What essentially is Good and Evil?

[ascanius]

@ starconstant. You got the wrong quotes there. FYI. But it still begs the question of the need to justify the act. You don't justify a good act, no one does. We justify something when we think it is wrong. They can think it necessary or feel they have a reason but if they feel the need to justify it they feel guilt towards it, thus making the action wrong/evil whatever. to justify something is to prove that they should be excused for that action, absolved. I'm sure all of would agree that killing is wrong, I hope. If I kill someone it is wrong, if I justify it by saying that I did it because he was breaking in my house to kill my family then it is excused as being just. the act is still wrong but deemed necessary.

 

[Kelise]

Ahh, fixed, thanks for that

I agree with most of what you say, but would add that we need to justify any great act, whether it be good or evil. To kill is a great act of evil, but justified as you say, as self protection or that of your family.

You would also need to justify why you, say, give $100,000 to someone. Is it because that figure is nothing to you because you're a millionaire? Because they did the same for you when you were poor and now in turn, you're repaying or saving them when they've fallen on hard times?

So I would say that yes, you do need to justify good acts once they're to the same level as the bad act of killing someone, otherwise everyone wants to know why you've done that and think you're up to something, or think you're being suspicious.

 

[Queshire]

yes, you do justify good acts. You have to justify to some point any act you do. Otherwise you wouldn't do the act! The question becomes then, what it takes to justify any act and how much time it takes to justify an act. A good act tends to be easy to justify to the point that it can be done subconciously, but it still has to be justified.

 

[Caliburn]

Our modern distinction of good and evil is rooted in the history of civilisations, which were founded in conditions of scarcity.
Early "civilised" humans saw themselves as struggling to compete against the forces of nature, which were both aiding and impeding their ability to survive. Environmental conditions meant that people needed to organise themselves efficiently, requiring simple and clear distinctions between what to do and what not to do that could not be easily confused.

Tribes living in situations of abundance, however, had a very different outlook on life. They did not necessarily see themselves as having to conquer or overcome the limitations of the natural world, because it provided them with everything they needed.
Their perception of good and evil might have been less stringent and more egalitarian? I'm not sure.

Thing is though, if environmental conditions were to suddenly change--as they have done so frequently throughout Earth's history--tribes living in idle abundance would have been much worse off than the people who had already formed civilisations and the tools necessary to adapt to changing environments. Earth's history is littered with examples of animal species that have lived abundantly in a small period of time--being perfectly suited to their current situation--only to be wiped out entirely after failing to adapt when environmental conditions eventually changed.

So perhaps civilisation has that going for it? Or perhaps it is just as liable to become extinct as anything else.

Might seem strange that I am talking about civilisation here, but I think its important as I think our notion of good and evil is fundamentally linked to the concept of civilisation, hence understanding why civilisations came about is the key to understanding why we have our specific notion of good and evil in the first place.

All groups tend to have rules though--even among non-human animals. To me, rules simply distinguish those things which are allowed by the group ("pro-social") from those things that are disallowed ("anti-social"). In this sense, good vs evil is relative to the group in which its meaning is constructed. Things that are allowed and encouraged by the group are things that seem to benefit the group's survival, prosperity and/or group cohesion and trust, while the greatest scorn is often reserved for those things which damage the group's sense of kinship--things like betrayal.

 

[Hans]

I'm sure all of would agree that killing is wrong, I hope. If I kill someone it is wrong, if I justify it by saying that I did it because he was breaking in my house to kill my family then it is excused as being just. the act is still wrong but deemed necessary.

And even so in a lot of human history and even in modern fiction killing your enemy or someone deemed as "evil" is regarded a "good" thing and needs no further justification.
Killing someone for the sole reason that he is on the wrong side of a battlefield never matters at all.

 

[Anders Ämting]

I generally don't use good and evil as literal concepts within the story - my villains tend to be powerful people with little or no empathy, who simply want something specific very badly and do not care about people who get in the way.

That said, I like to keep my heroes recognizably benevolent and my villains recognizably malevolent

 

[gavintonks]

good question
good is creation - a living body
bad is the unbinding of creation - the putrefaction to reduce a dead body back to its elements
Most good and bad emanate from the zorastam religion where concepts are personified
so by experience emotion like greed, hate etc you create a negative bad entity
by thinking good thoughts you do the same
the basic principles exist as storm entities bad / destructive and destroying - good - gentle rain makes stuff grow

 

[Mindfire]

When it comes to this, I tend to appeal to the Judeo-Christian viewpoint, even in my writing. That paradigm makes the most objective sense to me. There's an interesting article about that online here. I find the writer's argument to be interesting and I agree with him somewhat, but I also find the argument to be flawed.

