What's Your Alignment?

I'm neutral good. I might be leaning on Lawful Good if not for a few tendencies. Like my absolute disgust with the inefficiencies of our corrupt, bureaucratic, government. I know the laws. I follow the laws for the most part. My laws work better for me though.

OB1Shinobi wrote: all that stuff that i said

that post was way too long, sorry

i will shorten it tomorrow when im at a desk

Its ok, I picked out a few talking points.

You are right that this may come down to semantics in terms. I have no problem calling some acts “evil” as a matter of definition. These are acts we judge as repulsive or disgusting or repugnant or harmful to ourselves or others in some way, but that is only because we possess the capacity for benevolence and compassion and empathy. However I do not believe that acts can be considered evil unto themselves. This means that I don’t think anyone can “manifest evil”. Nor is there any absolute standard as to what “evil” is. Evil is a subjective thing that we each must decide for ourselves and that we judge by consensus as a society.

OB1Shinobi wrote: i have to ask, did you watch the video i posted earlier?
heres a shorter clip from the same interview
its easy to pick up on the fact that the dude in the video has got an internal state of being which is malevolent and predatory and thats what i am talking about

Yes I did watch that video when it was posted and I also just watched this version. In this context a “state of being” can be ascribed to a mental status or condition. These states can include mental disorders such as psychopathy which are described as a mental disorder that is characterized by an enduring inability to adapt to accepted patterns of behavior. These people’s behavior deviates dramatically from those typically accepted by society. These abnormal behaviors develop early and are associated with substantial distress or disability. As a counter to your video consider this. Is this child malevolent or is she a victim?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDVaiwzU8yc

Why do we treat this child differently than the psychopath in your video? Yours would be jailed or punished or executed. The child is nurtured and put in a home to rehabilitate even though they both manifest the exact same deviant behavior.

What about these animals? Would you consider them evil?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0BWPCzPNk4

These animals kill for a myriad of reasons up to and including personal pleasure or gain. They are not doing it to survive or help their groups. Are they evil or are they just instinctually doing what comes naturally to them? These groups of animals have no laws or societies to keep these deviant animals in check. We don’t call them evil or punish them. We just call it nature. What if we as humans did not have civilizations or societies? Would “evil” still exist?

OB1Shinobi wrote: "evil" is how we categorize an act when the act was motivated by evil intent - it is the intent and the motive which determines if an act is loving or fearful or courageous or evil, not simply the act itself

Is evil an emergent property of civilization or does it exist independently, somewhere out there, as an absolute standard or law? If it does who governs that absolute standard or law? Who or what is it beyond us that decides what evil is and enforces that absolute? 200 years ago slavery was fully accepted as a normal behavior. Was slavery still evil but for some reason we didn’t recognize it as such? What changed that caused us to begin to see slavery as evil? Seems it was not anything outside our control. We simply evolved as a race and decided that the oppression of others was no longer a sustainable action. Nothing changed beyond our own subjective opinions on the subject. Evil is a term we created to describe a set of behavior that we find subjectively unacceptable at a specific period and that definitely changes at our whim as a species.

OB1Shinobi wrote: surely you arent suggesting that "evil" is only to do something for which we will be punished?
if i kick some random old lady down a flight of stairs because i think its funny, is that only wrong if im caught and punished?
is it wrong to kick an old lady down a flight of stairs? if it is done simply for the joy of watching her experience pain and terror?

Evil as a definition could be described as anything that society deems as deviant or unacceptable behavior. Often times we see the evidence of evil but not the perpetrators so it is not based on being caught or not. However what we deem as evil today may not have been the case when the act was committed. Today if we dug up a mass grave where an ancient human sacrifice was made, we could consider that act of sacrifice as murder and thus an evil act. However at the time it was done it was an honorable act that those sacrificed may have even volunteered for as an act of worship to their God or Goddess. So was the action an act of evil or was it an act of worship?

As for the old lady, as an act in and of itself, I think we could agree that it would be considered a criminal act as we have defined it in our society. But as for labeling it as evil, even if his intent was to see harm caused, I think the best we could do is label the perpetrators mental state of being as one of psychopathy, with the qualifier being that psychopathy is an abnormal state of being that exists outside the bounds of what our species has defined as acceptable or normal behavior. Now if one wants to call that abnormal state “evil” I think that is ok as well. It is a definition we use to qualify that state of mind. However outside the bounds of our species I don’t think that would apply. Meaning that evil does not exist “out there”. It only exists as a definition as we have defined it for a particular behavior we find outside normal bounds but not as an absolute in any form.

