someone to be born in a rich nation, and without ever really seeking to improve herself or himself in their entire lives, still enjoy living conditions infinitely better than those born in a low-income nation with sewage lined streets not unfamiliar to dead bodies just decaying in front of their houses? Or how about this one, did you ever think that the whole idea of "self-improvement" might be a learned concept and not necessarily inherent in every single person's genes? Hmm, could it be that most of these billions and billions of people might actually lead lives where they're more concerned with the everyday struggle to not drop dead that they might not have had the time to stop and read (with no written language skills) all the inspiring classic stories that you've grown up on, like Great Expectations or The Holy Bible?


There has to be a small rich minority because:
1) we don't have the technology to have everyone be rich
2) we don't have the resources to have everyone be rich
3) Humanity can only move towards gaining those 2 goals at the moment by having small sections of its population be technologically advanced. Now this part is great. First you assume that anybody has to be rich, then you narrow it down to the small minority (depending on what you want to define "rich" as, this could be like 0.01% of the earth's population). For your first point, it doesn't require technology to become "rich." Nor has anyone in this thread argued that everyone has to be rich. We're not talking about yachts here, we're talking about food and water so that people don't fucking die. Same for the second point, except we kind of do have the resources for everyone to live decent, healthy lives. Did you know the US government is paying a lot of farmers here to grow smaller crops and produce less food? That's nice isn't it? :)

For your third point, I don't know what "2 goals" you're talking about. The only thing remotely resembling a goal that can be drawn from your previous 2 points is "some people becoming rich," and I'm not quite sure all of humanity is ready to go forward with that goal with you. As for your method of bringing it about, I have no problem with small amounts of people being technologically advanced. The problem arises when the technologically advanced people develop superiority complexes. Nobody here is talking about providing laptops, i-pods, broadband, and cars to everyone in every nation on earth. Not everyone wants a notebook or an i-pod, however, everyone does want food, water, and decent living conditions.


There is no inherent goodness in humanity, welcome to reality. Asians, Africans and Aztecs would be doing the same thing to you that we are doing to them if they could. It is human nature. Do you really know what human nature is? Are you up to date on the latest evolutionary biology and human genome project data? I'm not quite sure they found the "nasty greedy bastard" gene yet. As for other countries doing the same to us, that's quite arguable, but it's also immaterial to this argument. Unless you want to argue that no advancement has been made on behalf of the human race since the beginning of its existence, then you can't argue that there is no room for more advancement. What was done in the past, what could have theoretically been done in the past, cannot be changed now. But what we currently are doing, and what we will do, can be changed.


It sucks that people have to starve but they have to starve so that we can progress. Survival of the fittest as one of my good intp friends once said... Stop the presses! Stop the presses! This just in, we've just found out that apparently "some people have to starve." Our source is not providing us with any evidence to support the theory, but there you have it. It is apparently unavoidable that some people starve. We better stop all those global hunger organizations then, because their efforts would apparently do nothing. Even if they brought food to those nations and the people ate that food they would STILL starve, because they just HAVE to starve!

Darwin is turning in his grave... To think the theoretical process of "natural selection" would be used to justify this, it's scientifically mind boggling.


And just so that i don't sound like an utter asshole, if you have a better RATIONAL solution, then please go ahead, but the solution must be practical enough that you will be able to convince the majority to implement it. The solution is already being enacted in many places all over the world. It's called charity :)

Bill Gates's charitable foundation is at about 30 billion USD right now. He has said that he's going to be giving away about 90 percent of his wealth, which is estimated to be over 50 billion USD. This one man has personally provided enough for hundreds and hundreds of thousands of vaccinations and medications to prevent common causes of death in low-income nations, as well as enough food to help feed hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people for their entire lives.

Once the immediate problem is being addressed with basic medications and supplies of food, so that the people who are dying can stop dying, we can start worrying about things like helping them form educational systems and all that good stuff to help them to be less and less dependent on aid with each consecutive generation.


I was once like you guys, a nice innocent idealist... and then reality hit me and it hurt like hell... i'm just trying to prepare you guys and you have my admirance if you can dodge it. And just so I don't sound like an utter asshole... I understand where you're coming from completely. I know it's easy to not be able to reconcile one's child-like desire to not see (or know of) other people in suffering with the fact that such massive numbers of people are living in such horrible conditions and dying literally left and right... It's easy, actually, almost required, that one becomes calloused about it. I can completely understand that. But once you've had time to come to grips with reality, you have to be able to let go of the callousness and remember that a human life is worth more than dollars.

