Calling evil "good" and good "evil"

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I have to add as a separate thought as well - scarcity is a big problem and when a culture is backward or impoverished it can essentially turn us to eugenics and might-makes-right. Problems happen at both ends I suppose, just in different ways.

All good arguments, except that a) I don't see that good and evil -if done with an eye to the likely consequences- lead directly back to one another except in the sense that good encourages evil men to take avantage of the surplus resources while evil encourages good people to alleviate its effects, and b) that Nietzsche had a convincing defence for the mystical nature of his view that his own perspective was the 'best' perspective - namely that his perspective is simply 'cooler' (in what you might call a 'high-school jock' kind of way) than all other possible perspectices. -The word 'cool' in its recent uses seems to mean 'adapted to life' when you think about it.- It's fairly well-argued, as I've explained, and also meets the typical modern scientist's requirement that we also want it to be false, although this, ofcourse, speaks less of its actual 'truth' or 'falsehood' and could be a subconscious double-bluff. {I.e. intellectuals in our cultures are so worried about subconsciously arguing a position out of desire for its truth that they automatically gravitate to the position they don't want to be true to protect themselves from this effect - as well as from dissappointment.}

Given my point a), if iamnotaparakeet is also viewing 'good' and 'evil' as intentions synchronised with actions via a full calculation of their likely outcome, he may be viewing them as actions that lead to a surplus of either happiness or suffering - the actual world rather than a concept; whether even this narrow definition aligns with what is conventionally seen as good and bad is a separate question, as Nietzsche and others have shown. In other words, we can't tell whether 'evil' has been a net force for good and 'good' a net force for ill.

I take it you're rererring to religious beliefs, i.e. that belief in a universal force for good leads to a distorted view of what is good in a concrete sense and to the 'evils' of fanaticism and dissappointment when the truth that the belief may be false dawns on people with it, first subconsciously and then consciously. It's interesting how, in the US atleast, religious types tend to feel less needy of already-existing 'social good' such as welfare benefits, having their beliefs to fall back on instead - Libertarianism seems likely to 'work', psychologically, only for the rich in a society in which people are, as you point out in a later post, unnaccustomed to dealing with the underlying real world of individual survival.

The denial of subjective experience, as 'argued' (i.e. effectively asserted dogmatically by ignoring self-evident objections) by the likes of Dan Dennett, is just one of those 'black is white' statements that we're all expected to swallow by one or other elite. Coming form a different cultural sphere, a Russian scientist agreed with his interviewer, in a doc I saw the other day, that subjective experiences are, to self-honest human beings atleast, *more* real than the outside world.

So morality is atleast worth thinking about to anyone who'se interested. My point about Marx is that it seems to have been his bitterness at the basic conditions of existence, rather than a big-hearted wish for everyone to be relieved of their degradations, that drove him to his 'work', meaning that even his intentions were less than good.

P.s. I think you misunderstand the bible quote, in its usual sense atleast - In the Shakespearian English of the time of the Bible's standardised translation into English, 'woe unto' implies a wish for someone to be stopped in their tracks and possibly for them to suffer consequences, in other words that they have done something wrong and should be treated accordingly. Just saying that someone would suffer unpleasant consequences would be written as something like 'woe betide them'.

Actually I'd contend that its pronounced at both ends of what we've currently decided on as a political spectrum. You're correct about the right-of-center component of it, the left-of-center component is the dreamy-eyed utopian progressive left who are equally adamant to the religious right about their own forms of make-believe.

First hand experiences seem more real, but they could be hallucination. The seeming reality of experience does not establish its veracity. For crazy people, their delusions are as real as rain. And the question of "self honesty" is always an open question. Is the man who believes he is Jesus Christ dishonest or is he merely deluded.

ruveyn

You're sounding inconsistent here - What else do you expect to make right, in the final analysis, if not might?

Yes - In the sense of their belief that throwing money - especially 'borrowed' (i.e. fabricated) money - at people and their problems will "make it all better" - This is being disproven with every year that passes, even as the real solution (a society in which everyone's talents are atleast able to be channelled into self-sufficiency and rewardable contributions) drifts progressively further away.

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Hallucinations are real experiences that just lack direct object referents in the physical world. Experience is real because its existence is proven by purely empirical means ('a priori'), not because it necessarily corresponds with the reast of reality. Whether the basis of that existence is physical in the usual sense is neither here nor there, as I'm using a straightforward/commonsense definition of real objects as things that *are*, rather than the misleading definition (used by scientists, buddhists, and others) of real objects as things that boil down to a universal 'substance' of some kind or other. In your misreading of my post, you used the old and even narrower definition of real objects as things which correspond *at all levels* - in imagination as well as in substance - with physical matter.

You can't easily hallucinate a hallucination focourse; this would in any case be a further (subjective) abstraction/dilution of reality rather than its absence. In the case of the 'Jesus Complex', there may be another form of *real* subconscious dishonesty at work, and there may also be a *real* (likely schizophrenic or manic) experience of feeling special in a way that seems similar to one's cuturally-fabricated image of 'Jesus'.

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It really depends who wields the power whether might makes 'good' or 'evil'. Having a broad, organized, representative democracy usually works out for the better. Living under local warlords; very mixed bag and even for living under a war lord who wants 'good' its still an austere and militarized state of living because you're constantly fighting off thugs and bandits that may be as or more powerful than your own group.

Local warlords don't have the power to 'make might right', as their being warlords mean that their power is contested. The power of corporations, on the other hand, is not even contestable, as we need their stuff. In any case, what *is* is more important and interesting_

Mmm...I'd debate that in this sense; corporations still have to compete against one another, have different niches to fill in the same fields, and just like a competitor can out-corner them they can also practice better customer service, treat their employees better, make better product, all of these things can make them both lose sales and human capital. Stakeholders such as shareholders, media, local government, etc. also have a great deal of control in whether or not a corporation sinks or swims.

