I'd be lying if I didn't agree with that. I used to work for the prison system and although I found many inmates to be good people at heart, I ran across a variety of cases where I found myself saying, "That's Evil," with great conviction. It'll try to clarify based on my experience. In my opinion there's two types of behavior that boarders on evil, but aren't. The first is "Twisted" where you know better but are bitter and act out in a nasty way. That would be the guy who smashed his ex-girlfriends car window because she broke up with him. The second is "Perverse" where you do things to hurt people but truly believe it's a good idea. My impression of true evil is when a person greatly enjoys going things that have a negative effect on human or animal life. If you enjoy cutting weeds in your yard, you don't qualify. Also, I believe if one's perversities are so extensive that they're like a machine of destruction, no matter their knowledge of it, they are a type of evil being. With that said, I still don't believe in straight up evil, but I believe in "virtual evil" where people can reach 99% of the definition.
Well, that was sorta my case. Absolute morality is a metaphysical concept. Metaphysics are by definition outside of reality and as such, pure speculation. In metaphysics, evil can be a noun and referred to as a supernatural force. That doesn't mean it exists. In the same dictionary you'll find angels and vampires. It means nothing.
Oooo... I just re-read my last post on this thread, and it was slightly trippy. I've been having a really bad week. It's made me irate and prone to posting insulting messages, as well as boosting my powers of philosophy into nearly godlike levels. It's also made me have really depressing dreams; I mean the kind where you have the one thing you want in the dream, then you wake up and realize it's nowhere to be found. Combine that with having like five different high-school projects and essays due just today, on top of Christmas in a couple days (which I hate!) and I'm rather snippy at the moment. Like I said, I think this made my last post very... shall we say, unusual? It also made me get into a battle royale with avianmosquito, which is really unfortunate, because he's an atheist as well and really could have helped out this argument.
To comment on Allegro's prison guard good/evil post: Someone with a "good heart" can still be evil in given situations. For example, look at Nazi Germany. The individual SS officers, concentration camp employees etc were just "doing their jobs," and not the ones who implemented the policies, but what happened was evil. Likewise, people in the Millgram electoshock experiment were "just following orders" and were horrified with they got debriefed -- needless to say, it's still evil to compromise your individual sense of right/wrong just because someone in authority tells you to. Not to say that those people can't change or are marked to be evil for life, of course, but you can't just pin evil on the "pure blackhearted" people, because it's "average Joe" types who allow it to happen.
I was a psych specialist in prison, just to clarify. I'd count both the Nazis and the Millgram subjects as having a "perversion" as I talked about before. In Germany, the famous author Herman Hesse disagreed, while the great Existenialist Martin Heidegger supported the Nazis against Jews based on his ideas that being religious was not life affirming, not authentic. That means a person doesn't determine their own values but has them "injected" into their
I was a psych specialist in prison, just to clarify. I'd count both the Nazis and the Millgram subjects as having a "perversion" as I talked about before. In Germany, the famous author Herman Hesse disagreed, while the great Existenialist Martin Heidegger supported the Nazis against Jews based on his ideas that being religious was not life affirming, not authentic. That means a person doesn't determine their own values but has them "injected" into their minds, thus making them a type of robot with false programming. I've also read a lot of source material from Germany at the time and just before and Germans thought they were saving the world. That to me is perversion rather than evil because the people couldn't see that murder and destruction is not a way to improve anything and can lead to self-destruction, which it did. Also, Martin Luther, Germany was mostly Lutheran, wrote a book called "On the Jews", I believe, and he detailed most events of the Holocaust including smashing all of their businesses and putting them in work camps to "retrain" them. That was hundreds of years before the 1930s. So, German for generations grew up with ideas conditioning them to act against other living beings, and again that's perversity to me. On a side note, I got into psychology as result of seeing the TV miniseries "The Holocaust" as a kid. I was outraged and determined to figure out what makes people insane and how to defuse it.
Okay, I guess you are right in that it is perversion and not evil if they honestly think deep down that what they are doing is good. Bad example on my part. What I was trying to express, though, was that a "good-hearted," "average Joe" etc can be evil if he/she knows a policy or act is wrong but engages in it anyways with the belief of "it's not MY responsibility."
It wasn't a bad example because Nazis are commonly thought to be evil, rather than conditioned to be mistaken! That doesn't make for good action movies. Take that, you conditioned to be mistaken guy!!! I do agree that people can be generally good and then find themselves doing something rotten and enjoying it.
or even if they don't enjoy it. I'm talking about regular people who know something is wrong and feel squeamish doing it but they do it anyways, justifying it by saying it's not their responsibility. That is evil, especially as it's often that mindset that allows large-scale atrocities to happen.
It is because in that case, they know it's their responisbility, but are pretending it's not. The Existentialist Sartre built a lot of his ideas off of the behavior in WWII. Basically, he said that if you want to have a life with some kind of meaning you have to take personaly responsibility for what YOU do, and YOU aren't a country of a race, but an individual unit who must decide what path to follow. I agree.
