Malice

I do not like the word ‘malice’ here any more… perhaps ambivalence, or ignorance, or innocence, work better. Malice might be the end-result of this perspective “at play”, but it is not strictly speaking (or necessarily) an intent. One must retain a degree of naivete with respect to the malicious consequence/s which one causes or may cause, else one will lose this innocent nature into suffering (regret).

Malicious is what is “chaotic” from another’s perspective. By definition, then, most humans are malicious, chaotic toward each other …Every human chaotically affects other humans it comes into contact with… Love then could be interpreted here as a will toward a reduction of malice/chaos through increasing a mutual understanding and thus a control of the various ways in which two people do or potentially will influence each other.

. . .

Possession of “malice”, as in the child-at-play who acts maliciously even without malicious intent, or perhaps even with malicious intent, could be an early naivete that must be “broken” in order to become, at first, the regret/suffering of awareness and an understanding of one’s responsibility (power) toward others, and then later, as this suffering is subsequently broken apart, one becomes free to act maliciously as needed with respect to certain needs, goals or ends. At first this “as needed” is served merely by the flexing and expressing of this new power itself, its coming into itself (this may be and often is mis-interpreted as a mere regression to a pre-refined maliciousness of intent). Later, as this power matures and continues to be refined, a new space for compassion and restraint opens up and begins to delimit the malicious power which has grown more suceptible to conscious recognition and is able to be put more directly to use serving one’s ends. At this point, the value of compassion “for its own sake” naturally trumps that of maliciousness “for its own sake”, but the latter is able, if needed, to over-value the first given certain situational demands. This would be an applied malice, which perhaps would take on a form of ambivalence in order to be capable of manifesting its effects/consequences in light of the otherwise compassionate limitation/s of (a higher acculturated) conscious being. Later still, I would imagine that it would be possible to apply controlled malice consciously without utilizing a form of ambivalence or ignorance; this would become possible once one’s compassion has attained a similarly refined (self-conscious,controlled) form.

Well this makes a lot of sense. Seemingly good advice for both those who withhold their more negative emotions as well as for those who overwhelm others indiscriminately with a puffed up show malice and frustration.

I find that when I am able to be genuine with others (i.e. neither exaggerating for effect nor suppressing a major feeling) they feel more free to respond in kind.

“Malice” is something negative and especially something that create negative emotion/reaction in your judgmental perspective, most probably.
Apart from our (biologically, culturally, etc) conditioned mind and its perspectives, there is no malice, IMO.

But negative emotion/reaction often indicates what is blocking our view, energy flow, and so on, and thus it can be used as the sign post for freeing ourselves from such blocking.

However, we are conditioned, programed to run away and to escape from anything “negative” to us, by definition. So, using the sign post requires lots of practice, determination, and very delicate maneuver, on top of getting used to them.

Also, it’s usually more productive (for getting used to negatives) to mind our own business and forget about others, at least in the first place.
Bothering about others and trying to manipulate them (a.k.a trying to help others), can give us more information about our own stupid human nature, in some case, though.
Also, by trying to manipulate others, we will usually get lots of reactions from them that will produce negative emotion/reaction is us, in return.
So, it can be mean to encounter our own negatives.
However, even without any action, we are fully surrounded and saturated with all sort of negatives that I don’t think it’s necessary to obtain even more (and possibly of crude quality) negative emotion/reaction in us.

I think we learn to run, jump, and sharpen a spear when we keep company with lions. Call this “self-perception” if you want. The same thing goes on at the dinner table, in polite company.

How are you?
What do you do?

These are typical conversation openers. It’s not exactly hidden why they would be; it’s a straightfoward way of asking you for your strengths and weaknesses. And when you don’t like your own answers—you will exaggerate and lie without fail, or else pass the whole truth off as if it were only half. The questions that follow are always designed to detect just that. Do you think a stranger cares for you? No, of course not. And as for your family member, when he asks, he just wants to know what you contribute to the tribe. It’s embarrassing that we’re no more subtle than this.

