On the Subject of Evil

[mast]

I felt this thread belonged in Philosophy but may be better suited for General.

Thread inspired by a chat that occurred in chat awhile back. Do you believe Evil exists? Is it a divine or supernatural phenomenon or merely extreme selfishness?

Personally I do not believe Evil exists but would love to hear other perspectives.

 

[Vaporweeb]

Evil can only be defined by humans, so no, I don't think it "exists" beyond a human understanding of it. That is, it's not some inherent property of the universe or something.

Not to say that things cannot be called "evil" as we define it, if that makes any sense (i.e. "evil"=selfish, violent, etc.)

 

[Deleted member 1930]

of course evil exists

widely documented in history. I mean, chinese cultural revolution, the holocaust, the holodomir....i mean....

 

[That1Producer]

I felt this thread belonged in Philosophy but may be better suited for General.

Thread inspired by a chat that occurred in chat awhile back. Do you believe Evil exists? Is it a divine or supernatural phenomenon or merely extreme selfishness?

Personally I do not believe Evil exists but would love to hear other perspectives.

I've known mfs that straight up admitted to me that the only thing that keeps them going in life is doing bad shit. Not once did it ever seem like extreme selfishness but instead just pure bad vibes. But you know I don't think anyone here or really anyone around you will change your mind if you think it don't exist.

 

[naa]

I think it's a concept, and what Evil means to each individual person is pretty variable. It's hard to measure or quantify something like that. I'm not sure if I could say that it exists or not, I don't think there is one clear, objective reality to most things, but especially things like this.

I think what I could say is that it exists to some people, and not to others. If Evil exists for you, and is something tangible and real for you, then you're not wrong for acknowledging that. Similarly, if Evil doesn't exist as a tangible, real thing for you, then you're not wrong for acknowledging that either. Both these ways of experiencing the world can coexist, they're both correct.

I don't think Evil exists for me personally. I've never really related to the experience of Evil being real, I think a lot of people do horrible, reprehensible things, or legit only get joy out of making others feel like shit, or single-mindedly just fuck people over. I've never thought to contextualize it as Evil, though? Just fuckin' bad vibes that might be more complex than that but I think if I read into it I'd feel worse off for it, so I don't. It might be kind of a semantic difference but Evil feels borderline supernatural as a concept to me, I guess? I get that it's reality for some people though, and that's real and correct even if it's not reality for me.

Evil is a very intense idea that's very hard for me to wrap my brain around, so I don't really think about things as Evil. I've also just never really thought about things that way, even as a kid.

 

[Deleted member 2040]

Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals flipped my conception of good and evil on it's head and stands as a monument in his unique philosophy. It's well worth the effort to try and understand. It's introduced in Beyond Good and Evil and explored in depth in Genealogy of Morals. For those interested, this guide does a good job delineating his interesting perspective on Master Slave morality, which is quite profound.

Nietzsche's Master-Slave Morality

 

[Merzcat]

There is evil and then there is natural aggression.
A human will walk up to a small child smiling, letting the child warm up to them and then suddenly the adult will start clubbing the kid on the head splattering his brain matter all over the place, a cat wouldn't do that.
It's not normal for non-human animals to exhibit such behavior, and as far as I know only certain ape-like creatures have an inclination for violence for violences sake.
Natural aggression would be taking a group of people hostage and shooting a few in the head because you needed to buy a PS5 for the holidays.
So I guess you could say evil is a byproduct of higher consciousness, once you reach a certain level of awareness it's easy to fall into sado masochistic type stuff.

 

[RAVEN死98]

"People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls." - Carl Jung
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkoB-hS1sts

 

[Deleted member 1930]

There is evil and then there is natural aggression.
A human will walk up to a small child smiling, letting the child warm up to them and then suddenly the adult will start clubbing the kid on the head splattering his brain matter all over the place, a cat wouldn't do that.
It's not normal for non-human animals to exhibit such behavior, and as far as I know only certain ape-like creatures have an inclination for violence for violences sake.
Natural aggression would be taking a group of people hostage and shooting a few in the head because you needed to buy a PS5 for the holidays.
So I guess you could say evil is a byproduct of higher consciousness, once you reach a certain level of awareness it's easy to fall into sado masochistic type stuff.

satan has no reason to tell a cat to do such a thing like he does with people

evil exists, demons exist

 

[Mеченый Яков]

 

[Jessica3cho雪血⊜青意]

Evil is subjective and thus exists solely in the eye of the beholder (or maybe the Eye of Sauron).

 

[ECHETLAEUS]

The good and the evil exists, but only for humans because we have logic, we have consciousness and we are destined for a more human life by limiting animal instincts, this is our potential. The good and the evil they cant be valid to the animals because they behave according to their nature and their survival insticts. They may have emotions and a kind of language and soul but the animals they dont have the potential that humans have. I believe that both good and evil are normal for the human nature. Both of them are important for the existence of eachother. What is the good without the existence of the evil and what is evil without the existence of the good? The right is to have a balance between good and evil.