What is Good and what is Evil?

gozpel

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You read horror stories about this and that.
You read heartwarming stories about this and that.

Sometimes they're linked, being evil for the better good or the other way around.

People nowadays have access to "almost" everything that happens on this planet, and now and again you just get caught in it. Like the "cannibal" story. Insane for me, but for others, maybe it's normality. Can we blame everything on drugs, bad upbringing and so on?

If the drugs are the mechanical way to make ppl to behave like this, there must be a trigger in our brains to make anyone do this. Caveman stuff.

Opposite, sits the ppl that go out their way and normal life to help others, they travel to countries raged with wars and badness, but still go on.

What drives these people? What motivations are there to maybe get yourself killed to save a child. What motivations are there for some mass-murderers to sit on a roof and snipe people down?

We can't use God or Drugs in this discussion, it has to be more basic. You with experience of either side, please explain to me in basic terms, how and why are people so different? Are we still cavepeople?
 
Let's say this discussion lasts and last and lasts: we would arrive to this conclusion:

1: If God exists, God is the supreme goodness, and evil doesn't exist, for the evil is only the absence of good (as light with obscurity)

2: If God doesn't exist, everything is relative and you can't discuss something so general (sad)
 
What if the god is evil?

I think we are still cavemen. Haven't got enough time to get used to larger than tribal communities.
 
I don't see how the absence of God means that everything is relative.
 
I don't see how the presence of God means that things aren't relative.
 
2: If God doesn't exist, everything is relative and you can't discuss something so general (sad)

I never understood this concept. Why does the absence of a God mean that Good and Evil doesn't exist? Why must positive and negative be designed by a higher being?
 
"If god does not exist then everything is allowed" F. Dostoevsky.

Generally i would say that indeed, if a higher order of some sort (regardless of whether we can grasp it) does not exist, having some ethical variable of what becomes of someone in a continuation of life, and/or if no other life exists, then people do not really have deeper reasons to be "good". Of course most people are not good anyway, but chances are they're neither bad. They are just shades of gray, which is normal.

If we kill the idea of god (as Nietzsche did) we run the serious risk of needing to create some other constant to justify any sort of ethical behavior or lack of it. Again it seems to me that most people do good when they feel it is either beneficial directly to them, or beneficial in some indirect, theorized way.

Some people are "evil", but Plato argued that those who are evil are so out of ignorance of what good is. Maybe one could argue also that they may be evil out of the view that they cannot (for whatever reason) afford to be good. Teenagers come to mind; we all know how many people in that age tried to be "bad", for varying degrees of conscious reasoning.

And we are still cave-people, only that cave-people are not as simple as you might think. Afterall what is so simple about the pillar of a house? Sure it is not an internal garden, and neither is it a loft with secrets, but it remains something which can never be taken out, unlike those other more finessed attributes.
 
I don't think so. One must be good, because of good itself. What I mean is, that to be good is desirable by itself. To be good should not be on the condition of a better life, should not be on the condition of self-interest. People should be good. Period.
 
I don't think so. One must be good, because of good itself. What I mean is, that to be good is desirable by itself. To be good should not be on the condition of a better life, should not be on the condition of self-interest. People should be good. Period.

This "must" is suspicious in my view. Afterall what is a "must" if not a persistance of a predisposition, having negated and lost the ability to examine what it was made of?

Then again Antigone in the famous play claimed that "i was born to love and not to hate". And i too agree to some degree that it is more "natural" to be good, than evil. But probably it is more free to be able to choose (again to a degree) what you are (?)
 
Oh, certainly. I in fact meant that there should be no motivation for being good other than being good by itself.
 
I can agree with that. In my own impression, being "good" allows more freely for development of one's psyche to positive directions.

Although take writing for example: there are two main emotions used to propel (good) writing: love and anger. One positive, (in greek the term for this love is 'agape') and one negative. I have writen a lot of work using anger, but love can accomplish something to, for example the love of intellectuality can allow one to express some complicated meaning in a manner which is enjoyable to read.
 
I think that people are good or bad based on their actions.
 
I don't think that there are such things as good and evil, or at least not in the sense implied here. To me, that implies some extra-perspectival measure against which beings or their actions can be judged, which I don't think is possible. There's actions or patterns of behaviour which are desirable or advisable, and there are others which are not, and that's about the end of it.
 
"If god does not exist then everything is allowed" F. Dostoevsky.

Generally i would say that indeed, if a higher order of some sort (regardless of whether we can grasp it) does not exist, having some ethical variable of what becomes of someone in a continuation of life, and/or if no other life exists, then people do not really have deeper reasons to be "good".
I am more motivated to do good for my fellow human beings because they are fellow human beings than being good because some divine authority requires me to do so with the motivator that if I am good I will be rewarded or not punished in some way.

Doing good because you are forced to do so is doing good out of self-preservation. Posing that's the only way we would be able to figure out what's good and evil is an incredibly cynical view on life. Why can't one use the society we live in and the benefits of doing good for that society as a yardstick for doing good. Instead of doing good out of self-preservation it becomes doing good for general well-being, which includes your own.
 
I am more motivated to do good for my fellow human beings because they are fellow human beings than being good because some divine authority requires me to do so with the motivator that if I am good I will be rewarded or not punished in some way.

Doing good because you are forced to do so is doing good out of self-preservation. Posing that's the only way we would be able to figure out what's good and evil is an incredibly cynical view on life. Why can't one use the society we live in and the benefits of doing good for that society as a yardstick for doing good. Instead of doing good out of self-preservation it becomes doing good for general well-being, which includes your own.

Surely it makes sense to do good, as you suggested, out of the (albeit theoretical to some degree) trust that it improves the society you are in, and therefore again returns possibly to you again. However i was under the impression the OP was about good and evil presented as choices in the case of a dilemma. If such a state exists then obviously it has manifested itself out of the negation of trust in society.

I am not claiming that there should be no trust in society. Obviously if one does not trust anyone, at all, he is faced with many problems. A small degree of trust is probably recommended, else one will have to deal with a lot of problems generated by that pronounced mistrust.
 
If we kill the idea of god (as Nietzsche did) we run the serious risk of needing to create some other constant to justify any sort of ethical behavior or lack of it.

Thankfully a lot of us humans have an internal moral compass and a sense of wanting to do good in the world, instead of bad.

Those who rely on a supernatural agent to keep them in check are the real worry - what happens once they realize that the supernatural agent doesn't exist?
 
Mayhem :)

However a moral compass is one thing, and quite another a constant by which you set your behavior when you want to examine the reasons behind why you have the tendancy to do so.

Although i got to say i faced myriads of problems when trying -int he distant past-to be bad, so i am not that opposed to being good out of general reasons/urges.
 
What drives these people? What motivations are there to maybe get yourself killed to save a child.

Have you ever taken care of a child? They can be pretty damn adorable.

What motivations are there for some mass-murderers to sit on a roof and snipe people down?

What if there was some group that beat on you physically and emotionally, every day, with no mercy. Wouldn't you be mad as hell and filled with hate? Well for some people who perceive themselves (and usually are) victims of abuse, that group of hated people is called "people" or "women" or "multiculturalists" or whatever. (Misidentification of the abuser can result from insanity. And abuse is a leading cause of insanity.)
 
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