Are people inherently evil?
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~The_Chosen~
Registered Senior Member
Evil is definitely subjective. I'd say insane, not evil, their childhood probably seriously fucked around and messed up their way of thinking. So killing or whatever becomes a habit and/or motivation, NEVER because of nature. That's just a stupid and pathetic excuse.
But there is no such damn thing as people being born NATURALLY to be evil.
Evil is merely an absence of good.
"Evil is the lack of emapthy" acording to a jewish shrink asociated with the Neranberg trials (well at least thats what the movie said, i don't know if its fact or fiction)
i agree to some exstent because without emapthy there is nothing to stop you doing "evil" and it dosn't seem wrong ie: slavery, the masicur of the jews, masicurs of native populations around the world
i agree to some exstent because without emapthy there is nothing to stop you doing "evil" and it dosn't seem wrong ie: slavery, the masicur of the jews, masicurs of native populations around the world
Then how do explain 2 people that have had almost identical f*cked up lives - and 1 person turns out a murderer and 1 turns out a social worker? There has to be something else there. You cant just say - a person had f*cked up things happen - so they turned bad. No, some people were bad from the beginning and were later influenced in bad ways.
orthogonal
Registered Senior Member
As I've posted in other threads, man is by nature an aggressive animal. Women are less aggressive by nature. If one does not agree with the various theories put forth for the causes, one might at least examine the statistics of the results. Men are far more likely to be institutionalized for violent behavior than are women. That's the bad news for us men.
The good news is that men sit on juries, act as judges, and generally build and maintain the prisons that will contain the most violent men among us. In other words, man is far more than merely an impulse for violence. The vast majority of men overcome their aggressive inclination towards violence. Thankfully, the mind of man is complex enough to often favor cooperation rather than contention.
I don't look at the few men in prison to conclude that men are evil. I look at the many honest and peace loving men that have successfully buried their instinctive aggression to conclude that men are overwhelmingly good.
"You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses." Ziggy
Michael
The good news is that men sit on juries, act as judges, and generally build and maintain the prisons that will contain the most violent men among us. In other words, man is far more than merely an impulse for violence. The vast majority of men overcome their aggressive inclination towards violence. Thankfully, the mind of man is complex enough to often favor cooperation rather than contention.
I don't look at the few men in prison to conclude that men are evil. I look at the many honest and peace loving men that have successfully buried their instinctive aggression to conclude that men are overwhelmingly good.
"You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses." Ziggy
Michael
orthogonal
Registered Senior Member
Hello Xenu,
Aggression is a proclivity to want to split your skull rather than to patiently answer your request for a definition.
Joking aside, my definition of aggression hopefully isn't much different that your definition. An aggressive nature is hostile or quarrelsome. Aggressive personalities tend to attack rather than cooperate in the search for an equitable and peaceful solution to differences. However, cooperation is not the antithesis of aggression; an aggressive character often cooperates with others to further his own aggression (alliances, etc.).
No Xenu, the words ‘”aggressive” and “violent” are not synonyms. Rather, unchecked aggression typically leads to violence.
However, my argument does not hinge upon the difference between aggression and violence. Leaving out the word "aggression", here is my argument again, presented a bit more schematically:
The fact that prison populations are overwhelmingly composed of males suggests to us that males are more apt to commit violent acts than females. The premise is fairly evident, and the conclusion follows by deduction.
I'm further stating that there must be something unique about males that incites us to commit proportionally far more violence than females. In my earlier post I suggested that while various reasons have been put forward, it isn't necessary to understand the exact reason for the male tendency to violence. For the sake of this argument, it's only necessary to accept that there is some inherent male tendency towards violence.
Next, I note that despite an inherent tendency to violence in men, the number of civilized men that actually commit violent acts is rather small. I conclude that the vast majority of non-violent men must have quelled whatever it is in men that produces violence in the first place.
