Evil - What is it according to who?

MadMikeyB said:
Evil can be defined in many ways, ask yourself, is the child who kills a spider evil? Even if he does it out of fear? Is the man who runs over an innocent woman evil? Even if it is an accident? If that driver owns up to his crime, is he still evil? If he runs away from the crime due to fear, is he more evil than the driver who owned up to the crime?

There are lots of ways a person can be defined as "evil", but as you can see, it seems most of them are judged and governed by one main factor; fear.
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Fear has little to do with evil. Evil is allowed to truly flourish when there is no fear. Man is at his most wicked then.

Adolf Hitler enacted Race Laws at Nuremberg is the early 30's and according to those Laws anyone who wasn't a true German had no recourse for any crime perpetrated against him by a German. It was therefore not illegal under German Law to beat a Jew, steal his property or take his life. Evil ran unfettered through Germany, it stripped stark-bollock-naked and joined the Army, then it killed, raped, plundered and gorged itself on human misery free from the fear of consequence...

...until Germany lost the war that is. Then evil was captured, interrogated, prosecuted and hanged for running amok by good men and true. Or, maybe evil just changed uniforms and again practiced its madness free from sanction.
 
I believe that evil is hurting others which is the reason for prisons. Good, in contrast, is helping others - like for example, the good samaritan who helps his enemy a jew. Bad or evil parts of town tend to correspond to high crime areas. :(
 
hdrkid said:
I believe that evil is hurting others which is the reason for prisons. Good, in contrast, is helping others - like for example, the good samaritan who helps his enemy a jew. Bad or evil parts of town tend to correspond to high crime areas. :(
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I agree with that general idea. The only thing that divides us is when we label ourselves 'us vs them' whether it is city, state, country, ethnicity we are putting up walls when we should be bringing them down. So when something happens to someone we would look at it as if it was our neighbor or someone close to us. This allows us to empathize with the world easily crossing the borders.
 
Yeah, the old "us vs them" debate. It's always a matter of perspective isn't it ? Is there a way to avoid such a thing ?
 
Numenorean7 said:
Yeah, the old "us vs them" debate. It's always a matter of perspective isn't it ? Is there a way to avoid such a thing ?
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Like keroscene said tolerance which was the short version of what I said. Basically as long as you see people as outsiders you will likely treat them as such.
 
DAMN GOOD QUESTION!!! Guess it depends on who ask. there might be a "general definition" that most will agree on, and from there on out, it 's going to get or can get pretty darn picky, based on who one asks and depending on the person's agenda, as in everything from keeing the birds out of the garden to taking control of the entire world, and beyond.I guess it an "Operational Definition" that one has to go by when answering the question.
 

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