I think of good and evil as moral absolutes that do exist. Relativism can be self-defeating if allowed to go too far. In my opinion there need to be unchanging, absolute, and objective standards of right and wrong. The trouble is that because of our human narrow-mindedness, our perception of those absolutes is colored by our personal and cultural biases. It's like light seen through a filter. You see blue light, I see red light, but in reality the source is giving off white light. There is an absolute white light out there, but our personal biases are getting in the way of us seeing it.

In general, good tends to promote harmony and evil tends to be disruptive, but that's not a hard-and-fast definition AT ALL. We small minded humans tend to get "the greater good" confused with "my greater good" quite a bit.

 

[Anders Ämting]

I'm sure all of would agree that killing is wrong, I hope. If I kill someone it is wrong, if I justify it by saying that I did it because he was breaking in my house to kill my family then it is excused as being just. the act is still wrong but deemed necessary.

I would say that killing is always regretable -something any sensible person will want to avoid if at all possible- but not necessarily wrong, as in "the wrong thing to do." It ultimately comes down to intent.

For example, killing an innocent man because you want his shoes is obviously an evil act, whereas killing a clearly genocidal man to stop him from committing mass murder is a righteous act.

The ideal is of course that nobody has to die at all, but the world is not always ideal. Obviously we can't weigh one human life against another - we can't say that one man deserves to live while another man deserves to die, because life is a right rather than a privelige. But we can evaluate the intent and outcome of a person's actions and then determine if they are blameworthy.

And even so in a lot of human history and even in modern fiction killing your enemy or someone deemed as "evil" is regarded a "good" thing and needs no further justification.
Killing someone for the sole reason that he is on the wrong side of a battlefield never matters at all.

That is because a soldier must believe that he fights for a just cause and accept that he will be required to kill and possibly be killed in return for the sake of that cause.

CS Lewis fought in the trenches of World War I, one of the most horrible conflicts in human history, and he later wrote: "I have often thought to myself how it would have been if, when I served in the First World War, I and some young German had killed each other simultaneously and found ourselves together a moment after death. I cannot imagine that either of us would have felt any resentment or even any embarrassment. I think we might have laughed over it."

 

[Justme]

Why does a single source matter? reference to the devil? Or do you mean that evil is when someone/something takes from another such as theft? Then by that definition infants/children are inherently evil. Also if it is about reducing freedom then any and all government is evil along with any and all society. The restriction of freedom cannot be used as a measure of evil because then it would mean that if there is no restriction of freedom, anarchy, there is no evil even when someone does terrible things because they can. Utilitarianism is popular simply because it is expedient, well at least how I see it.

I believe evil is the intentional disregard for human life, dignity and property they possess. As we look back in history, how many examples are there of power hungry individuals or institutions that have forced their will on others for the ultimate goal of controlling them. What religion, what state has not at one time or the other done this for the express purpose of acquiring more power? This is what I mean by a single source, since ultimately a single entity acquires total sovereignty over those they concur. Your statement about children is off base, sense they aren't fully aware of what such actions mean.

As far as anarchy goes, wouldn't total loss of order restrict the weak and frail in our society to places which they deem safe. What is Anarchy anyway. Is it that total lack of laws or the lack of accountability of those who are sworn to uphold those laws. Example: If a policeman steals, is he a policeman or a thug with a badge?

As others have pointed out careful, this definition is very dangerous, Hitler, ring a bell. Utilitarianism and John Stewart Mill, essentially what you are saying, is spurious. The "aught clause," he asserted that People act this way instead of aught to act that way. semantics, maybe, but terrible acts have been done by those averring they are doing it for the greater good. NO ONE does anything to benefit the greater good, they look out after themselves. Altruism doesn't exist, except for a possible few cases.

read my statement above.

Sorry but this statement really, really bugs me, pet peeve. First America is NOT, nor ever was a democracy. Democracy was a failure, the only time it ever worked was when Athens was under iminent threat from a foreign power and Athens was a true democracy. Polybius gives a very nice description of democracy likening it to a ship where all the sailors are the captain. The USA is a constitutional republic which is entirely different.

I don't care about politics. If you disagree with me on this, then I'm happy for you. My statement was a side thought in the first place. Sorry to have upset you!