[misutii]

I'm addressing this all at once because it's not an argument I made or completely agree with. I think it's wrong to approach the issue in terms of anyone being required to help anyone else for any reason. So I kind of disagree with CapnEnnui. However, I would like to point out how you hypocritically think yourself to be worthy of consideration as an individual and not as part of a collective; you are not responsible for your ancestor's or country's or civilization's actions... and yet, you use EXTREMELY widespread judgments of other entire civilizations and all of their inhabitants. See Exhibit B:

Would you by any chance happen to be a Jared Diamond fan? Well, anyway... As you so eloquently put it later in your post, apparently "There is no inherent goodness in humanity." So these societies were just being consistent, that's all!

Now here you've resorted to spouting completely arbitrary and unconnected statements. Why is the individual more important than the group? Because the individual seeks self-improvement? Do you mean all individuals, or only certain individuals? If all individuals, then do not all groups consist entirely of individuals who seek self-improvement and therefore all groups are important too? If only certain, then did you mean to say that some individuals (those that seek self-improvement) are more important than the group? And seeing as all groups are merely made up of individuals, does it not stand to reason that you are saying some few individuals are more important than other many individuals? This would fit the pattern of the world, seeing as those individuals who, according to you, do not seek self-improvement (and are therefore poor, according to you), make up the vast majority.

Let's take your interesting theory and apply it some more to the real world. Now, do you not think that it's possible for someone to be born in a rich nation, and without ever really seeking to improve herself or himself in their entire lives, still enjoy living conditions infinitely better than those born in a low-income nation with sewage lined streets not unfamiliar to dead bodies just decaying in front of their houses? Or how about this one, did you ever think that the whole idea of "self-improvement" might be a learned concept and not necessarily inherent in every single person's genes? Hmm, could it be that most of these billions and billions of people might actually lead lives where they're more concerned with the everyday struggle to not drop dead that they might not have had the time to stop and read (with no written language skills) all the inspiring classic stories that you've grown up on, like Great Expectations or The Holy Bible?

Now this part is great. First you assume that anybody has to be rich, then you narrow it down to the small minority (depending on what you want to define "rich" as, this could be like 0.01% of the earth's population). For your first point, it doesn't require technology to become "rich." Nor has anyone in this thread argued that everyone has to be rich. We're not talking about yachts here, we're talking about food and water so that people don't fucking die. Same for the second point, except we kind of do have the resources for everyone to live decent, healthy lives. Did you know the US government is paying a lot of farmers here to grow smaller crops and produce less food? That's nice isn't it? :)

For your third point, I don't know what "2 goals" you're talking about. The only thing remotely resembling a goal that can be drawn from your previous 2 points is "some people becoming rich," and I'm not quite sure all of humanity is ready to go forward with that goal with you. As for your method of bringing it about, I have no problem with small amounts of people being technologically advanced. The problem arises when the technologically advanced people develop superiority complexes. Nobody here is talking about providing laptops, i-pods, broadband, and cars to everyone in every nation on earth. Not everyone wants a notebook or an i-pod, however, everyone does want food, water, and decent living conditions.

Do you really know what human nature is? Are you up to date on the latest evolutionary biology and human genome project data? I'm not quite sure they found the "nasty greedy bastard" gene yet. As for other countries doing the same to us, that's quite arguable, but it's also immaterial to this argument. Unless you want to argue that no advancement has been made on behalf of the human race since the beginning of its existence, then you can't argue that there is no room for more advancement. What was done in the past, what could have theoretically been done in the past, cannot be changed now. But what we currently are doing, and what we will do, can be changed.

Stop the presses! Stop the presses! This just in, we've just found out that apparently "some people have to starve." Our source is not providing us with any evidence to support the theory, but there you have it. It is apparently unavoidable that some people starve. We better stop all those global hunger organizations then, because their efforts would apparently do nothing. Even if they brought food to those nations and the people ate that food they would STILL starve, because they just HAVE to starve!

Darwin is turning in his grave... To think the theoretical process of "natural selection" would be used to justify this, it's scientifically mind boggling.

The solution is already being enacted in many places all over the world. It's called charity :)

Bill Gates's charitable foundation is at about 30 billion USD right now. He has said that he's going to be giving away about 90 percent of his wealth, which is estimated to be over 50 billion USD. This one man has personally provided enough for hundreds and hundreds of thousands of vaccinations and medications to prevent common causes of death in low-income nations, as well as enough food to help feed hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people for their entire lives.