“Playful” malice? What exactly is the distinction between malice “playful” or not. I think there may be none. Degrees, sure.

Suppose I tell a polite joke. You will smile. Funny how that is. …I’ve had an effect on you. I’ve made myself felt. Is it any wonder why you show your teeth? Why do you think creatures in the animal kingdom do show their teeth? You will show your teeth just when someone even looks at you. Degrees, perhaps. That’s all.

We’re creatures who’d prefer to hunt. By the way, I’m talking about polite conversations. And do you share polite jokes with someone who plays dead? You don’t even bother. Sure, in small doses, this is all good. How else are you going to learn to run, jump, and throw a spear? Call it “self-perception” if you want—it’s just licking your wound.

I am a river.

Children can be malicious in their play because they have no knowledge of any or all possible consequences:

I do, however, question the application of “controlled malice” in an adult world. Can you explain, please? My initial reaction to “controlled malice” is ‘bullying’–which really can’t (imm) have any beneficial outcomes, no matter what the “situational demands” may be. To me, compassion should always take precedence–or, at least, all possible, known consequences should be considered and evaluted before “controlled malice” is used. If compassion doesn’t over-rule “controlled malice,” any action would be taken, imm, with malice aforethought.

“Controlled malice” here means any time you act from a motivation that is less than totally compassionate toward another, less than totally oriented toward another’s needs or benefit. As I wrote, this often takes an initial form of ambivalence – malice, or a lack of compassion/caring will express as a disinterestedness, lack of concern, or neutrality toward another and his or her needs. This is “malicious” because it is less than totally compassionate, because it does not act in such a way to either work toward or even attempt to understand what is best, beneficial, helpful or good for others. This maliciousness then can be either more or less intended, which is to say naive or self-responsible. “Controlled” malice would be aiming more toward the latter end of that scale, toward a more intentional and rationally-directed maliciousness (e.g. ambivalence, neutrality or lack of concern for another).

Malice is acting in such a way that one’s intentions or actions are unbounded by the potential for harm these may cause another. Innocence then is “malicious” because it acts chaotically upon other people (and upon oneself). Innocence is not a “good will” nor good intention nor “excuse from self-responsibility” but rather is the lack of a guiding compassion and concern for another, this lack thus representing a failure of an otherwise compassion and concern to play a pre-scriptive and legislative role over one’s actions and intentions/motives. One is innocent, naive, or “playfully malicious” when one is quite simply unable to act in such a way that others are not harmed. This is what Nietzsche called the “playful innocence of the Child” (in Thus Spoke Zarathustra), its self-interestedness and the exclusion of any principle of compassion-care for others which would inform/infringe upon its motives and actions.

To be compassionate toward another is more than feeling a sympathetic response, it is taking direct, intentional action for the benefit of another. This action can express as actual behaviors or it can express on the level of thought or intention/motive. The absence of this action and/or of the capacity for it (which is to say, of the ability to be self-responsible and rationally conscious enough to envision one’s actions and their potential outcomes in advance) is what I choose to call here “malicious”.

None of that makes even the slightest bit of sense.

Your metaphor of hunting and competing in the wild is totally irrelevant here and is woefully inadequate to explain the civilized socialization of humans and our behaviors, thoughts or motives. Trying to reduce our behavior to “what primates do in the wild” or whatever is worse than useless.

Yes, this would represent what I call love, or the becoming-aware and able-to-be-informed-by of the potential needs/conditions of others in such a way that one’s own maliciousness (and subsequently, by relation, the maliciousness of others) is able to be reduced (i.e.there is a decrease in actual and potential chaos within the interpersonal relation/s).

If I ever catch myself saying something like, “I didn’t understand what you said, …oh, but it’s also worse than useless” —I would worry that I wasn’t even taking myself seriously.

And yes, why would anyone ever try to bring to bear our animal past to color our understanding of human behaviour in what ways it can! They’re sooo essentially different! We’re not an evolved pack animal with a past to study at all… No way, sir… How offensive indeed. I believe we came by special order carried by Storks.

