Evil

Raven

You sound unsure... Occam thinks some are but most 'choose' this path.
This path is what occam calls evil. It has nothing to do with religion or hell or any such caca.It is a path chosen.. for ALL thinking beings have choice.
NONE are forced to act. they choose to act.
Nurture does have significant impact. [unless there is NO contact with humanity]
But nature. and our reason and choice. must be the key.
For they are what make morality and consequence

The 'act' is evil... and disenherits one of rights as a human being.
The father of that child would be justified in destroying the murderer of his child without social consequence [ but applause]
We must draw the line somewhere.
Or do you suggest we call cancer 'a helpless victim of circumstance' and
stop all reseach against it...Poor cancer.. it could be so much more if we gave it a helping hand.

Premeditated murder[1] now draws only a few decades then they are free.
Yet took anothers irreplacable life.
WE MAKE FAIRNESS/MORALITY.

It is not a case of black and white. there is no black and white.
Black and white are absolutes and they are EXTEMELY FEW and applicabable only to reality itself.

There are only acts , and if those acts destroy what cannot be replaced.. what was unique, And the act was by one who chose to perform it.
The 'reason' says. Humanity is beter of without that individual.
If that is intollerable to you.
then why dont u try to save the thousands of children that die each day from sheer neglect. Easier to speak about the abused.. than about the
forgotten?

Occam

 

Oh I always sound unsure. That's just the way I talk and goes along with my philosophy to never rule anything out. I like to keep an open mind to everything because I never believe in an "always" or "absolute".

Indeed but my definition of Evil = compleatly bad. I feel the word Evil is one of those words that goes along with black and white, since it is so condeming.

Yes ultimately they do choose to act. It's still something wrong no matter what the person history is and I don't think that they should be "let go" or "saved". I'm not saying just because someone does that they should be dissmissed. The child absuse / mental problem is a reason NOT an excuse.

I still don't feel that this person should be considered evil though. I find that it's very important to understand other people even if you don't agree with their views at all (in the case of a killer hurting people). If you are able to learn from them, then maybe through study you can be able to stop it before it happens. Like being able to identify sypmtoms of a killer's persona and put people in theropy BEFORE they even commit the crime. Then you're helping everyone. Instead of killing them or locking them up forever and nothing will ever change.

Yes, but no amont of time they sit in jail will ever bring them back. If jail has been a lesson to them and they will never commit the crime again than jail has done it's job. Jail isn't about the victim's revenge, it's about reforming people back into society.

Fairness and morality are about society's rules. I feel that they don't have anything to do with being evil or not. Evil and not following morals is two differnt things in my book.

Humanity created that individual and I believe it's humanity that should be the one to fix it. If society continues to ignore and condem those indviduals nothing changes. The same violent crimes continue on, because soceity refuses to help them and just casts them away without thinking about how to get to the root source. The individual is still human. They are not evil, for no human is ever evil.

Neglect is also a form of abuse. Abuse does not always = physical hitting. Abuse has many forms: physical, neglect, emotional... There are three aspects to it and all are just as harsh as the next and will all cause severe damage.

 

Raven

Occam understands where u are comming from.
99% of murder would cease to be if society and parents did not wish to promote ignorance and manipulative behaviour.
But they do.

Murderers are the price society pays for it's stupidity and short sightedness
We dont need to study the ones that are.
we need to prevent they ones that will be.
By providing a society where educated and peacefull rational beings would never contemplate killing.

In our world.. nurture provides to some an intollerable situation where they 'decide' to say.. fuck this. i care no longer about society.. it is shit.
[Or withdraw.. another choice.]
And they take it out on sociery.. by killing that which makes it..people.
Yes..sometimes with some people there is little choice.
But mostly.. there IS choice. We are not deterministic machines.

The killers are but an effect.
The cause.. is our immature and self centered society that places appearance before substance and money before human inherent rights.

Occam

 

there is no true evil... its a point of view thing. one person may see themself as right, and good, whereas another person may see that persons beliefs as being bad. i think some religiouse people are bad because they try to convey their message so strongly, even if someone else is set on their state of mind and does not want to convert. i view this as evil to some extent, because it is not accepting and respecting anohters view point. from the religiouse persons view though, they are trying to "save" the other persons soul or something like that. so it all depends on wich side you are on, and what you own personal ideas are.

 

Freedom

Agreed.. any act can subjectively be called anything at all.
That is a fine intellectual position.

But if u get butchered by some 'psuedo-evil' chap who sees u
a nothing but a pleasant interlude.
What then?

do you say...OH he had his reasons?

no. you say nothing, your dead

lol

Occam

 

Occam would like to introduce an idea

That while morality is human thing, a relation of human action.
There is at least one moral action that all humans agree as being 'evil'

Who here thinks the rape and murder of a child is not an act of evil.
None?
Agreed.