OB1Shinobi wrote: well then you have to say "love" is an artificial construct and i dont think youd be correct in either case

There is a difference between an emotional state and a mental state. Emotions are characterized by moods. Emotional states themselves are brought on through chemical and hormonal interactions in the brain and body. Emotions like love and hate are complex long lasting while moods can be fleeting. However when it comes to conditions like psychopathy that is a state of mind that in fact does not allow emotion or mood to operate normally or even at all. It’s the lack of these things that causes aberrant behavior – the inability to produce these brain states. Emotion and mood and psychopathy are all valid brain states, however Evil is not a valid brain state.

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote: I have no problem calling some acts “evil” as a matter of definition.

well there ya go then lol i have this conversation frequently and that recognition is my primary aim

if there are "supernatural" forces then i would think evil to be one, but i have no proof of supernatural forces and i dont make a claim that any exist

when i talk of evil i am referring to an internal psychological state of being which desires to impose suffering upon others in general - i mean that the suffering is the actual aim and goal in and of itself, even if it is masked by the pretext of doing gods will or serving the nation or the fixing the system or whatever other rationalizations that evil people use to defend their evil actions

that internal state of being is one that people enter into for any number of reasons, and it is extremely dangerous to interact with people who spend any significant amount of time there because it is always looking for an opportunity to cause misery

i respond to the assertion that "evil doesnt exist" or "theres no such thing as evil" because i think that this assertion is factually incorrect -by definition if nothing else- and also i consider it socially irresponsible

what i hope to convince a reader of is that there are, and have always been people, who are "profoundly immoral and malevolent"
or just "profoundly malevolent" since moral relativism is very popular while also not being very well understood

what language a person uses to conceptualize the reality of evil (or the reality of profoundly malevolent people) is not all that important to me

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote: However I do not believe that acts can be considered evil unto themselves. This means that I don’t think anyone can “manifest evil”.

for the purposes of being understood, when i say "manifest evil" i mean it in the same way i might say to "manifest courage" - to manifest it is to draw it out of the Potential that exists within the psyche
that it can be tapped into is proof that it is real, and since we ourselves are "natural forces or "forces of nature" or at least we are "natural" then to my way of thinking, whatever is real for us, is by definition, also a real force of nature or a natural occurrence, even if it is only relevant to the human specific domain of reality

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote: Nor is there any absolute standard as to what “evil” is. Evil is a subjective thing that we each must decide for ourselves and that we judge by consensus as a society.

this another place is where it becomes useful to make a comparison to a force of nature - "hot" and "cold" are also subjective thing thats we each decide for ourselves - but only to a point

everyone eventually has an experience of being hot and of being cold, but the temperatures that a native of siberia would indicate for each would likely be different than that indicated by a native of thailand
even within thailand and siberia, there is variability of tolerance among individuals

but as human beings we all have an eventual maximum threshold for both heat and cold, and to exceed that threshold is fatal

even wim hof is going to have a limit, though he does indicates that our limits for cold and heat are further out than the average person would assume

well, i believe that malevolence is the same way: human beings, as individuals and as societies, have an eventual fatal threshold for malevolence, even if that threshold hasnt been scientifically determined yet

and that threshold is what i think of as the "universal standard" for evil, though it cannot be precisely articulated

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im breaking this into pieces lol

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote: As a counter to your video consider this. Is this child malevolent or is she a victim?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDVaiwzU8yc

awesome
ive thought about this girl a lot and this is what i have to say about your question: one of the most tragic elements of the phenomenon of evil is that it infects its victims so that victims become perpetrators of further evil

yes she was a victim first, likely so was the man in the first video and in a way we can even say that elliot rogers was a victim or at least that he experienced himself as being forced to endure unfair treatment that he wasnt able to change

if nothing else i think it is likely that his parents lack of awareness and guidance was neglectful to the point of constituting abuse, but thats speculative

the point is that when people are exposed to malevolence, it often has the effect of causing psychological damage

processing that experience is difficult at best, and if the malevolence and the damage are greater than the persons internal resources or ability to cope, then the result is that the victim becomes a perpetrator and the evil is increased

which would be something like frostbite or heatstroke

again i consider this one of the most tragic elements of evil

and maybe some people are just broken damaged or infected to begin with for some reason?

