Where does evil come from?

Humans are are capable of both adaptation and non-adaptation. Humans can dissociate from nature, can fight against nature. The more culture/civilization humans have, the more anti-natural they are.

In the same time, more and more other notorious communites are becoming more and more inhumane.

Nobody knows, when and how this is going to stop.

Hi Krissy. I don’t know about that. I think we have seen and can say that ~~ let’s say in the case of technology itself or the way in which humans have used and abused it, because we are such mental and emotional pigmies where it is concerned, has most definitely contributed to unethical and immoral acts. I speak both subjectively and objectively. Can one do both? :-k

The further back in time one goes the more barbaric human civilisation was. The present [ any present ] is therefore the least barbaric time one can live in since
by definition it is an improvement on all previous times. Though it could change if something detrimental to human existence occurred on a global scale. Such as
for example a nuclear war or universal epidemic or ice age. However barring such apocalyptic scenarios modern life is on average significantly more comfortable
than compared with previous eras. For more on this read Steven Pinker

google.com/search?q=the+bom … M7yynRM%3A

That was not on a global scale and was justified as being the lesser of two evils but there will always be atrocities regardless of anything else so it has
to be factored into the equation. But as I said modern life is on average significantly more comfortable. Also in the interests of objectively one should
reference in all the ways in which knowledge has been used for positive benefit also. Such as for example in medicine to name but one. You are never
going to have Utopia for that is simply not possible. But you can have a world which on balance is less imperfect than all of the ones that came before

Have you heard about the Mississippi police chiefs? Local news here. Pretty damn dramatic. Pretty damn criminal.
And yea one can do both :slight_smile:

First of all I have to say that the two different semantic fields for the two English words “culture” and “civilisation” are different from the two German words “Kultur” and "Zivilisation, so that we we would get a problem of contrastive linguistics, if we equalled them. So (1.) the English word “culture” and the German word “Kultur” do not always mean the same, and (2.) the English word “civilisation” and the German word “Zivilisation” do not always mean the same. I would say that the said semantic fields could look like this:

Kultur_Culture_Zivilisation_Civilisation.gif
So the proper translation of “Kultur” is sometimes "culture and sometimes “civilisation”, whereas the proper translation of “Zivilisation” is always “civilisation”.

And this means that I have to conclude or even to guess whether you meant “Kultur” or “Zivilisation” when you used the word “civilisation”. Most historians say that barbarians have no “civilisation” (“Zivilisation”). So I conclude that you meant “Kultur” and not “Zivilisation”. Most historians say that civilisations (Kulturen) can be both barbaric and not barbaric, and that civilisations (Zivilisationen) can never be barbaric. But my interpretation differs a bit from that mainstream interpretation. I am saying that civilisations (Zivilisationen) are also barbaric, and they can be and often are even much more barbaric than the so-called “barbaric civilisations” (“Kulturen”).

To facilitate survival, it is a very natural instinct of humans to focus on the negative [bad to evil] News. So what the mass media are merely expressing these days are what is instinctual and I believe that is very necessary.

Discounting the ideological and propaganda elements [an onus on the people to filter this] the mass media are reporting what is going on in reality around the world at present in comparison to what we merely read in the Newspapers and hearsay in the past.
Thus at present humanity has greater access to the truths [discounting propaganda] of negative [range of bad to evil] which should be welcomed.

With the knowledge of these truths of the existence of these negative acts around the world, humanity has the responsibility to prevent, reduce, eliminate [if possible] these negative acts. To achieve this there is a need for effective strategies.

For an effective strategy one approach is to use the effective concepts and terms to capture the significance of the full range of these negative acts that are a threat to the well-being of humanity.

This is why I proposed and I believed to use the term “evil” together with a proper definition and explanation to cover all acts and scenarios that are negative to the well-being of humanity. Using such a broad, loose and varied term such as ‘evil’ will definitely have problems involving communications and likely misinterpretation, that is why the term must be clearly spelled out covering all scenario on how it is to be used.

That is why I stated the definition of the term [evil] must be very clear and explanation given to cover all possible scenarios.

That is a lot of things that can be done to prevent any possible misinterpretations.
For example preparing a taxonomy of ‘what is evil’ with explanations for every level will definitely present a clearer picture towards the defined purpose of why the term is defined in the intended manner.

The point is when we put a philosophical, scientific, other faculty of knowledge approaches to our project, then it has a potential of eliminating weaknesses and promoting continuous improvements. This is in contrast to the theological blind faith approach.

Now I wonder what is the intent of your resistance and dissension to my proposals. You wanna keep to the status quo and not look for possible effective strategies to deal with the truths of those range of evil acts?

The more it is merely instinct, the more it is merely animal.

Arminius : I used civilisation to mean society in general which would mean all cultures. And I disagree with historians who say that civilisations cannot be
barbaric because in many cases that is how they came into being. These civilisations would specifically be the great empires of antiquity. And they could
not be maintained exclusively by non barbaric means either. But while civilisations might be barbaric the opposite is not so true for barbarians cannot be
civilised. Because barbarian translates as thug. And a thug is not some one who is either civilised or cultured. And it is also what philistine means as well

Comes from the mind along with negative aspects of life, influences.

Common English:

Thus it could be said that modern “civilisation” is being run by barbarians, thus is not really civilisation at all, but rather what was once a civilisation has become merely a barbaric culture (“High tech third world country”). :sunglasses:

Carefully scripted social fictions and mythologies…

The term “barbarian” originates from the Ancient Greek: βάρβαρος (barbaros). By this term the Ancient Greeks meant each one of those who were not Ancient Greeks resp. did not speak Ancient Greek.

Whom do you mean? I mean: Who translates “barbarian” as “thug”?

Yes, carefully scripted fictions of civility.

From Wikipedia : a barbarian is a human who is perceived to be uncivilized or primitive …
A barbarian may also be an individual reference to a brutal cruel warlike insensitive person

Tab,

What’s evil? Evil spelled backwards is live. So what is evil but anything which takes away the optimum good of one’s own life or that of another, which causes harm or great harm. I intuit that there ARE degrees to that which is evil.

That is not necessarily true. We oftentimes choose to make choices deliberately where we know that someone will be harmed or hurt. That is deliberate. We are quite conscious that those actions are not subjectively good but we don’t care. There is also no good or greater cause behind the actions.
That’s call callousness/indifference and evil can come from that…a deliberately conscious choice to cause harm.

Good in the world has its opposite, as does everything. Just as good can also come from evil and evil can come from good.
Evil can also come from NOT PAYING ATTENTION.

Why couldn’t it have been the good people who “invented” evil - coined the word - to show what we humans are capable of?
Evil is a plant which sprouted up from human consciousness making its first judgment call on human behavior. It has now become a multi-colored garden.

Why not?

Evil is to each person subjective. However, I would argue that society collectively can create a more “objective” view of what constitutes “evil”, and thus the law is meant to prevent evil from occurring.

As for the source of this “evil”, that does come from human nature and human individualism, which is why the law and the state restricts the darker elements of our nature and protects us from each other.