I don't mean to say this is getting pulled off track but, when I was making the initial point about evil coming from society unraveling I was denoting evil in that sense coming from environmental stresses that essentially force people to be at odds with each other and which creates a net utilitarian evil. Again, I don't believe at all in free will, I'd assert that human beings are merely passthrough entities (albeit complex), and that addressing endemic/systematic evil (systematic to nature) is best done by us understanding the rules - knowing that we cannot simply remove or wish away the fundamental rules or axioms (until such a day where we can genetically rebuild ourselves to not need food, not need sex, not need status, all kinds of other Darwinian elements that have us also jousting over who has better genetics no matter what the climate and with all these things gone still have a society strong enough to exist; if we *ever* find a way of liberating ourselves from the endemic genetic/evolutionary struggle I really doubt it will be this millennium).

Your early comments are all very well in the case of new markets, where people don't yet feel (rightly or wrongly) that they *need* the product and where monopolies have not yet had the chance to develop. Now that banks are not lending, it is new markets that have little chance to develop, and we can all see that well-established and unregulated capitalism has destroyed itself in the west through monopolisation, particularly given that corporations are now the only major sources of capital. So, although I'm no lefty, I'd argue that a lot of the practices you mentioned are no longer needed. Society IS unravelling and creating your 'net utilitarian evil', which may still benefit the species in evolutionary terms.

Interesting - albeit tangential - comments about free will. - I've always experienced myself as a container 'passed through', as you put it, by contents, perhaps because my autism leaves me without an NT's high level of content (as this must obscure the fact that we all identify with the sense of 'container' rather than 'contents' at a deep level). The problem with imagining we already have even the will to overcome the 'evil' universe that created us is self-explanatory; Richard Dawkins' argument at the end of 'The Selfish Gene' is self-defeating, since if we are the product of 'selfish genes' alone, how can we possibly wish to challenge our own selfishness?

To me, the only option seems to be to somehow escape the sense and reality of being an individual self with particular concerns; a free will would then perhaps be no will at all_ And autism's just an inversion of that obscure, ominous, (and other words-beginning-with-'o'-!) vision - Severely autistic people have written about the whole world appearing as temporary extensions with themselves as intentional awareness at the centre, rather than the whole world appearing to be intentional awareness (there's a lot in and behind it!) with themselves as temporary extensions.

Better not to begin??

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The February 2002 Watchtower, page 9, reads:

In keeping with those words here are a few reference scriptures.

Proverbs 17:15:

Anyone pronouncing the wicked one righteous and anyone pronouncing the righteous one wicked — even both of them are something detestable to Jehovah.

Malachi 2:17:

“YOU people have made Jehovah weary by YOUR words, and YOU have said, ‘In what way have we made [him] weary?’ By YOUR saying, ‘Everyone that is doing bad is good in the eyes of Jehovah, and in such ones he himself has taken delight’; or, ‘Where is the God of justice?’”

But what exactly would be considered "bad is good" in God's eyes?

Romans 1:24-25

Therefore God, in keeping with the desires of their hearts, gave them up to uncleanness, that their bodies might be dishonored among them, even those who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and venerated and rendered sacred service to the creation rather than the One who created, who is blessed forever. Amen.

Romans 1:28-31

God gave them up to a disapproved mental state, to do the things not fitting, filled as they were with all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, badness, being full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malicious disposition, being whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, insolent, haughty, self-assuming, inventors of injurious things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, false to agreements, having no natural affection, merciless.

2 Timothy 3:2-5

For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, self-assuming, haughty, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, disloyal, having no natural affection, not open to any agreement, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, without love of goodness, betrayers, headstrong, puffed up [with pride], lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God, having a form of godly devotion but proving false to its power

Galatians 5:19-21

Now the works of the flesh are manifest, and they are fornication, uncleanness, loose conduct, idolatry, practice of spiritism, enmities, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, contentions, divisions, sects, envies, drunken bouts, revelries, and things like these. As to these things I am forewarning YOU, the same way as I did forewarn YOU, that those who practice such things will not inherit God’s kingdom.

Actually, TechStep, your earlier post that I mentioned got me thinking - For intelligent apes atleast, aren't the individuals most likely to survive and reproduce in an evolution-provocative crisis both the genetically strongest AND the genetically weakest of those who were likely to reproduce? - The strongest because they're the most adaptive to any environment, and the weakest because they've had to continually try and further adapt to the environment they're already in, giving them the practice needed.

I thought along the same lines last Autumn/Fall, while everyone was telling me how awful they imagined my brain tumour removal op and recovery to be - With all my experience of growing up with an autism that clashed not only with human society but also with my own somewhat arty-farty/literary-oriented (i.e. basically people-centred) personality, the term 'walk in the park' or even 'teaching granny to suck eggs' felt like more fitting descriptions, as I geared up yet again to work out how to survive with my dignity intact. I wouldn't likely survive a sudden apocalypse, but it's the 'squeezed middle' - those who've only just managed to adapt and make a comfortable nest in our already cosseted societies - who have most to lose and who are likely to lose the most will-to-live in the coming years of persisting economic decline in the West, particularly those more adapted to stable societies.

I wonder if the 'imperfection' we see in evolution - appendices and what have you - is partly down to this struggle of the downtrodden set against the complacency of the middle-ranking-?_

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There is no such thing as good or evil.

Look at terrorism. To many, they are evil people killing for the sake of it. To others, they are fighting to get foreign oppressors out of their lands. So how can they be called evil? They aren't doing anything most people wouldn't.