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Does "evil" exist?
6h057 wrote: Here is another way of looking at it... Do animals have consciousness? Are they self aware enough to avoid suffering? Do they seek acts that prolong life and avoid death? Then would another species that understands that concept then be evil in nature to kill those beings that are self aware enough to have pain/death avoidance? Or is there a separation between species? Could an advanced alien species view is the same way if they had greater awareness than us? Would that make them evil? Would any of those acts be evil in nature or are they based on perspective?
Hi 6h057,
I'm not sure if that was a question for me or for the audience, but I'll take a stab at it in general.
Calling an act evil is another way of saying "it upsets my sensibilities and I don't like it"
And of course what is "evil" is going to vary from culture to culture. Killing animals for public consumption is going to be "evil" to a lot of people, and acceptable to many others.
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6h057 wrote: Here is another way of looking at it... Do animals have consciousness? Are they self aware enough to avoid suffering? Do they seek acts that prolong life and avoid death?
By human standards seemingly yes. It could be why many countries, especially in the so called 'developed world', try to harvest livestock with mechanisms of killing that incur the least possible pain (in relative, terms as it is a production line so cannot take too long either else it would cost too much for them). In effect, they know/think/believe the animal is conscious and seeks to avoid suffering, so try to minimize it, but kill it anyway for profit.
6h057 wrote: Then would another species that understands that concept then be evil in nature to kill those beings that are self aware enough to have pain/death avoidance? Or is there a separation between species? Could an advanced alien species view is the same way if they had greater awareness than us? Would that make them evil? Would any of those acts be evil in nature or are they based on perspective?
To us anything which increases our suffering is perceived as evil, but for us to ascertain they were cognizant of their actions impact (therefore knowingly acting (evil)) I'd be looking for indicators of them monitoring awareness of our suffering, modulation of our suffering for some reason by them, and mechanisms of directed efforts to achieve suffering in us.
Otherwise it could just be acting on instinct - as instincts are not as complex and rooted in survival behaviours IMO. The grey area between instinct and conscious intention to cause suffering is any reward system in the brain, but I do not classify that as addiction unless its driven by an underlying instinct - and then it gets to things like addiction and whether the efforts are being controlled effectively or just 'fed'.
:silly:
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Akkarin wrote:
What do you mean exist?
Is evil a tangible entity? Can you hold evil in your hand? Then in that case it doesn't exist.
But evil as an idea in our minds "exists"...
To conclude, whereas all other animals live in an objective world of rivers, trees and lions, we humans live in dual world. Yes, there are rivers, trees and lions in our world. But on top of that objective reality, we have constructed a second layer of make-believe reality, comprising fictional entities such as the European Union, God, the dollar and human rights.
And as time passes, these fictional entities have become ever more powerful, so that today they are the most powerful forces in the world. The very survival of trees, rivers and animals now depends on the wishes and decisions of fictional entities such as the United States and the World Bank — entities that exist only in our own imagination.[/hide][/spoiler]
baru wrote: Yes, I believe "evil" exists. I feel like the Darkside and "shadow" resides in us as a conscious being. I feel that we create it. It comes from our actions, intentions and "shadows". When we operate out of our subconscious or unconscious hurts, wounds, pains, insecurities, and suffering, that act usually has some for of those qualities in it - there for it perpetuates the cycle of "pain".
I feel that people when people "act" from their pain or "shadow" side - the Darkside - that action could be classified as "evil". If I am actively doing things to hurt, shame, or diminish an other person in order to gain something or to make myself "feel" better in the moment, that is "evil". If a person's intention is to create harmful pain for an other for my own personal satisfaction, that could be described as "evil".
I do not believe that there is any "evil" in the Force, Source or "God". Humans create the darkside all by ourselves.
Adder wrote: IMO Yep, as an action... not as a 'Force'. I've not encountered supernatural evil anywhere which was not manifest though the creature itself (yet).
So my comments are limited to that... being awareness of somethings suffering and intention or action to increase that suffering....
... still, as a Jedi my observance to the concept of the Force means I associate (and extend) awareness to iterations of what I perceive as potential suffering, across all things - not as a duty to it, but as an expression of self. It transforms through concepts like stability, efficiency, productivity, resonance, health etc and has to be seen both with an internal and external scope.
Gosh, I even practise it to inanimate things but as an exercise not a rule.
Hurting the dog #evil
Hurting the insect #likelyevil
Hurt the tree #maybeperhapsnot
Hurt the table #crikeygivemewhatyouron
Mareeka wrote: Does it exist? yes
as a concept
not found in the dictionary, as one half of a set of opposites
when they are face to face so to speak like the Taoist symbol, harmony
when they are back to back and pulling away, disharmony
both a force in nature
from the point that both the word evil and the concept evil are made up, then evil does not exist
from the point of . . from nothingness, there was one, then two . . . any two opposites can be put at the point of
two for a creation story or creative forces
my personal way to express it would be to say that evil is acting out of the deliberate intent to assault dignity, for the sake of assaulting dignity
evil is the act inflicting harm or pain because of the pleasure felt at the awareness that one is inflicting pain
evil is to promote or celebrate the degradation of dignity
evil is a mood - evil is a sense of personal exaltation at the misery of other/s
evil, from this view, is not simply to fire a bullet that kills
its not even the feeling of success or relief at having killed rather than being killed
evil from this view is to torture and mutilate the "enemy" as a means of entertainment
also, evil is different from tragedy such as volcanoes or diseases
and different from the predatory methods of survival
which even humans express
and which are mechanisms developed as a result of the process of evolution
evil requires the ability to think and to process the ideas of the self and the other as individuals with personalities which can influence and affect each other at the emotional level
People are complicated.