Lastly, I ask you to share with me the optimistic outlook that good men do more than simply flip a coin to decide how to deal with a situation. It isn't "heads equals murder" and "tails equals peaceful cooperation." No, good men work hard to suppress their inclination to choose violence as arbitrarily as they choose peaceful cooperation. Good men live their entire lives preferring peaceful rather than violent solutions to their conflicts. I am saying that this is not an accident. Men have brains complex enough to invent and generally prefer the concept of ethical behavior.
Michael
Aggression is a proclivity to want to split your skull rather than to patiently answer your request for a definition.
Joking aside, my definition of aggression hopefully isn't much different that your definition. An aggressive nature is hostile or quarrelsome. Aggressive personalities tend to attack rather than cooperate in the search for an equitable and peaceful solution to differences. However, cooperation is not the antithesis of aggression; an aggressive character often cooperates with others to further his own aggression (alliances, etc.).
No Xenu, the words ‘”aggressive” and “violent” are not synonyms. Rather, unchecked aggression typically leads to violence.
However, my argument does not hinge upon the difference between aggression and violence. Leaving out the word "aggression", here is my argument again, presented a bit more schematically:
The fact that prison populations are overwhelmingly composed of males suggests to us that males are more apt to commit violent acts than females. The premise is fairly evident, and the conclusion follows by deduction.
I'm further stating that there must be something unique about males that incites us to commit proportionally far more violence than females. In my earlier post I suggested that while various reasons have been put forward, it isn't necessary to understand the exact reason for the male tendency to violence. For the sake of this argument, it's only necessary to accept that there is some inherent male tendency towards violence.
Next, I note that despite an inherent tendency to violence in men, the number of civilized men that actually commit violent acts is rather small. I conclude that the vast majority of non-violent men must have quelled whatever it is in men that produces violence in the first place.
Lastly, I ask you to share with me the optimistic outlook that good men do more than simply flip a coin to decide how to deal with a situation. It isn't "heads equals murder" and "tails equals peaceful cooperation." No, good men work hard to suppress their inclination to choose violence as arbitrarily as they choose peaceful cooperation. Good men live their entire lives preferring peaceful rather than violent solutions to their conflicts. I am saying that this is not an accident. Men have brains complex enough to invent and generally prefer the concept of ethical behavior.
Michael
~The_Chosen~
Registered Senior Member
Proof? "Almost identical lives" - you aren't living in fantasy, are you?
Well, don't blame it on nature, "has to be something else there"? Hmmm...delusional??
Proof? Name someone who was born an evil person. A baby born that would want to kill right away.
Once again, proof? You asserted, so prove.
are you kidding original-message-posting-guy-dude? (sorry i dont know your name and im too lazy to scroll up.)
well, let me see . . .
*searches non-existent database of absolutist encyclopedias on obscure/subjective subject matter
ahhh.
heres one that was never written. "Why people are naturally evil." I think it details every possible human motivation and how it all somehow relates back to the imposition of insidious manipulation, ruthless violence, or indirect personal gain. yeah, yeah, pretty comprehensive.
no seriously, though dude, if this is for some lame school report, and time really doesnt matter, check out hobbes and rousseau and locke--political philosophers from the enlightenment.
well, let me see . . .
*searches non-existent database of absolutist encyclopedias on obscure/subjective subject matter
ahhh.
heres one that was never written. "Why people are naturally evil." I think it details every possible human motivation and how it all somehow relates back to the imposition of insidious manipulation, ruthless violence, or indirect personal gain. yeah, yeah, pretty comprehensive.
no seriously, though dude, if this is for some lame school report, and time really doesnt matter, check out hobbes and rousseau and locke--political philosophers from the enlightenment.
Evil is a much simpler concept than most of you are taking it for.
You simply combine our natural self interest with enough ambition to carry out that self interest at the expese of others and you have evil. So i guess since everyone has self interest and at least a little ambition everybody is at least a little bit evil.
