Evil - What is it according to who?

Re: Evil - What is it according to who?

I define evil as:
1. any act of willful ignorance and the direct consequences thereof
2. any reaction to external stimuli in a situation where willful action is possible
 
Re: Evil - What is it according to who?

Humanity and evil go hand-in-hand and I do not believe that evil will never cease to exist. Human beings are descended from the physically weak but cleaver minded subhumans that lied, stole, and cheated their way to survive. Thus, evil is in the very nature of humanity.

Evil also continues because it slowly morphs into different states. Evil is not constant and is eventually conquered in one form or another; however, that same evil might make an appearance later. In other cases, that evil might be contained in one area but might rise in another area. This fluidity of evil allows it to change shape and to change location easily, avoiding total annihilation. Not to mention, while people of one generation might condemn that act of evil, people of the next generation might view that evil as logically necessary. Take for instance torture. While the United States made an agreement in the past not to use torture because it was cruel and unusual punishment, today, Americans are justifying to use of some forms of torture in order to retrieve information. This constant shift of evil from one form to another, from one location to another, and the evil becoming justified or unjustified given the time period allows it to continue.

Small evils will always exist. While the larger events of evil are generally condemned by today’s society, the smaller evils continue. The numerous amounts of these small evils add up and cause a dramatic impact on the world. It seems that people are willing to commit a little bit of evil if good is going to come from it. What I mean is that people will cheat on a test if they do not know the answer but are pressured to do good on the test. Given the positive outcome of the test by cheating, this small amount of evil contributes to the human understanding that a little bit of evil occasionally is okay so long as it does not drastically harm others. We also rationalize lying by minding others feelings, like saying we are not feeling well when we do not want to attend an event or “accidentally” forgetting something. These are small evils, which add up eventually. Our children see us committing these small acts of evil and they pick up those same patterns. It is out of these small evils that eventually greater evils exists.
I do not believe that evil will eventually be erased on all levels. I believe humans will always lie, even about little things that do not seem to matter, so long as good things come from that evil. Also, greater evils will continue to go in and out with each generation or location. Time and time again we have seen evils pop up and history repeats itself. I do not believe the human race is doomed because of the evil that exists, but rather the evil allows the human race to continue. It gives groups an identifiable cause and a means for socialization, quite often known as the conflict theory in sociology.
 
Re: Evil - What is it according to who?

Evil is a strange beast and wears a cloak of many colours depending on your view point. The very act of cannibalism was seen by brave Christian adventurers travelling into Africa as an evil and obscene act against man and God, but to the cannibals it was an act of reverence, or of vengeance, but it was not an evil act. In fact, modern humans are believed to have cannibalised Neanderthal man in the evolutionary war of survival. So what is an evil act and how does that define evil? Hitler, the archetype of modern evil, the protean evil personified, didn't think he was committing evil acts when he sought to exterminate Jews and rid the world of International Jewery, yet we see him as evil incarnate. Those that worked with and for Hitler also didn't see the Holocaust as evil either and neither did the German people on the whole, so was the Holocaust evil?

Evil is a concept which is in counterpoint to good Christian ideology and thereby has no real definition within the human condition. Arguably, the acts of Japanese soldiers in WWII were evil, the current acts of horror in the Middle East are evil also, but neither the Japanese soldiers, nor the Islamic martyrs, or their peoples, would see what they do as evil. In fact, they view this from a diametrically opposed philosophy of what is right and what is wrong. Evil is not that which is unnatural, nor is it the opposite of good, which is subjective in itself, rather it is the South pole to our Christian moral North and our viewpoint is seen as an evil one in many parts of the world.

Evil is a construct by which religion and society can define what is acceptable and what is not within their spheres of influence and control. Good is acknowledged as an expectation of God and is rewarded by a place in heaven. Evil is bad and earns you a place in Hell. Do you really believe such concepts really exist?
 
Re: Evil - What is it according to who?

I myself don't think that morality itself must necessarily derive from religious thought.