Once the immediate problem is being addressed with basic medications and supplies of food, so that the people who are dying can stop dying, we can start worrying about things like helping them form educational systems and all that good stuff to help them to be less and less dependent on aid with each consecutive generation.

And just so I don't sound like an utter asshole... I understand where you're coming from completely. I know it's easy to not be able to reconcile one's child-like desire to not see (or know of) other people in suffering with the fact that such massive numbers of people are living in such horrible conditions and dying literally left and right... It's easy, actually, almost required, that one becomes calloused about it. I can completely understand that. But once you've had time to come to grips with reality, you have to be able to let go of the callousness and remember that a human life is worth more than dollars.

i'm bad with the whole/quote thing so i'll reply to paragraphs by number

1) An individual is only part of a group when they associate with the group to attain a common goal in my opinion. When individuals form/join a group they tend to lose individuality in their expression... that is there is norms and customs that they must follow in order that chaos does not result and the group disband. I am a student of history and i've seen these patterns in different civilizations so i believe in them. Basically rules must be formed and order kept for a civilization to prosper, these infringe on the rights of the individual. Hence in all advanced civilizations we see laws and social hierarchy. These tend to be similar from one civilization to the next.
I agree that human life is worth more than dollars, however, such a philosophy is in my opinion impossible to subject upon the world because the majority would not submit to it.

2)i've never heard of jared diamond? would you be willing to inform me?

3) individuals that seek individuality by looking at themself and relying on themself firstmost, thereby seeking. It's difficult to explain for me so i apologize for confusion. Basically individuals who are less reliant on what other people think and are skeptical of the motives of groups... umm i know that doesn't help. Umm... if you've read Ayn Rand i agree with lots of what she says... not everything but most in regards to the individual and capitalist society.

4+6) however, it's all relative to mazlow's theory, because they are concerned with getting food they have no concern with getting rich, however, once a human no longer needs to worry about food they will need something else. "we want what we can't have and if we get it we want more" is my theory of humanity. Basically once someone has security and food they will move on the something else... it will never be enough. Starving people aren't worrying about laptops and ipods now, however, if given the resources they will worry about such things.

7) how exactly can we do, and have been doing, be changed? I wish i knew so that i could believe, however, nothing has pointed me into that direction.

8) people starve today and people have starved since humanity was humanity. It's never going to change. I wish it would but it never will. Egalitarianism simply will never become the philosophy of the majority because someone will always want more.

Lastly maybe charity helps from your standpoint, but from mine there simply will always be people in need of charity, just like there always has been people in need of charity. I wish i knew how to fix this problem but it is beyong my understanding, and you haven't provided any logical conclusions so it's probably beyond yours too. Just because i'm not willing to feel forever guilty of the poverty of others does not make me child-like.

[Miss Anthropic]

Charity is utterly stupid
I absolutely hate when irrational morons write in my university's newspaper that WE or THE GOVERNMENT should be doing more to help poor countries. Who are these pathetic peasants to tell me what to do? If you want to give all your material wealth away then do it, in fact i'll pay for your fucking one-way plane ticket to africa.

This is the fact: In this world there is limited resources. Thus humanity has two possible options.
1) Everybody is equal, but everybody is poor
2) Most people are poor, but there is a small rich minority.

The second one is much more rational and therefore it is useless and counterproductive to feel guilty and give our resources to corrupt countries thousands of miles away that are just going to use it on ak47s anyway... and even if it was going to the people, giving them the false hope that they can live like us is more mean than giving them no hope at all.
Are you sure you're Canadian? Someone might mistake you for American... :devil: The way my daughter said it when I expressed guilt for not giving the homeless guy outside the post office my extra change was, "You shouldn't be giving him anything, we're about a dime away from being right where he is!"

Not helping doesn't mean you are hurting. If you don't take care of yourself first, you can't take care of anybody else. I think the US could take better care of its own before reaching out to the rest of the world. Besides, anything the government does for other countries is ultimately economic...for monetary gain or resources or to protect trade. There is never altruism involved. On the other hand, even if you can't go to Africa and help people directly you can spend a couple hours a week volunteering for some sort of non-profit or a school--endless possibilities there. If everyone spent an hour a week doing something positive for another person somewhere, life would improve. Evil will always exist, but just by not being evil you are practicing at least a small measure of good.

[Shai Gar]

'the death penalty isn't even tought enough for that scum' Tough

[ApeTheDog]

Yeah, that's how I tought it should be spelled.