First what do you mean by backwards? there needs to be a forward, which is?, for there to be a backward. Second it sounds like you have a problem with connotation that you do not want to include in the story. I've had that problem but my question is are you looking to redefine good and evil in your story? If that is the case then your best bet would be to do it through the cultures in your story, how people view things about themselves and the world.

Backwards, meaning the Biblical ideal and ideals about Good and Evil. They have been run into the ground at nearly evey discussion and debate site I've ever belonged to. The attitudes that one finds in religious texts are too cut and dry and have been the references for a good portion of the ridicule and suppression of far too many other peoples rights.

You might want to read some philosophy such as Aristotle, Kant, Mill, Nietzsche and countless others. They'll give good information on morals and various arguments for and against them. Kant is particularly interesting with his assertion that Duty is the defining moral value of right and wrong. Nietzsche, cannot remember which of his writings, gives a very nice history of moral values.

I will read what you suggest. I never bypass something that might give me a better understanding of humanity.

So if someone can justify their acts does that make the act not evil? If the act is not evil....well then things get interesting. Or does it just make it acceptable. If it makes it acceptable then how that act is viewed does not matter the act would still be evil. Having to justify an act confers an intrinsic evil, if it was not so then no justification is necessary. You don't justify a just/good act.

Do you mean justify or do you mean rationalize what they have done to place their act in a better light. People justify everything they do. It is part and parcel of the thought process. You buy a present that you really can't afford for the wife you married, when your anniversary comes around. Is it not the event that justifies the expenditure? Is that good or evil?

You can say the same for the idea that morality is personal and subject only to the individual. I think a more precise explanation is simply people are stupid.

Define stupid. Is it a lack of knowledge or a lack of understanding how to use that knowledge. I've found that there are very few really stupid people on the world. I've witnessed stunningly insightful statements by those that are considered slow by others around me and I've seen the smartest people I know turn into blithering idiots when ideology is introduced in the mix.

Example: I had a conservative friend, who was a Mensa member die from Cancer, because he refused to use Medicare when he had been ill for a very long time. One day I received a call from his room mate that they found out too late he had Cancer and he died, before they could do anything. I miss my friend. He taught me a lot about things and is responsible for my admiration for intellectuals. The one thing that I can not abide are those that use their intellect to degrade, without reason those they feel less astute as they.

I despise arrogance, but those who are attacked because of their intellect and smartly dispatch some snotty remark without resorting to nastiness is justified and quite humorous, to boot.

 

[Steerpike]

Backwards, meaning the Biblical ideal and ideals about Good and Evil. They have been run into the ground at nearly evey discussion and debate site I've ever belonged to.

This is purely subjective and probably puts you in the minority in terms of viewpoints worldwide. I mention this only because you said you want to diffuse the better part of the objection to your approach, but the approach you want to take doesn't seem to be consistent with that.

Also, I should add that philosophical debate and discussion often comes down to a group of like-minded individuals reinforcing each other's beliefs (at least, that has been my experience, where like minds gravitate toward one another to discuss such issues). The fact that these debates have driven a viewpoint into the ground is really meaningless on a topic like this, where ultimately there is no more hard evidence to support one side or another.

 

[Aidan of the tavern]

I think that the root of good and bad is founded mostly on our personal values, and what we place to be more important. If the majority of people agree that something is done for the sake of something more important then it would seem that it would be either justified or at least spared the label of "evil".

For instance, a guy goes into a old man's house and kills him, I think we would all agree that it would be a pretty evil act. But a guy goes into the old man's house and kill's him to prevent him detonating a bomb (with no time to call the police or anything), we still think its a grisly thing, but it saves people. The old man has a mental condition and as far as he's aware is doing something justifiable. The intruder isn't doing anything differently, but it comes down to what we deem to be more important, killing a man, or letting many people die.

As you can tell I'm crap at examples, but I think you get the idea.

 

[Steerpike]

The intruder isn't doing anything differently, but it comes down to what we deem to be more important, killing a man, or letting many people die.

Yeah, but you can't always do that kind of pure numbers analysis. Take this hypothetical:

Guy has bomb in unknown location. Detonating it will kill thousands of people. Guy won't detonate bomb if you take the gun you've just been handed and shoot the three year old little girl in front of you. For purposes of the hypothetical, assume there is no way to get to the bomb before it goes off, and also that if the little girl dies it will NOT go off.

I say if you shoot the girl, that's evil.

If you run the numbers only, it tells you to shoot her.