You simply combine our natural self interest with enough ambition to carry out that self interest at the expese of others and you have evil. So i guess since everyone has self interest and at least a little ambition everybody is at least a little bit evil.
orthogonal
Registered Senior Member
Hello Neutrino,
Is it not possible to cooperate with other men as a way to further our own self-interest? I might have a self-interest of obtaining food for my dinner. A farmer might have the self-interest of obtaining some of my money. I'm sure you could think of a way that mutually satisfies our individual self-interests, and results in a "win-win" for both the farmer and for me. Self-interest can drive us to cooperate as much as it drives us to compete.
Marcus Aurelius noted that: "What's good for the bee is good for the hive." In other words, while individuals might not know what is in their own self-interest, in the big picture, what is healthy for the man always improves the health of society as a whole.
So, perhaps evil has less to do with self-interest and ambition, than it has to do with ignorance? Please remember Socrates assertion that, "The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.".
If "good and evil" were simple concepts, why do you suppose the world's greatest minds have struggled for several millenia to understand them? Why do you think that the same human species that understands quantum physics, might after several thousand years, still be wrestling with such "simple" concepts as the origin and nature of evil?
Neutrino, I'd like to gently persuade you that understanding quantum physics is nothing compared to understanding why men act as they do. If morality were simple and physics were hard, we might today be living in a morally sophisticated, nearly utopian world of benevolent men, with the aid of woefully primative technology. Instead, we find ourselves living with sophisticated technology amid constant fears of our primative morality.
Michael
Is it not possible to cooperate with other men as a way to further our own self-interest? I might have a self-interest of obtaining food for my dinner. A farmer might have the self-interest of obtaining some of my money. I'm sure you could think of a way that mutually satisfies our individual self-interests, and results in a "win-win" for both the farmer and for me. Self-interest can drive us to cooperate as much as it drives us to compete.
Marcus Aurelius noted that: "What's good for the bee is good for the hive." In other words, while individuals might not know what is in their own self-interest, in the big picture, what is healthy for the man always improves the health of society as a whole.
So, perhaps evil has less to do with self-interest and ambition, than it has to do with ignorance? Please remember Socrates assertion that, "The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.".
If "good and evil" were simple concepts, why do you suppose the world's greatest minds have struggled for several millenia to understand them? Why do you think that the same human species that understands quantum physics, might after several thousand years, still be wrestling with such "simple" concepts as the origin and nature of evil?
Neutrino, I'd like to gently persuade you that understanding quantum physics is nothing compared to understanding why men act as they do. If morality were simple and physics were hard, we might today be living in a morally sophisticated, nearly utopian world of benevolent men, with the aid of woefully primative technology. Instead, we find ourselves living with sophisticated technology amid constant fears of our primative morality.
Michael
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Who said it wasn't? Im not even saying that self interest is bad we need it to survive. The desire to improve one's self is one of the primary traits of humans and there is nothing wrong with that. But you have to admit that without self interest there would be no evil (barring the occasional psychopath lunnatic of course).
True and this is where ambition takes over. In a totally cooporative system everyone should be about equal. But people with high ambition don't want to be equal they want to be better and if they have the skill they will get ahead of everybody else. If they have enough ambition they don't worry about who they hurt on thier way to the top.
I agree. Ignorance is a factor because it prevents people from realizing that in most cases cooperation is better that competition.
What's hard about understanding people? The bottom line is people want to be happy. Period. What makes a person happy varies from person to person ubt no signifigantly.
Identifying a problem and solving it are two seperate issues. If im right (and i think i probally am) the cause of evil is built into human nature something very difficult to change. Since evil seems to be more or less constant throughout history i think it almost has to be built into our nature as humans.
orthogonal
Registered Senior Member
Yes, but the field of Ethics encompasses both the theoretical and the pragmatic aspects of man's morality. Ethics would be little more than an academic mind-game if the the second issue were not addressed.
I suspect that what I think and write is probably not the truth. Max Guyll observed that, "Eventually, everything we currently believe will be revised. What we believe, then, is necessarily untrue." My approach to Philosophy is similar to that of Niels Bohr when he said, "Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question."