Mo, no malice intended here but your new avatar is no where near as effective as the one projecting an impression of the Marlboro man epitomizing the rugged individual/cowboy sitting around the campfire out in the Badlands somewhere.

This new one looks like, well, Adrien Brody. Kinda mousey.

On the other hand, I don’t even know how to create one! :wink:

I actually agree with you here, a point at which Aletheia and myself find ourselves at odds often enough–though I hope sans animosity. To attempt to understand such an intricate social body as we inhabit with no regard to how it came about is…well, myopic at best. The stark contrast of baring the fangs to the smile of human society warrants looking into and certainly implies a (now) more or less subtle malice. Anyone read about (or been in the company of) debutantes, parvenus, the bourgeoisie to high society in general (you know, the pretentious boners living in named manors) is more than familiar with the perfunctory nature of court civilities. Perhaps somewhere along the lines we began to believe the ruse. Observing the signification of the smile in culture at large metastasize over the years would be an interesting study.

Perhaps my insult to Mo was not clear enough. It is his reduction to “primitive animality”, not merely reference to it (e.g. of course we have an animal past, and of course this past has and still influences much of what we do/are), which is irrelevant here.

This exploration into the psychology of what I have called “malice” here is built upon such things as, for example, our animal past. The basic pathological drives are remnants of this past. What we experience as sentimental, passional, emotional reactions are derivatives of this basic “pleasure/pain” set-up of “instincts”. All that goes, or should go, without saying. My explorations here are subsequent to this, they take it all into account from the outset, they build upon it. So, the reduction of the sort of psychological responses and conscious functions which I am analyzing here to this instinctual set-up is, again, irrelevant.

We evolved, we are apes, we are animals. Yes yes, we get it. This is no big insight any more, no profound revelation. We shake hands because it is (i.e. arose because it led, in the past, to giving a distinct survival (social-structural) advantage) a display of passivity, yes yes. Now what?

Also interesting is the idiotic mis-construal of what I said, of “If I ever catch myself saying something like, “I didn’t understand what you said, …oh, but it’s also worse than useless””, when in fact what I stated was that what Mo said does not make sense. I did not state that I do not understand it. I understand it quite well, which is how I know it is irrelevant here.

Amusing how these simple little logical feats, like mentally construing a simple statement of clear meaning as it was written down, can remain so totally out of reach.

Math,

Continue with this person if you want; I can’t.

The point of my first post was to ask for a clarification, everything else there being a justification of why the clarification was needed. (Some nice writing. A few insights. All dressing for my question). This is clear from the post itself. I’m not sure why aletheia’s insult was needed, or why the follow-up seemed so incoherent. And btw, imagine the absurdity of someone now claiming to have understood what also did not make sense. It’d be hilarious if it wasn’t a waste of my post. I mean, the claim to have understood something that did also not make sense!

Hark at the wind.

And how might you know something “made no sense”, or was “irrelevant”, unless you understood it?

The equivalent of what you did: I say, “We have all these complex psychological drives, they work together in such-and-such a way, this is a result of that, which has led to this over here… that instinct tends to manifest like this, when it is … but like that when it is rather … etc. etc. etc.”, to which you reply, “We were primates once.”

I mean, really. I know you can do better.

Your “comments” might not even have been in reference to my post here, you touch on none of the content. Nor do your subsequent replies touch on any of the content of my own continuing replies to you. Like I said, it is truly fascinating to see a mind slide away like that, escape so naturally and totally into delusion, into irrelevance.

You’ve turned idiocy into quite an art. You ought be proud.

Now, if you wish to actually address the substance of my post here, by all means, go right ahead. But a hint: the whole “we are animals, we have evolved combat and hunting instincts, our social behavior derives from animality” is always-already implied within what I’ve said here, so if that is what you really want to focus on – if you’d rather look back than forward, or hell, even look back rather than at the present – at least try to meaningfully draw that out in light of the topic here. At least make some effort.