[tragula]

Regarding the initial post:

I definitely believe in good and evil. For me it boils down to the fact that life has the ability to change the universe in creative ways, therefore it is inherently meaningful. This is my rational basis for morality. (I also have an instinctive one.)

So anything that destroys life, or interferes with its ability to change the universe is Bad/Evil.

Basically I think it is impossible to worry about all the pain and suffering in the world, and it only makes sense to worry about Local problems. If everybody focused on solving local problems the world would get better fast.

So I still think of myself as a good person, even if I don't give up all my material possessions and send them to orphans in the third world....

I still have to walk by homeless people on the street, but I know that they are trying to be helped by many people but they refuse it because they are mentally ill. Therefore there is nothing I can do.

[Garyincinci]

Basically I think it is impossible to worry about all the pain and suffering in the world, and it only makes sense to worry about Local problems
Pain and suffering are the only truths in life. Nothing is worth worrying over however, to ignore either would be to close your eyes on life.

[ObstinateBane]

tragula postedSo anything that destroys life, or interferes with its ability to change the universe is Bad/Evil.

So Nature itself is evil, as well as Time, in your opinion.

Storms, Winter, Floods. Or were you refering to some other meaning of Life.

Have you ever swatted a mosquito? Hmm, that would make you Evil by your own theory, right?

[tragula]

Perhaps I was too ambiguous, I meant any actions by conscious beings--humans--that destroy life are evil. (Whether done with Malice or pure Stupidity.)

Self defense is allowed--in the case of being attacked by a person, or a mosquito...

But don't step on an ant just for the fun of it! It has its own little role to play... :-)

[ObstinateBane]

tragula posted- But don't step on an ant just for the fun of it! It has its own little role to play...

I can appreciate that. I tend to believe along those lines myself.



How about the farmer reaping his harvest? Evil for all the mice, rats, rabbits, woodchucks(groundhog, gopher) he kills running his combines? :devil:

[tragula]

Well, we need to live in harmony with nature. There is a certain amount of inevitable conflict. But most of what we are doing now in the name of our own self-interests cannot be defended. I mean-- ecological and environmental damage kind of stuff.

[misutii]

Are you sure you're Canadian? Someone might mistake you for American... :devil: The way my daughter said it when I expressed guilt for not giving the homeless guy outside the post office my extra change was, "You shouldn't be giving him anything, we're about a dime away from being right where he is!"

Not helping doesn't mean you are hurting. If you don't take care of yourself first, you can't take care of anybody else. I think the US could take better care of its own before reaching out to the rest of the world. Besides, anything the government does for other countries is ultimately economic...for monetary gain or resources or to protect trade. There is never altruism involved. On the other hand, even if you can't go to Africa and help people directly you can spend a couple hours a week volunteering for some sort of non-profit or a school--endless possibilities there. If everyone spent an hour a week doing something positive for another person somewhere, life would improve. Evil will always exist, but just by not being evil you are practicing at least a small measure of good.

i'm not a bad person. I'm generous with all my friends and am not 'cheap' with my money when i have it. I simply choose to help those that matter to me rather than those i don't know. I'm sure there's some very nice people out there, however, i take a cynical approach to situations.

There's some things about the canadian government i disagree with. I agree with healthcare to everyone and education to everyone i will vote for the party that helps this cause. However, private and public should be combined together rather than just public. The government's beureaucracy is inefficient and wasteful.

I don't have the energy or initiative to volunteer, however, i barely have the initiative to take care of myself let alone other people. I don't think i'm 'better' than other people. I don't have a high view of myself because as a cynic misanthrope i am included in humanity. Maybe in the future i will change positions because i've shifted on these issues already in the past couple of years.

[knome]

... albeit codified by such thing as the geneva convention.

All of which is very strange - why is it OK, really, to shoot someone with a bullet so that they suffer massive internal damage and die, but not to gas them with a poisonous substance. Hypocrisy of the highest order, really. ...

'poisonous gases' used prior to the Geneva Conventions in war :
-----
1 Blood Agents - cause blood to be unable to transport oxygen to the body properly. The body asphyxiates even as it lies gasping for breath.

2 Choking Agents - cause lungs to fill with liquid, either by irritation or damage to internals of lungs, literally drowning victim as they try (impossibly) to hack up all the liquid pooling in them.

3 Blister Agent - Ever wandered what a body would look like covered in gigantic blood filled blisters weighing a few pounds a piece? That is the main effect of blister agents to all exposed skin areas. Blistering can also occur inside the lungs thus killing, but generally this gas merely incapacites the victim, often giving them life long maladies (very difficult to treat).