 

[Aidan of the tavern]

Yeah, but you can't always do that kind of pure numbers analysis. Take this hypothetical:

Guy has bomb in unknown location. Detonating it will kill thousands of people. Guy won't detonate bomb if you take the gun you've just been handed and shoot the three year old little girl in front of you. For purposes of the hypothetical, assume there is no way to get to the bomb before it goes off, and also that if the little girl dies it will NOT go off.

I say if you shoot the girl, that's evil.

If you run the numbers only, it tells you to shoot her.

I agree, but It's how society views the incident that would probably bring the lasting verdict for good/evil. No doubt the opinions of society would be hugely polarized, so in the end it would come down to which society (which naturally consists of the majority, not everyone) would place to be more important, 1000+ lives or the girl.

 

[Steerpike]

I agree, but It's how society views the incident that would probably bring the lasting verdict for good/evil. No doubt the opinions of society would be hugely polarized, so in the end it would come down to which society (which naturally consists of the majority, not everyone) would place to be more important, 1000+ lives or the girl.

But in my view, it is evil whether or not any single person in society agrees that it is

 

[Justme]

The Biblical understanding is still stereotypical and as such is antiquated i guess I lack the words to explain fully my reasoning on what I'm trying, so I will cease trying. I guess I'm confusing people and that isn't what I wanted and frankly you guess don't deserve the headaches. Believe me, this is not the first time I did this to a forum and it, unfortunately won't be the last. I hate this, and I kick myself in the head, every time I do. Sorry man! I will continue the debate though because I think it's going well. I'm just going to figure out my own issues and leave you folks be. Thank you for your help, though. I appropriate it. thank you.

 

[Aidan of the tavern]

But in my view, it is evil whether or not any single person in society agrees that it is

Exactly! I think we all understand that the majority doesn't make something right to us, because of course right and wrong is not something someone else can ever decide for us. It is about what you deem to be right, not me, not the world, it is for you to decide. Or at least thats what I think.

 

[Steerpike]

The Biblical understanding is still stereotypical and as such is antiquated i guess I lack the words to explain fully my reasoning on what I'm trying, so I will cease trying. I guess I'm confusing people and that isn't what I wanted and frankly you guess don't deserve the headaches. Believe me, this is not the first time I did this to a forum and it, unfortunately won't be the last. I hate this, and I kick myself in the head, every time I do. Sorry man! I will continue the debate though because I think it's going well. I'm just going to figure out my own issues and leave you folks be. Thank you for your help, though. I appropriate it. thank you.

You're not confusing me, I think you've expressed yourself just fine In fact, my own viewpoint is probably closer to yours. I'm not a religious person. But I do think that the viewpoint religious people hold is just as valid. As you argue the case back on either side you end up at the same point, with neither side able to offer more in terms of a proof. The religious viewpoint may seem antiquated because it is been around so long, but that doesn't make it any less valid, and as I said above it is the viewpoint that seems to be held by the majority of people on the planet. I think it is important for people with varying perspectives on this to all realize that those who differ have valid viewpoints.

 

[Steerpike]

Exactly! I think we all understand that the majority doesn't make something right to us, because of course right and wrong is not something someone else can ever decide for us. It is about what you deem to be right, not me, not the world, it is for you to decide. Or at least thats what I think.

Yeah, I think this is true for the most part, if I'm following you correctly. But I tend to pull back from the idea that this is purely subjective. My viewpoint on the hypothetical above is that it is inherently evil to shoot the little girl; if another person feels that for them it is not evil to do so, then my view is that this person is wrong

 

[Aidan of the tavern]

Yeah, I think this is true for the most part, if I'm following you correctly. But I tend to pull back from the idea that this is purely subjective. My viewpoint on the hypothetical above is that it is inherently evil to shoot the little girl; if another person feels that for them it is not evil to do so, then my view is that this person is wrong

I don't know if I followed myself correctly, but I think what I meant was that like many things it is personal opinion, something we all have the right to. Wow, I've learnt a lot today.

The Biblical understanding is still stereotypical and as such is antiquated i guess I lack the words to explain fully my reasoning on what I'm trying, so I will cease trying. I guess I'm confusing people and that isn't what I wanted and frankly you guess don't deserve the headaches. Believe me, this is not the first time I did this to a forum and it, unfortunately won't be the last. I hate this, and I kick myself in the head, every time I do. Sorry man! I will continue the debate though because I think it's going well. I'm just going to figure out my own issues and leave you folks be. Thank you for your help, though. I appropriate it. thank you.

Please don't apologize, you certainly haven't given me a headache, you've made me think, question what I've taken for granted, that can never be a bad thing. This is what always happens when you get a bunch of writers together and ask questions like this, its just a friendly debate.