Thread: Mr. Manuscript

Been wanting to write something about music complete with metatext and commentary, and then something about movies, but it seems rather pointless, now. I just have two more old essays to finally get off my hard drive, and then I can be done with this. Old essay 1 GOOD VS. EVIL TITLE MATCH Or Non-Denominational Ethics ARE Possible Yes, I know. Good and Evil. So trite, so overplayed. What we like is good, what we don't like is evil. Yadda yadda yadda. But that's an oversimplification. For that matter, so is most religious teaching about good and evil. They've got the right idea, no question, but throughout history, the application is flawed. So what's to be done? Well, me, personally, I've got a loose definition of good and evil that works for my personal continuum, and now is as good a time as any to share it. Get it out of the way, right up front. First thing I think traditional definitions of good and evil are essentially correct, but lose it with the finer details. They frequently lump in other stuff that confuses the issue. Let's take Christianity, for example the religion in which I was raised. What is good is basically what's good everywhere being kind to others, forgiving, living in peace, etc. Being a religion, worshipping only one God is also encouraged. The usual suspects also serve as Big Bad murder, theft, envy, jealousy, etc. But there is little middle ground. For example, over the centuries people have interpreted religious good and evil to justify horrible actions. Group X thinks that because Group Y doesn't think exactly the same, they must be Evil, and therefore must be killed though Group Y may not actually be bothering anybody. Galileo saw the movement of planets, and that was counter to the contemporary interpretation of the Bible, therefore his discoveries were Evil. What's evil today might be reinterpreted later as good and True. And what about something that is neither good nor evil, just is? I know someone who believed that if something wasn't conventionally explainable a karate expert breaking cinderblocks was the example, and it wasn't obviously God at work, then it must be the Devil. Never mind that karate has nothing to do with either, never mind that it might be transfer of impact force or something else, or even God working mysteriously everything boiled down to binary thinking. If it's not with me, it must be against me. And what happens when there's a war on? A soldier follows orders, does what he's supposed to, and kills the enemy. Is that soldier evil? What about the politicians who decided to attack? They don't pull the trigger, their hands are physically clean, but what responsibility do they have for the deaths on either side? If not killing is one of your basic precepts, how can you support a war at all, much less participate, and stay faithful? What happens if the enemy actually does kill without motivation like Hitler in World War II. It's right to oppose him, but is it right to shoot frightened German kids who got drafted? How does that affect the families of soldiers? What if they have kids, themselves? What do we do about war orphans can we afford to leave them to grow up at risk of serious psychological problems, thereby creating a problem for ourselves in the future? See, life is complex. There really isn't a single one-interpretation answer that's going to fit every situation. Which is why I tried to avoid specific dogma or a particular specific code of religious ethics when examining my own scale of good and evil. I tried to abstract it a bit, and ascribe the various behaviors to more basic human impulses. So far, it's working for me. And here's how The ideas of Good and Evil are just labels. The question is how we decide what actions deserve which labels. My thought is that human behavior can be separated into self-focused motivations and other-focused motivations. It's not exact, because humans are complex beings, and there will always be the occasional exception. But in general, and barring dysfunction, that's how it breaks down. Other-focused activities are fairly easy to get helping the sick, improving the community, obeying the law, being kind and courteous, basically having the community in mind, whether it's the community of your family, your neighborhood, your city, your nation, or your world. People with an awareness of other recognize that their average fellow humans have an equal right to their own lives, to their own safety, to their own thoughts and opinions, and to whatever it is they've earned through their own efforts. Without these basic concepts, a person is a psychopath, believing other people are no more than toys to be manipulated. That's a dysfunction, however, so we'll put that aside for the moment and focus on people with normal, functional ethical systems. Self-focused activities can be misinterpreted as selfish. I don't think that's strictly true yes, some self-focused activities are selfish, but feeding yourself when you're hungry isn't selfish. Getting an education isn't selfish. Doing art, or singing, or taking a nap... these aren't necessarily selfish. If an actor stars in a movie or a writer sells a book, he or she negotiates to get paid what the sponsor will allow, and this isn't selfish, because the sponsor intends to make much more