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Lets say that there is all mankind consciousness from the beginning of mankind to the future - lets call it The Presence.
Lets say in the future aliens will came to this planet to harvest human meat the same way as we harvest animal meat.
And lets say The Presence can foresee this as this already happen in the future.
If this would not happen there will be no evil on this planet and we will live in peace even with the animals.
But because this already happen in the future - that is what The Presence knows - she (The Presence - all mankind consciousness in the future) must prepare all humanity to fight the alien race and to defeat them. But how we can fight them without any weapons and military tactics and war experiences? If we live peaceful in love and in accordance with the nature as everybody of us wish - we will be just a meat for them and they will eat us all, without any problems.
So the root of all the evil in the world is our own need to survive and defeat our self against what will come in the future.
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Corwinani wrote: Well i have quite an idea of what we can see as all evil in the world and the root of it. It is not very easy to explain.
Lets say that there is all mankind consciousness from the beginning of mankind to the future - lets call it The Presence.
Lets say in the future aliens will came to this planet to harvest human meat the same way as we harvest animal meat.
And lets say The Presence can foresee this as this already happen in the future.
If this would not happen there will be no evil on this planet and we will live in peace even with the animals.
But because this already happen in the future - that is what The Presence knows - she (The Presence - all mankind consciousness in the future) must prepare all humanity to fight the alien race and to defeat them. But how we can fight them without any weapons and military tactics and war experiences? If we live peaceful in love and in accordance with the nature as everybody of us wish - we will be just a meat for them and they will eat us all, without any problems.
So the root of all the evil in the world is our own need to survive and defeat our self against what will come in the future.
this is cool,i like the imagination and the sense of purpose
there is similar idea floating out that says that the aliens arrived long ago and that they are parasites which actually feed off of our spiritual power - this theory suggests that humans were once noble but that the parasite eats away and weakens us into petty and timid creatures who act out in fear and resentment and self absorption, to the detriment of ourselves and each other
People are complicated.
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Akkarin wrote: Some thoughts...
What do you mean exist?
Is evil a tangible entity? Can you hold evil in your hand? Then in that case it doesn't exist.
But evil as an idea in our minds "exists". Evil is a judgement we can make about something.
If someone holds up a pen and asks "what is this?" The reply they'll receive is "a pen". But what this person is holding isn't "pen", "pen" is a sound we attribute to the thing being held. Much like evil.
Does language exist? Sure we can make sounds, but language is a concept, a modelling of sounds into a particular order. Does the United Kingdom exist? Can you go out and touch it? I can touch the ground "owned" by the United Kingdom, but if I get out my microscope and look really hard all I find is dirt, where is this United Kingdom people speak of?
Here's an interesting question: Why do humans run the world? *spoiler alert* Because we cooperate flexibly in vast numbers, but what is it about us that allows us to cooperate in large numbers (some insects do, but not flexibly) and not, say, chimpanzees?
"We can cooperate with numerous strangers because we can invent fictional stories, spread them around, and convince millions of strangers to believe in them."
Humans live in a world of rivers and trees, but we also live in a world of make-believe comprised of fictional entities like the United Kingdom, Morality and Money (a useless piece of paper or even just a number on a computer screen...).
As Alex pointed out to me the Tao Te Ching begins with a pun:
http://www.friesian.com/taote.htm
Warning: Spoiler!
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And this is why I am a "Wolf."
However, I am also a human being. It's reconciling the two that is the trick is it not?
Thank you Akkarin. I skimmed the full message that's why I deleted the bottom portion. Not to mention I didn't want to have my post be longer than yours with that much text in it. Haha.
“Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.” -Zhuangzi
“Though, as the crusade presses on, I find myself altogether incapable of staying here in saftey while others shed their blood for such a noble and just cause. For surely must the Almighty be with us even in the sundering of our nation. Our fight is for freedom, for liberty, and for all the principles upon which that aforementioned nation was built.” - Patrick “Madman of Galway” O'Dell
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Yet what is evil depends on who you ask, if you ask me and then you go to a church their way of looking upon evil is probably a bit diffrent then mine, some ideas of evil may agree with mine, but it will not be entirely the same, that is becouse they have another perspective, and a question can always get a thousand diffrent answers
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Yugen (幽玄): is said to mean “a profound, mysterious sense of the beauty of the universe… and the sad beauty of human suffering”
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but the word refers to a state of being - or to a set, or subset of states of being, which are easily recognizable for their selfishness and sense of contempt or disgust towards others
this blend of negative emotional states is very dangerous to the rest of the world, whatever you want to call it
now, this kid expresses a lot of pain, much of it self pity but even so, at the level of recognising the suffering of another human i can empathize with him, to a point
but he also denies his own responsibility, placing blame on everyone but himself (he even says "im the perfect guy or the perfect gentleman, something along those lines) and he assumes for himself not only the innate right to have been granted all the things that he desired, as if he had already earned them simply by wanting them, but also the authority to decide who deserves punishment as a result of his not having them
and he consciously enjoys - really kind of REVELS IN - the thought of getting his opportunity to inflict that punishment
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G-gQ3aAdhIo
People are complicated.
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