4 Nerve Agent - The eyes dialate and the body's components start failing one after another as the nerves within the body are damaged, either ceasing to send any traffic, sending only sporadic traffic, or possibly sending mass amounts of nonexistance traffic (causing shakes and twitches and the like). The body dies after enough of it stops working.
-----

info (wikipedia) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_weapon)

I hadn't seen the hallucinatory 'incapacitating agent' and didn't think to mention tear gas type ones (saw those when getting link to more info, did above from memory, do forgive mistakes).

I, personally, find the difference between these and a bullet obvious, and see no hypocrisy in banning chemical agents from war.

[ApeTheDog]

The way I see it, we are all definately being evil, in the way that we're part of a society that destroys the world. Is the cog good if the machine is evil? Is the individual nazi good if he's part of an international organisation that destroys lives? Hardly. We're all part of a giant world-destroying/misery-bringing machine. There is a nuance, though, I should mention. The way I see it, we're evil, but we're born evil - sins of the fathers and all that stuff. We're born at a disadvantage and we're not personally to blame for being where we are. Yet be there, we do. And to t deny that would be a personal wrongdoing.

Since all our wealth is pretty much a result of all the misery our forefathers have inflicted upon the world, we can't accept the benefits without the responsability for the actions that brought this wealth to us in the first place. If your father were to steal a diamond off his best friend, die, inherits the diamond to you - does this mean you can now keep it? If that friend comes ask you for it back, shouldn't you give it to him? Of course. Even if you did not personally commit the crime, your friend is still being wronged injustly. Same for the third world. They are still suffering - doesn't matter if we didn't personally do it to them - they don't deserve to be in this sitution, and our fathers put them there.

Yes, the world is tremendously complex and it's not going to change unless a LOT of effort is put into it, by a lot of people. Yet the argumentation that, because nobody is going to bother, nothing is going to change, thus we shouldn't bother is obviously flawed. Besides, it's not true. I do want to change things. Besides, the human race can change - we're not the animals we were a long time ago. Perhaps human nature can't change, but society is perfectly malleable and this is where we can change. We've changed society so that there are no longer plunderings. In wars, prisoners of war are taken - rather than the beheadings and rapes of Genghis Khan. Is that not progress? It is possible this way.

[Miss Anthropic]

i'm not a bad person. I'm generous with all my friends and am not 'cheap' with my money when i have it. I simply choose to help those that matter to me rather than those i don't know. I'm sure there's some very nice people out there, however, i take a cynical approach to situations.

There's some things about the canadian government i disagree with. I agree with healthcare to everyone and education to everyone i will vote for the party that helps this cause. However, private and public should be combined together rather than just public. The government's beureaucracy is inefficient and wasteful.

I don't have the energy or initiative to volunteer, however, i barely have the initiative to take care of myself let alone other people. I don't think i'm 'better' than other people. I don't have a high view of myself because as a cynic misanthrope i am included in humanity. Maybe in the future i will change positions because i've shifted on these issues already in the past couple of years.

I completely understand about not volunteering and barely having enough energy to take care of yourself. I'm right there with you. It is just something I am trying very recently. (Making myself do, really) It is kind of nutty really because I need to get another part time paying job while I'm in school. I still have a glimmer of my former cynic inside which makes appearances periodically. I've decided that I have lived half of my life inside myself, and I am trying to live outside myself to see how it feels. By helping someone else, the focus is taken off of me. It feels really good actually. I think with the world's problems being so overwhelming it is too difficult to look at big things to do to make a difference. It becomes impossible. Nobody can solve them. But many people doing something small, changes can be made--and that includes doing things for friends and people you care about. And as I said before, by not hurting anyone... in a way it is helping.

[ObstinateBane]

By helping someone else, the focus is taken off of me. It feels really good actually.

I didn't know I understood this till I read it. I do this at times as well. Usually right till "Feelings" enter the mix, then I turn inward again.

[Miss Anthropic]

I didn't know I understood this till I read it. I do this at times as well. Usually right till "Feelings" enter the mix, then I turn inward again.

Yeah, I turn inward again too...but have kind of a residual high from inside. I have to force myself back out again the next time. I think though, that I can condition myself over time....not become extraverted but to be more comfortable reaching out.