I know you can do it.

The point of my post was to ask you for a clarification and expanded explanation. This makes your ensuing comments about my not addressing your post not only ridi… Anyways, here’s what I wrote:

AND EVERYTHING I SAID was was to bolster the need for a further explanation on your part. After your comments, I’m afraid I have no interest in hearing it. And besides, you may have already agreed with me that “playful malice” is borderline an oxymoron.

LOL. How would you know something made no sense unless you couldn’t understand it? If you understood it, then guess what? --It makes fucking sense.

I have? I should?

Thank you for your explanation and definitions. Using ‘playful’ as an adjective modifying ‘malicious’ is putting opposites together–like “beautiful ugliness” (although it’s easier for me to understand the latter than the former.) Perhaps that’s why I have trouble with Nietzsche.

If you don’t mind, I’d like to paraphrase your next paragraph just to see if I understand it correctly.

When someone acts maliciously, they sometimes do so because they don’t recognize the potential for harm their actions may cause another–the result of the action is unpredictable (chaotic) because it’s unknown. Because ‘innocence’ has no understanding of consequence, an ‘innocent’ cannot have either compassion or concern for another–nor can an ‘innocent’ keep himself from unwitting malice. Nietzsche called this the “playful innocence of the Child” in Also Sprach Zarathrustra, meaning–(and here’s where I have a problem. You say “its” with the antecedent being the child. It could also be “it’s”–it is–with the antecedent being the child’s innocence.) Which do you mean?

Now I’ll use my own words. I agree, compassion is more than either sympathy or empathy–or a combination of both. Compassion means trying to help the person in need as well as you can. Now I’ll come back to malice. People are malicious when they are fully aware that what they do will hurt someone else, but they do it anyway. For example, this often entails a whisper of truth, half-truth or non-truth meant to denigrate. If the whisper is made to another person who feel’s as you do, it’ll be passed on. One homophobe can go to another homophobe and say pretty much anything about a third person and be believed. People who do things like that aren’t innocent nor are they being ‘playfully malicious.’ They’re just spitefully mean!

There are multitudinous reasons for being spitefully mean and all of them, imm, stem from fear.

However, if I’m incorrect in my understanding of you words, please correct me. I have no desire to derail your thread. (Although I do admit to hoping to derail mo’s rather tedious arguments.)

Let me try this another way, as I have two main objections.

I) I wonder why you feel the ‘negative’ emotions substantiate your existence as an individual more than the ‘positive’ ones. Perhaps I’m way off base here, but it seems to me that anger is something that defines you contra others, in a bellicose ‘I am not that’ sense. Let’s take chess for example: I know my anger at losing is not directed at my inadequacy but the opponent’s superiority. Is this really me at my most replete state of dasein? On the contrary, when I play a piece of music on the piano well, take an inspiring photo, express an opinion that is lauded, my focus (though sometimes aided or even induced by the praise of others) is on my accomplishment (“I am this”)–my successful expression of self–and this, I feel, is my zenith of self-awareness.

II) Malice is defined as the desire to inflict injury; it’s unequivocally intentional. Innocence thus can’t be malicious as the intent is not to harm another but to benefit oneself. Though you seem to have begun to notice this yourself, it still seems a bit confused. You appear to describe more of a sociopath (or a graduation thereof) than an innocent: the self-interest supersedes the consequences bestowed external to the individual, this stemming from a “lack of guiding compassion and concern for another,” or in other words a lack of empathy–ergo sociopath. Perhaps you could transpose your concepts onto a graduation of sociopathy, the consciousness of one’s locus in that graduation and the conscious behavior as a result of this–or if this is analogous to what you’re developing, I could just translate in my head, but I often find our signifiers conflict and as a result have difficulty interpreting the gestalt of your ideas.

Aside from that, I do think you were too quick to disregard Mo’s and my post–and that’s saying something, as Mo and I don’t have the most congenial history.