I’ve been thinking about good and bad/evil a lot lately and thought I’d see what others think about something…
If you accept evil/immoral people or their creations in your life is that not filling life with evil and so a rejection of good?
You can’t be good if you are filled with evil filth right?
For example, let’s say an entertainer is pleasuring the lives of millions of immoral (evil) people, that would make them and their creations bad right?
How can you be on the side of good if you are improving the lives of evil?
So, if you enjoy the creations of evil/filth, you are accepting evil and therefore rejecting good right?
It’s not so black and white. Yes there is some truth to the idea that if you accept or allow evil people to do evil things you are somewhat to blame and you can be called a bad person. However, if you are not the one who did the evil things then this is a gray area. There are plenty of reasons why a good person would choose to not get involved with evil people and the evil things they do. The reasonable moral requirement of being good doesn’t involve everyone being some kind of superhero risking their lives to fight evil every day.
Being good can also involve accepting the truth that many people are evil and you aren’t going to change that. In specific cases where you can help someone out who is innocent, that can be a moral requirement assuming the actions involved on your part aren’t unreasonably risky to you or others. But to deliberately remove yourself from the possible situations so you can remain ignorant of any victims isn’t necessarily evil, it might simply be the desire to remain on the side of goodness and not get any evil involved in your life. Self-protection is a moral good all things considered, as long as you are not actually doing evil things yourself.
Then there is the counter perspective that if you deliberately ignore evil and its victims then you are guilty yourself or at least somewhat evil since only an evil person could do that. There is some truth to this, but again it’s not black and white. What if you had kids and you realize if you get involved in trying to stop evil people and help their victims you would be endangering your own kids as a result? Then where does your moral responsiblity lie?
This goes back to the train sort of dilemmas in basic philosophy 101 morality and ethics classes. An evil person sets up a situation where you have to decide if 1 person dies or 10 people die. You can throw the switch either way, but one of those two outcomes will occur and its up to you. Well, my personal opinion is that you are not to blame for it unless you choose to involve yourself. If it were me, I would tune out the details of the evil situation and refuse to participate. Whatever setup the evil person has concocted, that is on them. Of course it becomes different if you are personally motivated toward one outcome or the other, for example if you know some of the people who might die. But that changes things. We have greater moral obligation to people we know and care about compared to total strangers. That may sound weird but it is how it works. We are not stone cold calculators and computers to analyze every person as of equal value, and in fact the very idea of value precludes such an approach. Morality is derivative of human valuation and the facts and realities of that, which can get complicated and confusing at times.
We can recognize objectively that all humans have some kind of baseline fundamental moral value, yet it is also the case that who we value personally and why plays an inevitable role in our moral calculations and responsibilities. So the answer to the OP just depends on more specifics and cannot be generalized.
That is a problem with so much philosophizing about morality, the attempt to find universal generalizations while ignoring important specifics. In reality, we always need to understand the situation from all sides and in its specifics in order to be able to properly morally evaluate it.
Yes, one perspective on this is that no evil can exist in heaven, no sin can exist alongside God. Therefore we must purge ourselves of all evil thoughts, deeds, sin etc. otherwise God will not allow us into his presence.
But the other perspective is simply that philosophy and a comprehensive self dictates that we are complex beings and the specific situations and reasons do matter. We might struggle with evil thoughts or deeds only because we are gradually acquiring the strength and perspective to overcome them. And perhaps that is the only way to actually overcome them and ignorance isn’t an option. And in certain situations depending on the outcomes, an evil (or rather a bad) might end up being good and vice versa. That comes down to intentions, which must be understood as an essential part of any moral evaluation. Evil truly enjoys in causing bads to occur and chooses this freely knowing it could do otherwise, knowing the bad consequences for others but not only not caring but actually liking this. There is a distinction between evil and bad, which falls more or less along these lines. And good people can be evil at times, it just depends on the situation and all factors involved. What would reasonably be expected of an average person, or rather of a specific person in a specific situation given all the relevant details, in certain situations that involve some kind of implicit pressure or force or known outcomes either good or bad? These are the kind of questions that must be asked.
And once you ask those questions and really get down to the bottom of the situations and issues, intentions are unable to be ignored. You can contextualize intentions given a full picture of the situation and specifics of the person involved. Once that is done it will become obvious if you are dealing with evil or simply something bad, or maybe something good or at least neutral. What is most troubling is that almost nowhere, in philosophy or real life or in courtrooms, does anyone actually take the time to try and carefully figure all of that out. We tend to like a conclusion, a done deal, especially when this aligns with our own emotions and presuppositions that appease our egos. So the entire issue of morality, evil and good, is kind of pre-empted in most cases before it could even get started. Then you have to ask if THAT is evil? Well no… but it is bad, although understandably so. It is not reasonable to expect the average person to care that much or be smart enough to go through a sufficient process when moral analysis or understanding is supposed to occur. And that just shows that most people are pretty dumb, or lazy, or just childish. And it would be silly to expect people like that to be moral.
That’s a delusion. We’re always there. But not letting go of consent (personhood) violation causes blindness. Of the third eye. And deafness of the third ear.
And… you lose the scent… because… your third nostril is malfunctioning.