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote: Why do we treat this child differently than the psychopath in your video? Yours would be jailed or punished or executed. The child is nurtured and put in a home to rehabilitate even though they both manifest the exact same deviant behavior.

i have some theories about how to evaluate and treat evil people but i havent expressed them yet

im not going to express here, but the short answer to your question about treating them differently is that the adult has got some 40 years worth of mentally reinforcing his own behavior to overcome in terms of his own transformation, and also some 20 or 30 years worth of victims to be held accountable to

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote: What about these animals? Would you consider them evil?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0BWPCzPNk4

These animals kill for a myriad of reasons up to and including personal pleasure or gain. They are not doing it to survive or help their groups. Are they evil or are they just instinctually doing what comes naturally to them? These groups of animals have no laws or societies to keep these deviant animals in check. We don’t call them evil or punish them. We just call it nature. What if we as humans did not have civilizations or societies? Would “evil” still exist?

1) pretty much everything that each of those animals is doing can be accounted for in relation to either personal or group or familial survival (predators teach their young how to kill and continue to practice killing throughout much of their lives) or the continuation of their own personal genetic line- infanticide is a reproductive strategy

2) we are more complicated and have a more sophisticated system for interacting with reality and the world and each other.
we do not expect chimps to file tax returns or pass algebra exams and saying that the rule doesnt apply to a chimp isnt in any way evidence that it doesnt or shouldnt apply to us

3) non human societies do have social norms and punitive measures, theyre just not as complicated as the supreme court or laws of admiralty

4) http://dujs.dartmouth.edu/2015/07/chimpanzee-study-indicates-evolutionary-preconditions-of-morality/#.V__k1_mAOko
"According to the researchers, several building blocks of morality have been identified to some extent in chimpanzees. These blocks include consolation, inequity aversion, and spontaneous altruism."

5) if humans didnt have society we wouldnt be human - those two things are literally inseparable
because we arent physically equipped to survive as totally independent entities, our survival depends on mutual cooperation

we were social creatures long before we became human, and without that social foundation we would not BE human today

this understanding takes us back to 2) we are human because we have a more sophisticated way of interacting with reality and each other than the other animals in the jungle, and this means we dont hold them to our standards or hold ourselves to theirs

one more note on animals and evil: the potential for evil is something which requires a minimum level of cognitive ability for abstract conceptualization - most creatures simply arent smart enough to be evil

but of those that are, maybe some are evil
i would expect it but i couldnt prove it, so i dont bother with it

evil
profoundly immoral and malevolent

i really dont like the "immoral" part, because people think morals are just "relative" and dont really matter

http://www.iep.utm.edu/moral-re/#H4

malevolent has got a pretty straight forward definition (just mentally remove "evil" and yull get the gist lol)

1) wishing evil or harm to another or others; showing ill will; ill-disposed; malicious:
2) evil; harmful; injurious:

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote: 200 years ago slavery was fully accepted as a normal behavior. Was slavery still evil but for some reason we didn’t recognize it as such? What changed that caused us to begin to see slavery as evil? Seems it was not anything outside our control. We simply evolved as a race and decided that the oppression of others was no longer a sustainable action. Nothing changed beyond our own subjective opinions on the subject. Evil is a term we created to describe a set of behavior that we find subjectively unacceptable at a specific period and that definitely changes at our whim as a species.

the fundamental ideas of my position are: evil is an internal state - a set of motives and emotional responses characterized by desire for and pleasure in a relationship of imposed helplessness and extreme abuse

there is no cultural context wherein an evil personality will not be socially destructive force, even though there may be organizations, such as the mafia or isis, where evil people are put to use

now, you might say there is a malevolent undertone to slavery, but you could also you see how being born into a slave owning culture one might accept it simply as a condition of life and "make the most of it"

in fact there are plenty of examples of slaves living pretty good lives

theres no way that anyone could witness evil and not recognize it as destructive

a slave owner who simply enjoyed hurting people because thats what he likes to do, would torture and mutilate his slaves simply simply because he likes to do it

you can see how that would be acting from a different set of motives and impulses than a slave owner who treated his slaves more like live-in employees - people over whom he was in charge but also for whom he was responsible