I think free-will, rather than evil is built into our nature. We have the freedom to chose between good and evil. If evil were actually built-into our human nature, then men could no more avoid doing evil, than they could hold their knee still while the doctor hit it with a rubber hammer. It would be nearly a reflex action. The fact that the vast majority of men lead lives of goodness belies the notion that we have been pre-programmed for evil.
I honestly wish it were so simple Neutrino. Could we understand the actions of the two kids that went on a murder spree through Columbine high school on the basis that they only wanted to be happy. Period? People have incredibly complex minds. The British astrophysicist, Martin Rees, commented that, "A star is simpler than an insect." Yet think of how much more complex is the behavior of a human than an insect. We have very good theories to explain the life cycle of a star on the opposite side of the Galaxy, yet we puzzle over the motivation our two kids had for their murderous rampage. On the basis of solvability, I'd take a physics problem over an ethical problem any day.
Yes, but men only occasionally commit acts of evil. Could it be that all acts of evil are only commited by psychopathic lunatics? If not, how might you differentiate an evil man from a lunatic? Could you do it on the basis of happiness. Period?
I'm pleased that you accept this point Neutrino. However, your original statement was, "You simply combine our natural self interest with enough ambition to carry out that self interest at the expese of others and you have evil." But you now accept that ignorance plays a part as well. You are beginning to lose the simplicity of your definition. It seems as if the problem is more complex.
Mea Culpa
Let me stop here and say that I think it was a sign of fairness that you've accepted a point that I made. Please don't think that I want to put your face in it. I don't mean to sound harsh in my arguments, and I hope that I can be as fair minded as you are showing yourself to be. Thanks.
But this only brings me back to my contention that we often don't know what really is in our own best interest. The executives at Enron mistakenly imagined that using questionable accounting practices would be in their own best interest. Yet look what they've done to themselves. Not only have they destroyed their company, they have rocked the entire Western financial word. I can almost hear Emperor Aurelius repeating that what's good for the bee is good for the hive. Enron not only hurt the bee (the workers, and the company as a whole) they hurt the hive (Wall Street, and the United States as a whole). I would submit that it was not ambition that killed Enron, it was an ignorance of what actions were truly in the best interest of the company. I won't belabor this point any further because, as I've already noted, you were kind enough to accomodate me on it.
Thanks for the interesting discussion Neutrino!
Michael
Is it so hard to believe? I do know a set of twins, who had "almost indentical lives" - not absolutely identical, but pretty darn close. 1 of them is now a social worker, and the other is doing life in prison for murder. Same virtues instilled at a very young age, they were exposed to the same things as children. You honesly dont believe that 2 people can have almost identical lives, and 1 person takes it one way and the other can take it a different way? I dont know any infant that was born wanting to kill someone. But I do know a child that was born extremely hyper active and was a constant trouble maker as soon as she could walk. She was a bully all throughout school, she beat up people constantly, and about 2 years ago, she blugeoned someone to death to get the poor souls disability check. You may say... "mental illness, hyper activeness, etc.." I say, "bad seed". Sorry, but you havent convinced me otherwise, but I do like that your trying
In all honesty I would like proof that people are not born bad. I find it difficult to believe myself, but the actions and the things that I have seen first hand, have proven otherwise.
Take care
I think it has to do with perceiving things which come on your way during your life. It's up to you yourself to give it a place in your Inner Self and how you handle life's experiences. It may be that two persons have gone through the same basic life forces, it does not mean they both, do perceive it in the same way and place it in the right perspective.
A newborn baby is basically "good", if you want to go from one extreme to the other, by saying a person is natural evil or good.
One person has a more optimistic view on life than the other and shall therefor be able to see "things" in a more "bright" light, so to say. It's totally up to a person him/herself to deal with life experiences, whether good or bad, in the right perspective. It is very easy to go with the flow and say that it all has to do with bad experiences in childhood or whatever. It is never an excuse to behave "evil", because you had such bad experiences in the past. Live and deal with what comes on your way. There are two paths you can go on. Up to you which one you chose.
