Being despicable vs. doing despicable things

[UtahDan]

I also believe evil to exist in the world. Those that don't believe in a God, will refute that and think it is silly. So, in that regard that I believe in a God, and therefore believe in an evil presence in the world....my dilemma is just "when does evil enter into a person and take hold of and influence their decisions and behavior"?

This is the binary religious view that I have a problem with and why I prefer a dual nature view. If you imagine that a person is under the influence of a evil spirit, or that evil has entered into them or that they have succumbed to evil then I think you have an excuse to treat them in an extreme way which becomes more of a problem the more broadly you define what is evil. This is the impulse that led to the atrocities of the Inquisition. The same impulse, though an infinitely toned down version of it, leads people to reject friends and family members over issues of orthodoxy and all sorts of religions and religious settings.

That is why I say that for me I find it best to be wiling to condemn, and even stigmatize and negatively label, that which is truly bad, while at the same time being conservative about what I do that over and never in any case losing sight of a person's humanity. And I don't see the subjectivity and difficulty of determining what is "truly bad" as a sufficient reason to never stigmatize or label.

[Brian]

You can make choices without judging something as good or evil.


That's one of the takeaways from the parable in Eden. Start labeling things as good or evil, and you are dead.

[jay santos]

my dilemma is just "when does evil enter into a person and take hold of and influence their decisions and behavior"?

I shouted out "Who killed the Kennedy's?" When after all, it was you and me.

[ERCougar]

You can make choices without judging something as good or evil.


That's one of the takeaways from the parable in Eden. Start labeling things as good or evil, and you are dead.

Huh.
There's something deeper and interesting here, but I'm not getting it.
Explain?

[jay santos]

Huh.
There's something deeper and interesting here, but I'm not getting it.
Explain?

Yeah Brian, I've heard this a few times. Where did it originate? I think Fus used to use this, too. Personally, I think it's cockamaney, but I'm curious what the source is.

[Jacob]

Ha! I'm attacked for saying that I haven't seen enough evidence to conclude that Paterno is a really bad guy, for saying that he probably committed no crime, and thinking that the rush to destroy him is a bit overzealous, and then we have someone telling us in this thread that we shouldn't rush to judge Hitler et at. That's great. But I'm not so low as to fall for that one. Get real, man! We judge people all the time, and we should continue to do so. If you can't condemn Hitler, you've got problems.

[jay santos]

Ha! I'm attacked for saying that I haven't seen enough evidence to conclude that Paterno is a really bad guy, for saying that he probably committed no crime, and thinking that the rush to destroy him is a bit overzealous, and then we have someone telling us in this thread that we shouldn't rush to judge Hitler et at. That's great. But I'm not so low as to fall for that one. Get real, man! We judge people all the time, and we should continue to do so. If you can't condemn Hitler, you've got problems.

Define condemn.

Subject to the highest level of consequences that could be given? Sure.
Say what he did was awful? Sure.
Say there's something about his soul that is more evil than you or me? Not sure.

[ERCougar]

Ha! I'm attacked for saying that I haven't seen enough evidence to conclude that Paterno is a really bad guy, for saying that he probably committed no crime, and thinking that the rush to destroy him is a bit overzealous, and then we have someone telling us in this thread that we shouldn't rush to judge Hitler et at. That's great. But I'm not so low as to fall for that one. Get real, man! We judge people all the time, and we should continue to do so. If you can't condemn Hitler, you've got problems.

Since we both come from a Christian background, I'm really curious how you square your statement with the Sermon on the Mount. Is it the JST addition of "unrighteously"? If so, what defines "righteous judgment"?

Hitler is obviously theoretical and is actually easier to "not judge" than a lot of people I run into every day, in that I actually have to act on an ideal rather than just claim it.

[creekster]

What dies judge mean here?

Judge for policy? Sure

Judge for behavior? Yes

Judge for morality? Oui.

Judge for teaching? Correct.

Judge for eternal damnation? Nope, not my gig, but I guess I might be willing to lay some odds for Hitler.

[Brian]

Huh.
There's something deeper and interesting here, but I'm not getting it.
Explain?

God said don't partake of knowledge of good and evil. If you do, you'll die.
Satan shows up and says that there is something wrong with Adam.
God says everything is good, then satan comes and says "you're naked. God will be upset with you."
God made Adam naked, why would he be mad at him?

