crazyheart's picture

crazyheart

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Evil vs Ill

I know that there are people across the world who are evil (but I can say that in my life I have not met many)

 

There are also ill people who do evil things. But does that make them evil? ( If so, I have met many in my life).

 

So when does ill become evil?

 

Just pondering after the shooting at Fort Bragg.

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Elanorgold's picture

Elanorgold

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I don't really know. Maybe you have to be deeply intrenched in crime and psychology to have an inkling about it. A position I wouldn't want to be in. Imagine how haunted people in those jobs must be.

Witch's picture

Witch

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My faith does not contain the duality of absolute Evil vs absolute Good, therefore we don't have the concept of evil. We cannot blame any outside force when we cause harm by intent, we can only blame ourselves

crazyheart's picture

crazyheart

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Edit - Fort Hood

Olivet_Sarah's picture

Olivet_Sarah

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My opinion is that evil comes from illness. There are absolutely evil actions - the Holocaust as a very clear one, the Sept. 11 attacks, various shootings at schools/on military bases, etc. And I do believe perpetrators of those actions do need to be faced with consequences (eg jail, etc.) for the safety of society, and so the lesson is never taught that such actions are any less than evil. However, anyone who thinks that murder is a way of dealing with an argument (with the very possible exception being where it has turned deadly violent and you are acting in self defense, for example), or who would wipe out an entire race or people because of what a few might or might not represent, or what have you, by definition is not thinking with a healthy, normal human brain. It is when such evil goes unpunished and is seen as in fact a strengthening virtue (for example, whisking Hitler into power in 1930s Germany) that otherwise healthy people begin to feel that those evil concepts are perhaps right.

 

There is the legal definition of insanity, but I am almost certain that almost anyone who in cold blood has committed crimes rather than go through a divorce, go on welfare/ask for help, live with acceptance of others of other races/religions/ethnicities, what have you, has some impediment on how they see the world. Again - doesn't make me a bleeding heart, the world still needs to be protected. But they need help as well. While crime is almost never an appropriate response, there are very few crimes which occur for absolutely no reason with absolutely no provocation from absolutely nowhere, it is often simply an indication of an inability to cope within normal human boundaries. And where it is just sort of random and in cold blood, often that is an illness too, referred to as sociopathy or psychopathy.

SLJudds's picture

SLJudds

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The fascinating about the Ft. Bragg tragedy is that the perp is a psychiatrist.

Wonderingg's picture

Wonderingg

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Witch wrote:

My faith does not contain the duality of absolute Evil vs absolute Good, therefore we don't have the concept of evil. We cannot blame any outside force when we cause harm by intent, we can only blame ourselves

I mostly agree with you Witch, (which is odd) but what about "good" and "evil" as a human condition, or "nature" instead of an outside force? Interested to hear your opinion of the yin/yang idea.

Aresthena's picture

Aresthena

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There is no set outer force that leads to evil, in my opinion. Evil may as well be a stereotype. It mainly derives from individuals who decide to follow a certain darkness in their minds and hearts. No one can truly be evil if they feel remorse, and remorse is something certain people do not possess.

And how would ill fit into the equation? It very much depends. We cannot predict what something will lead to the next, it just happens. If you mean physically ill, like cancer for example, I have Jigsaw (John Kramer) in mind. If this is not what you are referring to, please correct me.

LBmuskoka's picture

LBmuskoka

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Witch wrote:

My faith does not contain the duality of absolute Evil vs absolute Good, therefore we don't have the concept of evil. We cannot blame any outside force when we cause harm by intent, we can only blame ourselves

 

Bears repeating.

 

I have found that what constitutes evil is often very personal.  For Americans the bombing of New York city was an evil act, for the perpetrators it was the consequences of war.

 

J. Robert Oppenheimer was one of the creators of the atom bomb.  To the American military he was a brilliant genius.  To the Japanese he was evil.  To Oppenheimer himself he was a scientist who in the end lobbied for arms control and this act led the American military to view him as evil.  One man, one lifetime; hero and devil.

 

Is it evil to know that millions of people suffer needlessly and do nothing?  Is it evil to grant permission via a check mark on a ballot to agencies to kill people in a different country?

 

Evil is easy to identify when it is a concrete act.  It is much harder when viewed in the abstract.

 

My personal take, we are all capable of being heroes and devils depending on the situation we find ourselves in.  I think for some that realization can lead to either madness or badness and often both.

 

 

LB


If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Panentheism's picture

Panentheism

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Witch sends into a direction that is important - to speak of evil as external force is not helpful.  What we do know that there is evil - things that ought not be.  It can come from ideas, built into systems of organization, it can come from illness, it can come from experience.  It does not help to reduce it to one cause like illness, there are some who just love to cause distruction and there are ideas that send us toward distruction. 

 

One of the things we know from systems theory is that when a bad action or idea gets embedded into a system it is hard to root out. 

 

One of the bad ideas is there is a force called evil for it removes human agency.  While some ideas are so powerful in a negative outcome they appear to be external because of their impact, but to locate that in a demonic force is misplaced.  What the metaphor of demonic means it has control of us but it is not a real demon in the sense of an actual entity.

Dcn. Jae's picture

Dcn. Jae

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Doing evil things does not make a person evil. They can be an indication that the person is evil. There are good people who are ill and there are evil people who are ill. There are good people who are healthy and there are evil people who are healthy.

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