Good vs Evil.
What is good or evil?
Good. Is it an acceptance of something, an occasion, event, etc that is context related and practically accepted as being of a ‘good’ nature or thing? Or rather good being pejoratively unacceptable and therefore not good and consequently being its opposite, bad or evil; this is assuming that the essence, if there is an essence of good and evil, really exist.
There is in all cultures a measure of acceptance of good deeds and forms that are recognised as such and that there is a counter view of evil deeds / forms being the contrary, which only exist within the over all social context that has been built up over a long period of time and that such forms have for what ever reason been useful. The terms are by their nature located within the cultural construct that defines which is which and are often easier to appreciate as acts of physical actions that places the deed etc within the good vs. bad framework. However given the certainty of human nature and the emotiveness attached to situations, judgemental acts are often based not just on the elements of corporal manifestation but also on religious connotation linked to a tenuous personification of the terms as attached to deity. Can it be that there is no such a thing as the personification of good and evil rather they are solely contextual concepts which are used purely descriptively for deeds that are neither good nor evil but just are and therefore come up against the rules of society only?
The whole discursive process on the existence of good and evil could be curtailed by the simple acceptance that there is no such thing as in personification of good or evil, they do not exist but that there is a created practicality of scenarios onto which the terms are laid in order to distinguish the two and that they only remain open to judgmental direction for as long as the context in which they are fixed remains stable.
In order to try to understand the essence of the terms they have to be given a descriptive noun (good or bad etc) that parcels contextual understanding in a variety of non specific situations so that some mental view can be formed upon which a notion can be applied that puts the words and the situation that is being weighed in a frame that is covered by the term good or evil. Good in English can be expressed in additional descriptive term as: - moral, excellent, superior, good as in god, and bad as in: - dreadful, shocking, horrific, awful, and the stronger term, Evil as: - malevolence, iniquity, wickedness, immoral or evil as in devil.
Without straying into any form of religious scriptural interpretation the only practical way of making a judgment on what is good and bad / good and evil can only be assessed by reference to the social condition in which the assessment is being carried out. However can anyone be absolutely certain that their own interpretation of what is deemed to be good is the right one or that bad is evil? The individual terms taken in isolation cannot offer any guidance at all on the value of what the single word that is used is attempting to be expressed, so this draws one to the inescapable conclusion that the one cannot exit without the other. Both apparently apposing terms have to co- exist to give meaning to each other and the intent of the meaning is compounded in the use to which the terms are put, balanced against each other and the society in which the definitions of the terms are exercised.
So it has to be accepted that the terms good and evil may be interchangeable, for if the scenario onto which the terms are laid are viewed from an externally different sociological background, it can make the passing of a valued judgments impossible. The best one can say is that what is being described as being good or bad is, or is not, acceptable given the specific nature of those attempting to make a judgment but it does not mean that what is being viewed is absolutely good or bad, just different. If the circumstances are such that the nature of the situation is one viewed in isolation with no alternative view, that has no impact on any external event or the evaluator then nothing can be done to effect an alteration to adopt a counter view; neutrality must be the guiding principle. If however there is the desirable possibility of interaction then there has to be a way of sharing and understanding views without any form of forced cohesion that in time may balance the perception of the scenario that uses of the terms good / bad/ evil. This though depends on which party has the stronger influence to facilitate assimilation.
Is there then such a thing as actual good and evil?
As outlined above good is wholly dependant on the opposite nature of it and visa a versa. However some measure of the nature of good and evil can be made, At least from the perspective of the existing social context in which one lives.
Being parochial one could say that such a thing is good because it does no harm to ones self and may have a beneficial effect for one no matter what the consequences are for others, which may be also good or not. Or the reverse, if something is harmful to one self it is bad although others may benefit from the action or equally be harmed. The point here is that one (self) is more important than others no matter how it is placed in any wider context. Of course self can also be any grouping of people that have power to hold and influence a direction but the assumption must be that the consequence is for the majority. So do any of the descriptive contextual elements of any scenario, that may be created to identify the positive or negative element of the scenarios, support the view that there is such an actual thing as good or evil?
A similar difficulty is met with the personification of the terms. Is there such a thing as a good person or an evil one? If one accepts that all humans are born equal, that is with no inherent psychological or social conditioning then it may be expected that there is no actual personification of good or evil other than that which is to become conditional within the social contextual environment to be experience by the new born. All that flows from this is then wholly dependent on the way the new born are raised and conditioned and the possible judgment placed on their action by the social order. This may be a comforting position to take in that individuals are wholly responsible for their own actions and society is innocent and blameless for any causality action, yet even this may not alleviate one from the disquieting thought that there may just be an intrinsic element to good and evil that is not fully appreciate, as the essential emphasis of it falls outside existing human consciousness which does not apportion the terms used to describe eventualities in comprehensible words.