Hence, it is not necessary to introduce religion in order to define immorality or "Evil."

However, I will say, as Grayson pointed out, that Evil is in the eye of the beholder, most of the time.

Harte
 
Re: Evil - What is it according to who?

An interesting concept H. Are we then saying that man is born with an innate moral compass or do we assume the whole tabula rasa motif? Actually, I've always been more interested in the good vs the evil. Evil can at times be derived from the basest or most primitive reactions and emotions. The concept of good particularly the area of morality I would think requires a greater degree of difficulty if you will. Was it a learned response to the already existing evil condition?
 
Re: Evil - What is it according to who?

whether you subscribe to the tabula rasa or a priori schools of thought, you cannot escape the fact that as humans defined themselves, sought to defend family and tribe and worshipped the moon, they developed Religion. Religion made sense of the chaos, Religion created the rules by which we live, Religion teaches us right from wrong, Religion defined evil.

Was evil extant prior to us defining it as such?

Given that evil is a construct, one of fear and malevolence, then how could it exist before we could define it? Is there a protean source of evil that predates man, one that was lurking in the wings and waiting for us to become tool users? I think not, in fact I don't believe evil exists outside of our language and minds and I think it simply serves to maintain our moral altitude in one sense and confine our wills in another.

Religion has a lot to answer for.
 
Re: Evil - What is it according to who?

Well in my simple mind, if religion defined evil, then it also defined its protean source, which if not in all religions, then certainly the large majority, does predate man. Isn't it one of the first salient points in the creation myth of Christianity and Judaism? Evil hanging around like low hanging fruit just waiting to be picked? Cain and Able? I agree that evil is a construct of fear and most certainly a product of man's mind but I would say it predates religion, morality and language. I think it is a creation and by product of a developing mind as it began applying primitive reasoning to the innate concepts of fight or flight. Perhaps a combination of a priori building blocks fine tuned with a posteriori reinforcement. Something along the lines of Kant perhaps
 
Re: Evil - What is it according to who?

gl100 said:
Well in my simple mind, if religion defined evil, then it also defined its protean source, which if not in all religions, then certainly the large majority, does predate man. Isn't it one of the first salient points in the creation myth of Christianity and Judaism? Evil hanging around like low hanging fruit just waiting to be picked? Cain and Able? I agree that evil is a construct of fear and most certainly a product of man's mind but I would say it predates religion, morality and language. I think it is a creation and by product of a developing mind as it began applying primitive reasoning to the innate concepts of fight or flight. Perhaps a combination of a priori building blocks fine tuned with a posteriori reinforcement. Something along the lines of Kant perhaps
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Evil can't predate Religion as Religion came with language and the ability to conceptualise ourselves and our place in the world. You can't conceive of something unless you have the language to describe it. So, human development, language and Religion are inextricably interrelated.

Do you think Cro Magnon man had any feeling of doubt, villainy or even the slightest concept of evil when they ousted Neanderthal man out of creation? I don't think so, they did it solely for survival and they did it without compunction. Was evil, the protean force of malevolence steering them down a path of global supremacy of the Neanderthal Untermensch? NO, evil wasn't waiting to exist in a far more developed mind either. Evil has no place in the evolutionary tree, you can't find a single skeleton of this being and there are no records of evil's cousin, Sin, either. Evil is what we define it to be, evil is the south to our moral North and that's only for those of us who define evil by white christian values. Evil is a different being altogether in minds not indoctrinated by Jesus, God and the Devil, so if evil predates man, why doesn't all of man understand the beast in the same way?

Is America evil? A good third of the world's people seem to think so.

Can a Nation be evil? Is evil that powerful, that elastic that it can encompass and subsume a whole Nation?

Or, is evil simply in the minds of men who choose to do no good?

Before we could choose to do no good, we only did what we needed to in order to survive and in doing that, no evil existed did it. Evil evolved along with is, we nurture it and cosset it and we perform acts of evil on scales to horrible to consider, but it is ours, we own it, we gave birth to it and Religion showed us where it lurked.
 

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