Oh yes, there is always the gray area in between, like in follow the herd, be a sheep among all the others...I guess it's best to never lie to yourself or pretend towards others. It will always come out and that's worse. Be yourself and treat other people the way you want to be treated yourself...
A newborn baby is basically "good", if you want to go from one extreme to the other, by saying a person is natural evil or good.
One person has a more optimistic view on life than the other and shall therefor be able to see "things" in a more "bright" light, so to say. It's totally up to a person him/herself to deal with life experiences, whether good or bad, in the right perspective. It is very easy to go with the flow and say that it all has to do with bad experiences in childhood or whatever. It is never an excuse to behave "evil", because you had such bad experiences in the past. Live and deal with what comes on your way. There are two paths you can go on. Up to you which one you chose.
Oh yes, there is always the gray area in between, like in follow the herd, be a sheep among all the others...I guess it's best to never lie to yourself or pretend towards others. It will always come out and that's worse. Be yourself and treat other people the way you want to be treated yourself...
The basic instinct of man and every living thing on the planet is to pass on thier genes. They don't care who they have to hurt, or not help in order to do get the basic instinct done.
It goes back to what Neutrino_Albatross said
Evil could be something as not helping someone when the needed it. Also it is killing someone, but what many people are doing is classifing evil as killing someone, or stealing thier life savings. However it could be something like keeping the change when the person at the store gives you too much.
Banshee, how do you come to this conclusion? Don't childern demand candy azt the grocery stores, and want thier parents to give them stuff. If childern were naturaly good, when a parent said no wouldn't they accept no for an answer, or would they beg and pled and cry until they got what they want?
orthogonal,
There is a difference between a reaction and a mindset. A preprogrammed mindset for evil can be changed as childern are raised and brought into socity.
but you say...
Is it not possible to cooperate with other men to lead a life of goodness also!
Yes, they wanted to stop being made fun of. So they killed everyone that made them feel bad in prusit of a feeling fo acomplishment and thus leading them to happiness. It is that simiple.
It goes back to what Neutrino_Albatross said
Evil could be something as not helping someone when the needed it. Also it is killing someone, but what many people are doing is classifing evil as killing someone, or stealing thier life savings. However it could be something like keeping the change when the person at the store gives you too much.
Banshee, how do you come to this conclusion? Don't childern demand candy azt the grocery stores, and want thier parents to give them stuff. If childern were naturaly good, when a parent said no wouldn't they accept no for an answer, or would they beg and pled and cry until they got what they want?
orthogonal,
There is a difference between a reaction and a mindset. A preprogrammed mindset for evil can be changed as childern are raised and brought into socity.
but you say...
Is it not possible to cooperate with other men to lead a life of goodness also!
Yes, they wanted to stop being made fun of. So they killed everyone that made them feel bad in prusit of a feeling fo acomplishment and thus leading them to happiness. It is that simiple.
My fault i phrased that badly. I meant that the factors that couse evil are prebuilt into humans as survival instincts. Only when they are taken to extremes does it cause evil.
I know he said that. but he was talikng about how the cellular and chemical reations that make an insect live are more complicated than the nuclear reations that keep a str going. He wasn't talking about behavior at all. But taken out of context it sounded good
.I guess im just a hell of alot more cynical than you. I see evil not as somthing that is occasional but as a dominat trait of human society. Just look at the crime statistics.
Insanity can be and is diagnosed and treated.
I don't think ignorace really complicates it. The main part it plays is it deludes the evildoer into thinking that what he is doing is in his best interest when it probally isn't. That does nothing to change the motivation.
What they did would have been in their best interest if they hadn't been caught. That whole enron thing is probally the best example of my "Theory of Evil" at work.
Has anyone ever bought a bag of apples? And bit into one of them, and it was rotten to the core? Well. apparently the same laws that apply to nature, apply to us... and it seems like us to, can be rotten to the core....
Have you ever seen a person that was deformed on the exterior? Does it seen so far fetched that a person could be born deformed on the interior??????
Take care
Have you ever seen a person that was deformed on the exterior? Does it seen so far fetched that a person could be born deformed on the interior??????
Take care