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote: being that psychopathy is an abnormal state of being that exists outside the bounds of what our species has defined as acceptable or normal behavior. Now if one wants to call that abnormal state “evil” I think that is ok as well. It is a definition we use to qualify that state of mind. However outside the bounds of our species I don’t think that would apply. Meaning that evil does not exist “out there”. It only exists as a definition as we have defined it for a particular behavior we find outside normal bounds but not as an absolute in any form.

hot and cold are subjective experiences too, but only to a point

a native of siberia will have a different idea of what is hot and cold than a native of thailand, and individuals within each have different tolerances relative to one another

but there is an limit to the temperature that the human body can survive in either direction

malevolence is the same way
there is a limit to how much malevolence a person or a society can withstand

we have different tolerance levels as individuals but eventually there is breaking point

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote: There is a difference between an emotional state and a mental state. Emotions are characterized by moods. Emotional states themselves are brought on through chemical and hormonal interactions in the brain and body. Emotions like love and hate are complex long lasting while moods can be fleeting. However when it comes to conditions like psychopathy that is a state of mind that in fact does not allow emotion or mood to operate normally or even at all. It’s the lack of these things that causes aberrant behavior – the inability to produce these brain states. Emotion and mood and psychopathy are all valid brain states, however Evil is not a valid brain state.

youre taking one element of one kind of pathology and using it as an umbrella

the man in the first video experienced a huge emotional charge at sexually abusing his victims

elliot roger was driven to revenge by the intensity of his emotional resentment

emotions are a fundamental component of motives - just look at the words

emotion - emote - emotive - motive - motivation

a person who is highly motivated to inflict suffering is evil and impose victimization is, by definition, evil

evil people exist

evil exists

LOL, wow lots of stuff here. Let me see if I can do some of your comments justice.

OB1Shinobi wrote: if there are "supernatural" forces then i would think evil to be one, but i have no proof of supernatural forces and i dont make a claim that any exist

I think we can agree on that point. However some of your following comments bring that into question as well. I will expand on that further down however.

OB1Shinobi wrote: i respond to the assertion that "evil doesnt exist" or "theres no such thing as evil" because i think that this assertion is factually incorrect -by definition if nothing else- and also i consider it socially irresponsible

This is an interesting thought. I think there is a mutual exclusion between accepting social responsibility and denying the concept of evil. However I can see the point from a certain point of view if one uses a position of denying the concept of evil to justify deviant or violent or otherwise criminal behavior.

However that’s not what I’m saying here. What I am saying is that the concept of Evil in the context of an absolute position in reality does not exist. But that in no way excludes us from our social responsibility to be ever vigilant of deviant violent behavior against ourselves or others. In fact for me the idea that there are no absolutes and thus no absolute authority to manage those absolutes gives even more credence to the idea that we as a sentient species need to be hyper-vigilant. Because we have been given faculties like compassion and empathy we have in ingrained social responsibility to care for and protect every other form of life that we may encounter at every opportunity that presents itself.

OB1Shinobi wrote: for the purposes of being understood, when i say "manifest evil" i mean it in the same way i might say to "manifest courage" - to manifest it is to draw it out of the Potential that exists within the psyche.
that it can be tapped into is proof that it is real, and since we ourselves are "natural forces or "forces of nature" or at least we are "natural" then to my way of thinking, whatever is real for us, is by definition, also a real force of nature or a natural occurrence, even if it is only relevant to the human specific domain of reality

Here’s where your concepts start to go off the rails a bit for me. You say that Evil is not a force above and yet you define it as something that can be manifest here. I think I understand the concept you’re trying to convey though. What is actually being manifested is the deviant behavior which is facilitated by an abnormal or deviant brain function. This is a choice by the individual to perform an action contrary to an otherwise normal capacity for empathy. The deviants thought process is one that justifies his behavior because he is lacking the facilities to tell him otherwise. It is the combination of the mental state in conjunction with the physical act that you refer to colloquially as a “manifestation of evil”.

If that is the case I can get behind that. However your further assertion that this can be defined a universal or absolute phenomenon is where I must beg to differ.