[nBT]

The way I see it, we are all definately being evil, in the way that we're part of a society that destroys the world. Is the cog good if the machine is evil? Is the individual nazi good if he's part of an international organisation that destroys lives? Hardly. We're all part of a giant world-destroying/misery-bringing machine. There is a nuance, though, I should mention. The way I see it, we're evil, but we're born evil - sins of the fathers and all that stuff. We're born at a disadvantage and we're not personally to blame for being where we are. Yet be there, we do. And to t deny that would be a personal wrongdoing.

Since all our wealth is pretty much a result of all the misery our forefathers have inflicted upon the world, we can't accept the benefits without the responsability for the actions that brought this wealth to us in the first place. If your father were to steal a diamond off his best friend, die, inherits the diamond to you - does this mean you can now keep it? If that friend comes ask you for it back, shouldn't you give it to him? Of course. Even if you did not personally commit the crime, your friend is still being wronged injustly. Same for the third world. They are still suffering - doesn't matter if we didn't personally do it to them - they don't deserve to be in this sitution, and our fathers put them there.

Yes, the world is tremendously complex and it's not going to change unless a LOT of effort is put into it, by a lot of people. Yet the argumentation that, because nobody is going to bother, nothing is going to change, thus we shouldn't bother is obviously flawed. Besides, it's not true. I do want to change things. Besides, the human race can change - we're not the animals we were a long time ago. Perhaps human nature can't change, but society is perfectly malleable and this is where we can change. We've changed society so that there are no longer plunderings. In wars, prisoners of war are taken - rather than the beheadings and rapes of Genghis Khan. Is that not progress? It is possible this way.


i get what you say
i think this is a possible way. by reforming our social values.
first off: whats weighs heavier, our evil nature or our efforts to alter that. the ways i see it is that evil and bad shifted from a physical realm to a spiritual realm. we (europeans) dont rape woman after battle. but we kill eachother for holding a different (spiritual) opinion. on the surface things may seem settled or reformed. but underneath at the core of evil things are still the same. you can prescribe perfect rules to limit the violent expression. sports is a good example.

next problem: the world needs leaders. as an intp/j i can guide myself. authority cant bother me. if you or any N would stand up and take the lead, he would foremost have to know his 'evils' and 'goods' next he would have to trnaslate that into rules. rules can be perversed. rules will be broken.

lastly. get out of that evil and good judgement. its a dead end. it may work on a superficial level, not on a deeper one.

[Geoff]

Re geneva convention and good vs evil.

I note that gas is a pretty horrible way to die. But still see a hypocrisy in choosing one method of ending a person's life, where that person is serving the government of an 'enemy' (and not therefore a mass murdered in the traditional sense), over another.

My point remains, is it not evil to gas or shoot someone. And if it is not, because 'war' is suddenly acceptable and outside of our good vs evil debates, why should one route be evil and the other 'good' or less evil.

Playing devil's advocate here, of course.

-Geoff

[ApeTheDog]

i get what you say
i think this is a possible way. by reforming our social values.
first off: whats weighs heavier, our evil nature or our efforts to alter that. the ways i see it is that evil and bad shifted from a physical realm to a spiritual realm. we (europeans) dont rape woman after battle. but we kill eachother for holding a different (spiritual) opinion. on the surface things may seem settled or reformed. but underneath at the core of evil things are still the same. you can prescribe perfect rules to limit the violent expression. sports is a good example.

So you're saying that there is always a burder of evil in our lives, and that if we remove it from one place, it has to go somewhere else? I don't know... why would this have to be the case? Why, if you push it away somewhere, does it have to show up elsewhere? I would have to see some kind of explanation before I can believe that. I find that, really, the people who have spiritual difficulties with people tend to be the ones who are evil in many other regions as well - look at Bush. And often the ones who are very tolerant of others in spiritual matters aren't very violent either. At least - I'm yet to see the Dalai Lama kick somebodies ass.


next problem: the world needs leaders. as an intp/j i can guide myself. authority cant bother me. if you or any N would stand up and take the lead, he would foremost have to know his 'evils' and 'goods' next he would have to trnaslate that into rules. rules can be perversed. rules will be broken.

I guess when it comes to good and evil, only one rule really works, and that's the Golden one. 'Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself'. The hardest part and where most of the perversions come from, I think, is in understanding one another.


lastly. get out of that evil and good judgement. its a dead end. it may work on a superficial level, not on a deeper one.

Well, it's not like I'm obsessed with this. Okay, maybe I am, but that's a temporary thing. When something fascinates me, I want to know everything about it, but my conversations about it stay limited to this thread. I don't talk about this all the time, nor do I measure the world in good/evil terms. This is the good/evil thread, though. It's not really that rare that I'd talk about it here, is it?