than that payment in profits from the masses and those masses pay small amounts, relatively speaking, to get the enjoyment of the performance or the story. It's all voluntary, and therefore, negotiating for payment is not strictly selfish. The key is division between good and evil, in this plan it depends on whether that action is taken at the expense of another. When gratifying your own motivations means victimizing others, that action becomes evil. This brings up the question of whether the person taking the action realizes it is exacting a cost. That would make the action still evil, but the person taking the action not intending to do evil. Yes, it's complex. Welcome to life. Let's not make the mistake of thinking other-focused activities can't be evil if you do right by your nation, you may be exploiting an innocent nation. Also, you can act selfishly as a member of a small group if you enact a tax law, for example, that benefits the rich of which class you are a member but puts the cost of that benefit on the less-wealthy, then that's still ultimately selfish, and therefore evil. In normal, everyday life, people are close to neutral. They look after their own interests, but they've got a mind toward the community so that they don't get in other people's way too much. If you strive to do good, you focus more on the other-centered activities, such as helping out in the community, or giving up recreation to spend time with your kids. It's possible to go too far in this direction, wrecking one's own health in the course of helping others, and that's not healthy. However, given most people have a strong sense of self-interest, that's rarely a problem. Self-interest including small elite groups is not, in itself, evil the evil comes when self-interest is at the expense of others. This is obvious in individual actions, but larger-scale evils also exist. When a mugger decides his need for money outweighs your right to keep what you've earned or your right to be unharmed, then that mugger is doing evil. If a rapist decides his desire is stronger than a woman's right of refusal, that's evil. If a mother would rather smoke a cigarette and watch her soap opera rather than attend to her crying baby, that's a special kind of neglectful evil. To scale up, coming up with an excuse for a war to satisfy a sense of revenge, andor to see to the profit of a certain group evil, made worse because it's also an abuse of power and public trust. Tricky question is a soldier at war doing evil? Well, any soldier should serve out of a focus on the other of nation, which isn't bad in and of itself. And killing enemy soldiers is the job they're trained to do. Killing another human being is a negative thing it flies in the face of other-focused concepts, and in itself it has serious psychological effects if it doesn't, then there's something dysfunctional already present. But the enemy soldiers are trying to kill the example soldier, too, so it's kind of self-defense. And the example soldier is following orders, so it's not entirely his decision to make. Ultimately, in my judgment, killing doesn't have to be an evil thing. It's negative, and it should be avoided, but it may not be evil. What makes it evil or not is the context, and that includes the motivation, the reasons behind the conflict, and the ultimate purpose of the action. Does that make the question less tricky? Not really, but it does identify what the factors are, and admits right up front that killing is wrong, whether or not it's evil. I admit there are times when you can be a nice person, trying to do good, and find yourself compelled, via one means or another, to do evil. Does this mean you are evil, yourself? Not necessarily. Depends on your reaction, and what you do in the future. As I've said, I believe humans are largely ethics-neutral in their day-to-day lives, and I don't think that taking a single action has to tip the balance of ethics permanently one way or another. Each day is a new opportunity to make choices it's when one gets used to victimizing others to make one's own life more comfortable that the choices dip toward evil on a more regular basis. I don't consider humans to be inherently either good or evil. They simply are human. When you're born, you have no conception of other, all you know is self. As you grow, you figure out what other people are, and you learn to care, around the time you also learn how cause and effect works. Babies and small children can't be good or evil, because they don't know enough to make the choice, and all their existence has to be at the expense of others, because they are absolutely incapable of supporting themselves. As they mature, children become able to make judgments and take actions regarding self and other, and whether or not to act at the expense of someone else. It is only through time and maturation that children become capable of discerning the difference, and thus become ethical individuals. That's my non-denominational ethics scale. As with all life, it's potentially complex, it relies on judgment and decisions and information some of which may be imperfect, and it's still a work in progress. But who knows? I may chuck it all and reduce myself to something simpler, or let some other authority do the thinking for me. Sure. Thatll happen.