In actual fact one can only ever place a limited conceptual impression on the terms of good and evil for one does not know the ultimate meaning or implications of the terms. From time to time there is some attempt to enforce a moral stamp on things, people, situation, events and call upon the indefinite terms of good and evil as if supported by some external might as used in religion, or to fall back on the unquestioning dogma of a script in order to justify the testament of something being good or evil but this is only a tenuous recourse to understand just what it is that is being vaguely perceived.
There might be two ways to look upon the terms as an aid to understanding their use and importance, one way relates to the application of rules and laws that society has drawn up to created order, to control wo/men from the worst excesses of their actions that do harm or excessive good to others or society. The other way is to recognise that in using the term good and evil opens up to the doubt that society has in its own place in the world or indeed having a place at all in the pantheons of gods and devils to any extent that if such things exist humans are important enough for them to want to influence their affairs or to expect an ultimate judgement.
As alluded to above, the general social contextual idea of good and evil is easy to understand. But if one uses the majority of the existing social and cultural constructs to raise the interpretation of good and evil to GOD and Devil, then a completely new layer of complexity is placed on the issue, one which will not be satisfactorily explainable without trying to place definitions to these additional incomprehensible concepts that lay behind them. Therefore words may mean precisely what I want them to mean, more or less, but the problem is what I want them to mean may not be what you understand them to mean and this applies to the terms good and evil in whatever context I want. This conundrum will always be a flaw in the judgement of good and evil.
We have for now this sense that there must be ultimately good things and these are counterbalanced by bad. Humans can affirm that in some context these labels can be placed on events and things that have an impact on society as a whole but only in so far and as long as it is useful to use such terms that serve the best interest of the majority. Yet this attachment of the terms to event etc must be a very loose fixture and can only stand for as long as the ideals and social mores wish them to stand, they are not to be fixed for all time and must on a regular basis be challenge for their efficacy.
Take the scenario of the prisoner dilemma or the affliction of wars, were do you place the onus of good or bad, good or evil. Sometime is not a matter of doing what is right or wrong, good, bad or evil it is just a matter of doing what is necessary and sorting the mess out to a state of fair equilibrium later. One can never be definitive for it is like assessing absolutely what is right or wrong; either is only accessible based on the available information at the time, so it is not truthfulness that matters in such situations is the usefulness.
So to conclude is there such a thing as good and evil? Do they exist? How do they manifest? To know that start at the beginning but I think yes. However I have no idea what they actually look like, only that on a temporary basis and in so far as the terms relate to me, I consider good deeds and are cautious with the evil ones and hope to recognise their alternatives to effect a balance judgement – at least as best I can.
P25.5.07
© Renot 2007
Good. Is it an acceptance of something, an occasion, event, etc that is context related and practically accepted as being of a ‘good’ nature or thing? Or rather good being pejoratively unacceptable and therefore not good and consequently being its opposite, bad or evil; this is assuming that the essence, if there is an essence of good and evil, really exist.
There is in all cultures a measure of acceptance of good deeds and forms that are recognised as such and that there is a counter view of evil deeds / forms being the contrary, which only exist within the over all social context that has been built up over a long period of time and that such forms have for what ever reason been useful. The terms are by their nature located within the cultural construct that defines which is which and are often easier to appreciate as acts of physical actions that places the deed etc within the good vs. bad framework. However given the certainty of human nature and the emotiveness attached to situations, judgemental acts are often based not just on the elements of corporal manifestation but also on religious connotation linked to a tenuous personification of the terms as attached to deity. Can it be that there is no such a thing as the personification of good and evil rather they are solely contextual concepts which are used purely descriptively for deeds that are neither good nor evil but just are and therefore come up against the rules of society only?
The whole discursive process on the existence of good and evil could be curtailed by the simple acceptance that there is no such thing as in personification of good or evil, they do not exist but that there is a created practicality of scenarios onto which the terms are laid in order to distinguish the two and that they only remain open to judgmental direction for as long as the context in which they are fixed remains stable.
In order to try to understand the essence of the terms they have to be given a descriptive noun (good or bad etc) that parcels contextual understanding in a variety of non specific situations so that some mental view can be formed upon which a notion can be applied that puts the words and the situation that is being weighed in a frame that is covered by the term good or evil. Good in English can be expressed in additional descriptive term as: - moral, excellent, superior, good as in god, and bad as in: - dreadful, shocking, horrific, awful, and the stronger term, Evil as: - malevolence, iniquity, wickedness, immoral or evil as in devil.
Without straying into any form of religious scriptural interpretation the only practical way of making a judgment on what is good and bad / good and evil can only be assessed by reference to the social condition in which the assessment is being carried out. However can anyone be absolutely certain that their own interpretation of what is deemed to be good is the right one or that bad is evil? The individual terms taken in isolation cannot offer any guidance at all on the value of what the single word that is used is attempting to be expressed, so this draws one to the inescapable conclusion that the one cannot exit without the other. Both apparently apposing terms have to co- exist to give meaning to each other and the intent of the meaning is compounded in the use to which the terms are put, balanced against each other and the society in which the definitions of the terms are exercised.