OB1Shinobi wrote: this another place is where it becomes useful to make a comparison to a force of nature - "hot" and "cold" are also subjective thing thats we each decide for ourselves - but only to a point…

well, i believe that malevolence is the same way: human beings, as individuals and as societies, have an eventual fatal threshold for malevolence, even if that threshold hasnt been scientifically determined yet

and that threshold is what i think of as the "universal standard" for evil, though it cannot be precisely articulated

I don’t think you can ever define any concept like this in terms of universal or absolute. In fact you can find no absolutes anyplace in nature. Neither in abstract concepts like numbers or in physical objects properties like size or shape and I don’t think you can apply an absolute standard to evil either. Your example of hot and cold are a case in point. There is no absoulute heat and there is no absolute cold. Now we as humans may have extremes that we can not exist beyond but that would even be a different number from human to human. And outside our species others can experience much greater ranges.

To take this one step further the universe itself does not experience even absolute zero. A system at absolute zero still possesses quantum mechanical zero-point energy, the energy of its ground state at absolute zero. The kinetic energy of the ground state cannot be removed. How about the speed of light? Sure for physical objects but what about quantum objects. Quantum entanglement allows particle’s to instantly interact with one another at any distance seemingly breaking the light speed barrier. There are no absolutes in any aspect of nature so why should be assume that this would not be the case for a concept like “evil?” what it comes down to for me is that evil is a subjective thing for us in this reality - this nature as you will. And as creatures of nature and bound by its laws, I think we can apply the same logic to Evil.

OB1Shinobi wrote: ive thought about this girl a lot and this is what i have to say about your question: one of the most tragic elements of the phenomenon of evil is that it infects its victims so that victims become perpetrators of further evil

Here is another example where you seem to say that evil is some non-physical substance that can be transferred from individual to individual. If this can be transferred then what vehicle is used to transfer it? How does the “Manifest evil” move from one person to another? Wouldn’t a better explanation be that the physical experience alone of the victim at a critical time in development would be a valid mechanism to stunt their mental growth so to speak? It’s not the transference of the malady of Evil. It’s just the fact that in the context of a physical reality some process of their brain was damaged in some way not unlike a physical disease would cause some defect in the body.

This is actually an interesting concept surrounding the nature of consciousness. I’m currently reading a book by Suzanne Cunningham entitles “What is a Mind”. It goes into concepts of consciousness and explores the idea that our conscious selves are actually the product of evolution just as we as a species are. It talks about the idea the consciousness is not one thing but an entire collection of different processes and systems all intertwined that work together to form our mental selves. Under this paradigm it’s easy to see that other animals may have developed some similar ones to us as well as different ones and that they may experience consciousness in a different way than we do. Anyway I found that interesting because it really drives home the concept for me that maybe some of those mental process can be affected by a specific trauma in a similar way that a certain system in the body might be by a specific disease.

This concept really blends into the whole animal discussion as well. Their Consciousness process differ from ours enough that we can’t hold them to the same standards as we would others in our species. I won’t go into that to much more as I agree with a lot of your assessment there

OB1Shinobi wrote: it is this malevolence that i am attempting to isolate as the definitive component of "evil"

This is the thing that I think you will never find because I do not believe that it exists. It seems you are trying to pull that component of absolute evil out of reality in a similar manner to what Dr Jekyll attempted to do with Mr Hyde. However it is the stuff of fantasy and wishful thinking. It would be nice if the universe were so neatly assembled that we could do this but unfortunately it’s just not. We can’t have ecstasy without suffering as they are two intricately manifested components of the same thing and neither one knows an absolute bound. Instead we are relegated to watching the shadows on the wall and making our best subjective guess as to its nature.

So i had another thought while reviewing some our comments. I may have mis-charaterized your concept of evil. I defined it as something you consider the combination of mental state and action. However i feel i may have overstepped my bounds in this. So i have to ask, how would you define evil? As the combination of the mental state and an associated action of malevelence against another life form? Or would you define evil as just the brain state alone irrelevant of the fact that an act of malevelence was committed or not?

If its the second and not the first then that really mirrors a concept found in christianity that says "if you lust after someone in your heart you have already committed the sin of adultry no matter whether you carry out the action or not".

If your definotion is that closer to the bible that radically alters my response - lol. So i am curious as to how you defined it so i would not misunderstand.

Chaotic good. I have broken laws to bring about a good change.

And there isnt much stopping me from breaking more laws to bring about a good change