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"there is no one totally evil in the world
- Thread starter no-body
- Start date
PolyHedral
Superabacus Mystic
.....David Bowie said:
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
There's enough thoughtlessness and recklessness out there to render the existence of evil redundant.
Gjallarhorn
N'yog-Sothep
There is no such thing as "evil", normally. There is egotism and ignorance, with egotism stemming from existence as evolved beings and ignorance stemming from, well, ignorance.
In other words: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
In other words: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
no-body
Well-Known Member
This I agree with. The amount of suffering that real "criminals" inflict on society is much smaller than what regular people inflict on each other.
Clarifying I am talking about big time major "evil" or negatives; vivisection, pedophilia, rape, etc. It is only in our minds I believe that no one is capable of redemption. With the caveat that just because I believe no one is irredeemable it does not mean that they should not pay for their consequences.
I understand it as "miscreating." And even adding "them" is adding to the problem / confusion.
Degrees of evil (beliefs) exist within us, and we project that onto reality.
But, and this is absolutely paramount, there is inverse to the assertion of:
"There is no one totally evil in the world."
I think there are perhaps several ways to state that, and it can be fun, slightly challenging, to understand the logic at work. Put simply, there is way to say very much the same thing (same conclusion) using only positive indicators. Such as:
"Everyone in the world is totally loving."
Which, depending where we are on scale of understanding, could challenge us more than the reverse claim. Could have us make greater leap in logic, and gain profound sense of trust. Then again, we could show up very cowardly and essentially say such things as, "I will never ever see the rapist as totally loving. Sorry. Fail." Which on 'scale of understanding' (really knowledge) tells me, "I ain't ready for that world. Not yet." Arguably for some (perhaps majority) "not ever."
And yet, magically, we live in that world today.
Unless we don't (live).
No one is born Evil - nor good. We all have free will, and have the opportunity to choose how we react to life. If we do an evil deed, it doesn't make us evil; it means that we have done evil deeds - but, it always comes down (for me) to the old rule "Love the sinner, hate the sin".
In the absolute sense, neither good nor evil exists; those are man-made concepts to refer to specific things. There are things which are almost universally accepted as evil, and things which are universally accepted as good, but most of the time, defining something as good or evil is dynamic.
javajo
Well-Known Member
I believe we are all sinners. Some are just worse than others and some just get caught. But we are all sinners, we all have sinned. I believe we sin because we are sinners not that we are sinners because we sin. That we were born with a sinful nature and all do sin quite natural every day all the time. I believe Christ paid for all our sins on the cross and if we trust in him we are saved.
Skwim
Veteran Member
If there is "no one totally evil in the world," then there would no such a person for which anyone would be responsible.
earlwooters
Active Member
"Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time."
Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 5
"I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so"
Adolph Hitler, to Gen. Gerhard Engel, 1941
What evil is and what it is not, is always just an opinion, and nothing else. Some peoples evil is another peoples justice.
Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 5
"I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so"
Adolph Hitler, to Gen. Gerhard Engel, 1941
What evil is and what it is not, is always just an opinion, and nothing else. Some peoples evil is another peoples justice.
no-body
Well-Known Member
Kind of pedantic there don't you think? I did go on to say "and if there is.." (and if you don't like the word evil it can be replaced with bad or criminal)
Anyways I doubt anyone cares but the quote is from Alejandro Jodorowsky off the commentary from the movie "El Topo"
Skwim
Veteran Member
Not at all. Simply trying to make sense of your intent here. Normally a thread's title announces the thrust of what follows, but one is no more than two words into the body of your text when we're confronted with an "if." A declarative: "there is X. . ." followed by an uncertainty "if there is X . . ." is distractingly incongruent.
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Levite
Higher and Higher
I wouldn't confine the title statement just to evil.
No human being is absolutely any one thing, or absolutely any several things. We are simply not creatures of absolutes.
Even those of us who are really pretty extraordinarily good people have bad moments, fly off the handle at people, think something bad, one person who just can't stand them, or something. And likewise, those of us who are really almost unremittingly horrifying usually have at least one decent moment, one person who loves us as we are.
Human beings are complex and nuanced, and a great part of what makes people who are remarkable for being extremely one thing or another so interesting are the ways in which they are not that way, or uncharacteristic in some other fashion; whether it is the very good who have interesting failings, or the very bad who have inexplicable flashes of empathy, it's really the same phenomenon at work, I think.
All of which, by the way, is separate from the fact that I believe that evil in our world is solely the result of the choices of human free will. And also that I believe (as do many, if not most, Jewish authorities) that "evil" is a label for actions, not for people. We may idiomatically call a person who does many evil acts "wicked," but that is a condition applied because of the choices that they made, not something innate to them. If they had made different, more positive, choices, they would not have been wicked; likewise, if they did evil acts, and then repented them and did reparations, they would no longer be wicked.
waitasec
Veteran Member
charles manson and hitler come right off the bat...
were they a product of society or were they just bad genes?
i guessing bad genes.
Hitler was most definitely a product of the world he grew up in. After all, he was well-spoken, and a German patriot. He fought in World War I, and when the Germans lost, that was a pretty big blow for him. But then the treaty of Versailles basically screwed the country over, which would have caused a lot of hatred for the rest of the world, and the subsequent German depression didn't help.
As for Charles Manson, I do believe his problems were almost entirely mental. But if he had such a bad mental illness that he couldn't control himself, then he was just insane, and there's a reason why insanity is a cause for being declared not guilty in court.