Thus while morality is relative. There are certain acts that are not.
For all** agree that they are the most destructive of moral and 'rational' acts.
Both to the individual [the victim] and human society.

What does this reveal.?

That most human beings are not capable of making rational moral judgements aside from the most fundamental.
They are as ignorant of moral understanding as they are of all other understanding. And that ignorance is huge.
So they use morality to gain what they want. Its negotiable. And thus.
it must be relative.
Which fits exactly with the world we live in. Ignorant.

Occam

** except non-humans

 

evil is a word

bennifit and harm exist

nontangable forces and beings i have not observed in the act of being coercive,
for good or ill, though they might well clearly possess preferences.

what influences people for better or worse are incentives
and those are created
statisticly and collectively
by the priorities we actualy live by

and not on the basis of arbitrary presumptions about them either

there is a natural morality:
and that is to avoid causing harm.
it is a natural morality, and the only observable natural morality,
because the more harm that is caused,
however justifiable the excuse,
the greater the probability, frequency, and severity, of suffering.

=^^=
.../\...

 

Occam is a very intelligent and wise soul, as are all that have posted here on this topic. I agree with nearly all of Occam's views and can add little to each. I doubt that we need three all incompassing rules...one will do and all though i am not a practicing christian the one rule that comes the closest is "do unto others..."

I don't want to muddy the debate but one point set me on a path...and that was the universality of the murder of a child. I guess it only applies if the child has been pushed through a vagina first. I see both sides of that argument and don't want it to be the center of this debate I just want to use that point to illustrate the grayness of even that argument. There just are not very many absolutes. Killing another human? What if the person asks you to do this due to intractible pain or terminal illness?
The universe is truely neutral. Positive and negative are human inventions as are hot and cold, beauty and ugliness, atc.I fear that if we start taking too many folks off the extreme edge of the sociatal bell curve that the defining extreme will slowly move closer and closer to the narrow peak in the middle and then who is to say what "extreme" is then?
Killing and murder has always been with us. The bones of peking man found in china showed signs of having been butchered and cooked. If our nearest relatives the chimps are any bellweather then their violent society shows that that behavior is deeply seated indeed.
I do like occams call to fewer rules (3 or 1). we have too many rules and most of the folks in prison are there for really stupid violations of really stupid laws. Save the prisons for the really basd SOB's and let the junkies and pot heads go back home.
By the way, prisons are there to PUNISH criminals...that is what the law says, however when ask what he thought of the white man's prisons one chief of the plains Indians responded..."funny, we didn't need your prisons until you showed up with your laws."

 

How can killing a child not be pure evil? It's an innocent

 

The dynamics of our psycho-energy is a force that in certain un-balanced yet natural circumstances will lead to patterns of behavior that fear-driven ignorance will call evil.

Evil is a crude pejorative definition of behavioral patterns used by the fearful to crudely control that behavior without understanding the underlying psycho-dynamic physics of that behavior.

 

m6m

In an ignorant world..
A 'a crude pejorative definition' is the one best understood.

You dont attempt to analyse evil.
Any human knows what it is..in ourselves.
You remove fear and ignorance.
Evil will cease to be.

Occam

 

i don't believe in pure good or evil, i mean lets look at it this way, ok the 911 attack, they killed a shitload of people, but oh wait, some of the dead people could have been christians and went to heaven, or at least they made us more up to date on the terrorists and try to find them. Its all ignorance really, i mean if people would follow their inside, consciousness(sp?) it would all be okay, but instead we need some religion to tell right or wrong and how to live our lifes.

 

Evil, as also is anger, violence, etc., is just a symptom of fear. Fear is too personal and vulnerable a thing for many of us to dare express. Instead, hate, evil, etc., are substituted.

 

BG13

Agree

Occam

 

When they are not aware of the bad things they do, people would blame the evil forces. It's a way of avoiding to take responsibility for their acts. We all have a dark side.

 

I didn't know what I was doing. I was out of control. I couldn't stop. Something came over me. I lost my temper. I flew into a rage. He made me so angry... etc.
I agree.
We often try to pass the buck, but as Truman said, 'The buck stops here.'
It is tempting to shift the onus, place the blame, or avoid taking responsibility when one has done something bad. But, in my view, you are right, and we all are capable of evil. No one makes us angry. Contrary to what most people believe, we choose to be angry. Why would anyone allow another person, especially an adversary, to control their emotions? They don't. But they may think that they do. Sadness, depression, happiness, anger, etc. are all choices, they are action verbs, not states of being, and they are expressed pretty much how we have chosen them to be.
I don't agree with the 'human nature is evil' camp, though. I feel we likely start out sincerely intending to be good people, or at the least we are neutral. But, as we grow, sometimes our life experiences are such that we choose to change our aims, and we experiment with evil. Harming others for ones own gain can appear to be quite beneficial. It may be so, but I prefer to see people as being my equals, worthy of being treated as I would be happy to be treated.