Ya. But people are also quite capable of doing good and stopping evil when the opportunity arises…does indoz acknowledge that?
The best I can gather it sounds like indoz is saying: since people will always do evil, why don’t we just accept it already?
The answer is because it’s not in our “nature” to just accept evil. It is human nature to struggle between good and evil, perhaps forever, at least until we are extinct.
How do I know this? Because I can’t fathom a world in which people do good things and people do evil things, and nobody stops an evil thing from happening. Nor can I imagine a world in which everybody acts evil all the time. I don’t think either are going to happen. Not because they are impossible, per se, but just because it seems intuitively improbable based on my experience.
This sums up well a pattern of indoz’s I have also noticed. He says that something is natural or subjective and then asks why people react negatively to it - racism, evil acts, rudeness, whatever. Despite it being pointed out repeatedly that people’s reactions to these things can ALSO be seen as natural, he still seems to want people to stop reacting negatively to these things.
I don’t know, Fuse. Indoz said that: “I think so-called horrendous acts are normal.”
I feel a little hard put myself to use the word normal though the definition of normal is - Conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected. Noun: The usual, average, or typical state or condition.
BUT if you look at history, unfortunately horrendous acts may appear to be the norm under a certain set of circumstances; namely greed, grasping for power, hatred, racism, bias, a psychopathic or sociopathic mind, etcetera. It’s difficult to embrace that thought, but he does have a point. At the same time…
It’s true that people are capable of doing good and stopping evil. For many horrendous actions in history, there have always been those there to fight against the evil and to try to right the wrongs or at least to balance them out. But I think it’s important to focus on both sides at the same time.
Well, I can 't assume that this is what Indoz is actually saying. As I said above, if we are not capable of seeing the evil we can do, we may be pulled into someday committing those horrendous act[s]. We have seen humanity at its best but we have also seen it at its worse. I think it can happen to any of us, under the right set of circumstances. As the word means, evil does exist, doesn’t it, Fuse? And how can we understand something if we don’t first recognize it as having existence? Perhaps all Indoz is saying is that we have to accept its existence. We don’t know if he would fight it or not.
I don’t know. It may actually be more a part of our natures than we think - we are a very complicated conglomeration of many parts, both hidden and to be discovered and in plain view - but we have ALSO learned to both transcend our animal instincts and work in harmonious unison with them and are stilling learning this but it takes self-awareness…it is a process. We are not the devil nor the angel - we are both - and I think that in merging the two, we become the strongest and the most aware.
I know how you feel. I feel the same way as you. But a world does exist which encompasses the above - but at the same time, we DO also fight the evil.
I can’t either. I think that consciousness has evolved in order for us to have a chance at insuring our survival. So wherever there are self-conscious, self-aware people in the world, there will be people trying to create a good and right world. If you look around you, you can see both sides, well maybe even more than that. There are those who remain neutral, no matter what - and I’m not sure what to think of them.
As Elie Wiesel wrote: I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
One of the things one should have learned in school is definition determines class membership. The concept transposed into a language system means that definition determines the principles of predication, i.e., what may or may not be asserted of any thing–even the mind of man.
Another thing that this means is that one cannot assert nor deny existence. See Plato’s Parmenides.
Now, the mind can be defined, just like any other environmental acquisition system of a living organism. And just like any other environmental acquisition system of a living organism, it can be determined if it is functional simply by examining that which it is suppose to produce. This fact is obvious to a mind of a certain level of functionality-that human psychology is linguistically based. One will find this in Confucius, Plato, and the Judeo-Christian Scripture.
Now the human mind is responsible for being able to reason in both primitive categories of reason, logics and analogics. If it cannot do this, is it functional? Can it even reliably conceptualize? Not just good and evil, but of anything at all?
One of the hall marks of a functional mind is its ability to “see the big picture” i.e. to see the same idea in the many examples. Called the simili in Multis by Plato, and “dark sentences” in scripture, and metaphor in grammar classes. it means the ability to see the class a particular member may belong to, i.e. it reasons by principles of judgment. Therefore, a functional mind does not question that good and evil are real things, just as sure as they are that they, as mind, are responsible for that good and evil.
Both evil and the opposition to evil are natural. I agree with Pavlovian’s definition of evil. As for the opposition to it, it stems from one of the basic natural instincts inherent not only in living beings but in the evolutionary mechanism itself - destruction of weakness. When humans are gathered in a group, the group becomes an organism, somewhat intelligent, and it is, like any organism, set on survival and prosperity. Such an organisation requires stability in order to prosper and it must develop mechanisms that facilitate stability and remove subversive elements. They are considered a disease of the organisation.
Through a similar pattern, the conforming elements of the organisation, i.e. “law-obiding citizens”, based on their natural instinct to detect weakness and diesease (which is always weakness), recognize subversive behavior as damaging not only to the society but to the individual itself, since they can not instinctively discern multitude from singularity and assume what is damaging to the society is damaging to the individual. An unstable element of society thus becomes simply an unstable individual, diseased and dangerous to them, and this is where their self-preservation instinct kicks in. They are thenceforth aimed at either destroying the individual or otherwise neutralizing him, making him inert and susceptible to absorption.
This latter solution is what the so-called “rehabilitation” is all about.
Now you are very simple in regard to what human nature is. By your very use of language, you admit that the actions of humans are evolving to be expressions of linguistic principles.
The most fundamental is A = A. Or expressed in words, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
The nature of the mind, a functional mind, is linguistic, and its purpose is to effect human action that maintains and promotes life.
To say that it is not so, is to say that language contradicts language, a statement made by the very linguistic incompetent.
At any rate, you see how pathetic your grammar classes have been, when you are completely ignorant that language is to effect human will, and therefore determines principles of morality. And, that there has been nothing in your life from which you have had the wit enough to abstract the realization. The human mind is young, like a child who still wallows in its own shit. That does not mean it is human nature not to grow up and take a bath.
Every environmental acquisition system of a living organism is for the express purpose of “having life and having more abundantly” The human mind is one of them, to say that it acts contrary even to evolution is the statement of the very dim witted.
The majority also pretty much defines what characterizes a lack of mental health. One indicator, pursuant to the majority, of a lack of mental health is the capacity to commit greatly evil acts.
So science is based on what the majority believes only?
I personally don’t see the point in limiting “evil”,since acts generally considered “evil” are normal, and arise from our nature. it makes no sense to limit them. To a large extent, life is dog eat dog. This is essentially why so-called “evils” such as slavery or the Holocaust occurred.