Satan wants us to judge, try to figure out what is good and what is evil, and put labels on things.
Well, nobody can possibly have such knowledge. How can you know if something is good, or evil? We just don't have all the information required to "know" such a thing.

I don't believe in a devil. I believe that "satan" is a part of our mental makeup. It divides, accuses, puts us down, etc.

I used to get perturbed when "bad" people got away with things. I would rest assured that they would get punished one day. And I felt some satisfaction in that.
Sick thinking.

I dropped that (not all of it of course, but much less now than before), and it feels like a huge weight off me. Feels liberating.

As you mentioned above, what is the point of judging? It doesn't really accomplish anything.
I can make a choice not to listen to country music without thinking that it is evil.

[ERCougar]

God said don't partake of knowledge of good and evil. If you do, you'll die.
Satan shows up and says that there is something wrong with Adam.
God says everything is good, then satan comes and says "you're naked. God will be upset with you."
God made Adam naked, why would he be mad at him?

Satan wants us to judge, try to figure out what is good and what is evil, and put labels on things.
Well, nobody can possibly have such knowledge. How can you know if something is good, or evil? We just don't have all the information required to "know" such a thing.

I don't believe in a devil. I believe that "satan" is a part of our mental makeup. It divides, accuses, puts us down, etc.

I used to get perturbed when "bad" people got away with things. I would rest assured that they would get punished one day. And I felt some satisfaction in that.
Sick thinking.

I dropped that (not all of it of course, but much less now than before), and it feels like a huge weight off me. Feels liberating.

As you mentioned above, what is the point of judging? It doesn't really accomplish anything.
I can make a choice not to listen to country music without thinking that it is evil.

That's an interesting take on the story.
So, is there a point to judging your own actions "good" or "evil"?

[woot]

It seems to me that when we judge a person as being evil, we are assuming that their physiology and experiences are/have been similar enough to our own that they have the same means of judging between right and wrong as we do. Studies have demonstrated that this is very often not the case. Those who gamble away the money that was supposed to be used to support their family, those who are ill-tempered, serial killers, are often found to have some part of their brain that isn't functioning as it should, or at least that don't function in the same way (an important distinction, since it's very difficult to define a "healthy" brain due to almost everyone's brain having some area of overactivity or underactivity).

The same applies to good attributes. The people you know who are very dedicated to their work and seem to always be super productive may just have overactive basal ganglia, to the detriment of other areas in their life.

Who's to say Hitler didn't have some undetected brain damage? Maybe he had an extremely overaction cingulate gyrus that caused him to be unable to "shift gears" away from his hatred? Maybe that was combined some other condition that made him megalomaniac. I don't know. Sure, maybe he was just the evilest person who ever lived, meaning that he clearly understood how evil his actions were at every step of the way. Certainly his actions were indefensible, but I think the vast majority of people would never be capable of doing what he did, and that he was wired in a way that was necessary for his actions to be possible. Combine that with a set of events in his life that caused him to have the desire and opportunity, and you get perhaps the most evil set of actions ever committed by a person. Put any one of us in his exact situation, and I doubt the result is the same. The wiring and the opportunity both have to be there.

Maybe this is all obvious, and my point isn't to try to defend Hitler or anyone else who does evil. I just think it's interesting to contemplate some of the possibilities, given recent insights into how the brain functions.

[FMCoug]

This is really just a restatement of what others have said but the bottom line to me is that there is really no such thing as "good people" or "bad people". There are people. Actions are what define us. Is there some sort of cosmic calculus to say x bad actions = "bad person" vs .y good actions = "good person". Hard for me to fathom. There is good and bad in all of us. Which is why I think all we can ever really focus on is behavior taken on a case by case basis.

JoePa has done some good things in his life. We now find out he has done a horrible thing. So it's hard to say he IS good or bad. We just know the above.

[UtahDan]

This is really just a restatement of what others have said but the bottom line to me is that there is really no such thing as "good people" or "bad people". There are people. Actions are what define us. Is there some sort of cosmic calculus to say x bad actions = "bad person" vs .y good actions = "good person". Hard for me to fathom. There is good and bad in all of us. Which is why I think all we can ever really focus on is behavior taken on a case by case basis.

JoePa has done some good things in his life. We now find out he has done a horrible thing. So it's hard to say he IS good or bad. We just know the above.

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