So it has to be accepted that the terms good and evil may be interchangeable, for if the scenario onto which the terms are laid are viewed from an externally different sociological background, it can make the passing of a valued judgments impossible. The best one can say is that what is being described as being good or bad is, or is not, acceptable given the specific nature of those attempting to make a judgment but it does not mean that what is being viewed is absolutely good or bad, just different. If the circumstances are such that the nature of the situation is one viewed in isolation with no alternative view, that has no impact on any external event or the evaluator then nothing can be done to effect an alteration to adopt a counter view; neutrality must be the guiding principle. If however there is the desirable possibility of interaction then there has to be a way of sharing and understanding views without any form of forced cohesion that in time may balance the perception of the scenario that uses of the terms good / bad/ evil. This though depends on which party has the stronger influence to facilitate assimilation.
Is there then such a thing as actual good and evil?
As outlined above good is wholly dependant on the opposite nature of it and visa a versa. However some measure of the nature of good and evil can be made, At least from the perspective of the existing social context in which one lives.
Being parochial one could say that such a thing is good because it does no harm to ones self and may have a beneficial effect for one no matter what the consequences are for others, which may be also good or not. Or the reverse, if something is harmful to one self it is bad although others may benefit from the action or equally be harmed. The point here is that one (self) is more important than others no matter how it is placed in any wider context. Of course self can also be any grouping of people that have power to hold and influence a direction but the assumption must be that the consequence is for the majority. So do any of the descriptive contextual elements of any scenario, that may be created to identify the positive or negative element of the scenarios, support the view that there is such an actual thing as good or evil?
A similar difficulty is met with the personification of the terms. Is there such a thing as a good person or an evil one? If one accepts that all humans are born equal, that is with no inherent psychological or social conditioning then it may be expected that there is no actual personification of good or evil other than that which is to become conditional within the social contextual environment to be experience by the new born. All that flows from this is then wholly dependent on the way the new born are raised and conditioned and the possible judgment placed on their action by the social order. This may be a comforting position to take in that individuals are wholly responsible for their own actions and society is innocent and blameless for any causality action, yet even this may not alleviate one from the disquieting thought that there may just be an intrinsic element to good and evil that is not fully appreciate, as the essential emphasis of it falls outside existing human consciousness which does not apportion the terms used to describe eventualities in comprehensible words.
In actual fact one can only ever place a limited conceptual impression on the terms of good and evil for one does not know the ultimate meaning or implications of the terms. From time to time there is some attempt to enforce a moral stamp on things, people, situation, events and call upon the indefinite terms of good and evil as if supported by some external might as used in religion, or to fall back on the unquestioning dogma of a script in order to justify the testament of something being good or evil but this is only a tenuous recourse to understand just what it is that is being vaguely perceived.
There might be two ways to look upon the terms as an aid to understanding their use and importance, one way relates to the application of rules and laws that society has drawn up to created order, to control wo/men from the worst excesses of their actions that do harm or excessive good to others or society. The other way is to recognise that in using the term good and evil opens up to the doubt that society has in its own place in the world or indeed having a place at all in the pantheons of gods and devils to any extent that if such things exist humans are important enough for them to want to influence their affairs or to expect an ultimate judgement.
As alluded to above, the general social contextual idea of good and evil is easy to understand. But if one uses the majority of the existing social and cultural constructs to raise the interpretation of good and evil to GOD and Devil, then a completely new layer of complexity is placed on the issue, one which will not be satisfactorily explainable without trying to place definitions to these additional incomprehensible concepts that lay behind them. Therefore words may mean precisely what I want them to mean, more or less, but the problem is what I want them to mean may not be what you understand them to mean and this applies to the terms good and evil in whatever context I want. This conundrum will always be a flaw in the judgement of good and evil.
We have for now this sense that there must be ultimately good things and these are counterbalanced by bad. Humans can affirm that in some context these labels can be placed on events and things that have an impact on society as a whole but only in so far and as long as it is useful to use such terms that serve the best interest of the majority. Yet this attachment of the terms to event etc must be a very loose fixture and can only stand for as long as the ideals and social mores wish them to stand, they are not to be fixed for all time and must on a regular basis be challenge for their efficacy.
Take the scenario of the prisoner dilemma or the affliction of wars, were do you place the onus of good or bad, good or evil. Sometime is not a matter of doing what is right or wrong, good, bad or evil it is just a matter of doing what is necessary and sorting the mess out to a state of fair equilibrium later. One can never be definitive for it is like assessing absolutely what is right or wrong; either is only accessible based on the available information at the time, so it is not truthfulness that matters in such situations is the usefulness.
So to conclude is there such a thing as good and evil? Do they exist? How do they manifest? To know that start at the beginning but I think yes. However I have no idea what they actually look like, only that on a temporary basis and in so far as the terms relate to me, I consider good deeds and are cautious with the evil ones and hope to recognise their alternatives to effect a balance judgement – at least as best I can.
P25.5.07
© Renot 2007
posted by Renot at 7:29 am
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