Do Good & Evil exist outside of Human society?

Do Good & Evil exist

  • Yes

    Votes: 79 38.5%
  • No

    Votes: 122 59.5%
  • There is only Good

    Votes: 4 2.0%
  • There is only Evil

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    205

Angelinity

absent
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Aug 6, 2006
Messages
2,765
Reaction score
1,059
good and evil are human perceptions. you will notice that definitions of what is good and what is evil will vary form culture to culture; sometimes the gap is so deep, that what one culture sees as a virture will be deemed deadly imoral by another.

you can answer the question yourself by observing the world outside human culture/society -- is it evil for a lioness to kill in order to feed her brood? it is necessary, no more, no less. how would a human perceive the same situation -- if they absolutely had to kill another in order to survive, the deed would no longer appear evil to them, they would have to rationalize it so that they can go on surviving.

however, as a writer, you must adhere to the mores and morals of your audience. your audience does not care for perceptions of good and evil that do not conform to its own expectations, hence, you ought not ask whether something is either good or evil, but whether your audience will perceive it as either good or evil.
 

gorgias of leontini

Sockpuppet
Banned
Joined
Jan 5, 2009
Messages
19
Reaction score
3
Age
48
Location
Sleepyville
first, do moral properties– properties like rightness or goodness– fit into our best picture of the world, in particular with the picture drawn by the natural and social sciences?

Oh this is silliness because rightness or goodness is not defined, so how are we to discuss it? If rightness exists within a human-created ethics then obviously it does not fit within the natural world, unless of course you conceive of humans as being within the natural world, then of course their (varying concepts of) good fits into the natural order, if one could call it that.

If rightness is a matter merely of knowing what is red and what not is red (so that we can all agree to stop at the light at appropriate times) then rightness is a matter of civilization. What existence does rightness have in the animal kingdom, one could wonder.

I'd like these things defined so that we can discuss them.
 

William Haskins

poet
Kind Benefactor
Absolute Sage
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
29,099
Reaction score
8,848
Age
58
Website
www.poisonpen.net
yes. good and evil exist. this is not a theological issue for me.

good drives past a stranded woman in the rain and wants to help her. evil drives past a stranded woman and wants to rape her.

good wants to protect and care for his family. evil wants to harm the family and take its possessions.

i agree with others who say no person is all one or the other. good and evil exist on a continuum, but there is a line of demarcation there.

as for evil existing outside of human society, i believe it does in some other primates. i have seen video of chimps ambushing and ganging up on a member of their own group, beating him brutally even beyond death.

my opinion is that they have self-awareness and a know it is a conscious act of malice.
 

KTC

Stand in the Place Where You Live
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 24, 2005
Messages
29,138
Reaction score
8,563
Location
Toronto
Website
ktcraig.com
I don't believe it exists outside the human experience. Any other beings are just being themselves...they don't judge their actions as good or evil. Animals are just being animal selves. I think with any other animal in the animal kingdom there are rules by which each tribe lives. It is a hierarchy kingdom and the weak are sometimes pruned out for the betterment of the whole tribe. These concepts are not good/evil...they are necessary for life. NO...good and evil are not breathing out there beyond the walls of the human mind. They do not exist.
 

gorgias of leontini

Sockpuppet
Banned
Joined
Jan 5, 2009
Messages
19
Reaction score
3
Age
48
Location
Sleepyville
Even if they are choices, who ultimately decides what is good and what is evil? If God Hisself is real, which I can't believe while I am awake, then we have the Good Book to tell us what is right and what is wrong. Otherwise we have our intuition, reason, and record.

How good are our instruments, though? Let us say that Good and Evil are ectoplasmic forces in the universe. We would be able to experience them, though not seemingly directly, through our senses (touch, smell, sight, hearing, taste). So when a man drives by a woman on the street, it is the Good ectoplasm that, like the smell of cookies, draws him to the side of the road to help her. The Evil ectoplasm, on the other hand, would be the cause of/reason for a man raping that same woman. Essentially- and I choose that word ever-so-carefully- we are programmed with a tendency one way or another: our brains have been trained, in a number of ways, for a number of reasons, to be more open to the Good ectoplasm, so we are more Good than Evil. The ectoplasm is like air: we breathe in something related to what we breathe out. People in Good ectoplasm release Good ectoplasm, but not always. People are born with bad lungs, wicked minds, and black hearts, after all.

Or, if choice is involved, however shallowly, we are the ones who generate more ectoplasm. There were originally two (way back, don't mind how or why), and relatively little amounts of it. Like a bacteria, the ectoplasm somehow grew in places it seemed quite unlikely. As humans grew, their brains reproduced the ectoplasm in a multitude of ways through their actions, reproduced so quickly that we could not keep track of it. Then we wrote myths about it. We tried to find out which actions produced which ectoplasm. Now, it seems, there are more ectoplasmic forces than we can keep track of, even if we can keep track of a few (10% tithe is Good; genocide is Evil).


All that I've said seems quite unlikely, yet anyone who says that Good and Evil exist in the world must mean this or they mean otherwise that they are involved in a system of signification, a fundamentally arbitrary one (whose origins otherwise we can only speculate through dead Adamic or Vedic language). By arbitrary I come to say that it barely exists at all, except the way pots of gold exist beneath rainbows. I've chased the rainbows all day; I've found skittles, but no gold.
 
Last edited:

Homewrecker

Intranational Mystery Woman
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 27, 2007
Messages
86
Reaction score
16
Location
Northern Idaho
Website
www.nwhellcats.org
W00t! Great thread. I think good & evil are culturally defined and limited to the sapien realm.

This discussion reminds me of Eddie Izzard's riff on evil. . .

“I am an evil giraffe, and I shall eat more leaves from this tree then perhaps I should, so that other giraffes may die”

and

“But with dogs, we do have “bad dog.” Bad dog exists. “Bad dog! Bad dog! Stole a biscuit, bad dog!” The dog is saying, “Who are you to judge me? You human beings who’ve had genocide, war against people of different creeds, colors, religions, and I stole a biscuit?! Is that a crime? People of the world!”

“Well, if you put it that way, I think you’ve got a point. Have another biscuit, sorry.”

Cheers!
 

ABekah

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 11, 2008
Messages
165
Reaction score
21
Location
Currently? Walks over to check address book...Mar
I'm feel like I'm stepping into a landmine here, but these are my beliefs:

As a Christian, I see "good" and "evil" as being "holy" and "unholy." Probably a different definition from what most people think of as good and evil. But I believe that God is perfectly holy and can not tolerate being in the presence of anything unholy (sin). Hence why Lucifer was banished. I believe God gave His creation free will--there was only one rule in the beginning, and we failed.

There's more to the story, but I've tried to keep my response limited to answering the question posted.
 

gothicangel

Toughen up.
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 29, 2008
Messages
7,907
Reaction score
691
Location
North of the Wall
No.

Good and evil are arbitrary terms. They are subjective and as much a construction as gender or sexuality.

It is something that I've been think a lot about lately for my crime novel. In labeling someone 'evil' we are attempting to linguistically signify the devil. Now I'm more interested in what motivates people to behave in such a manner.

Also; 'evil' is a western term so can we apply it to all of humanity? I'm a Daoist - I don't believe in good or evil; only light and dark. Does these terms apply to me if they do not exist in my reality?
 

KTC

Stand in the Place Where You Live
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 24, 2005
Messages
29,138
Reaction score
8,563
Location
Toronto
Website
ktcraig.com
“But with dogs, we do have “bad dog.” Bad dog exists. “Bad dog! Bad dog! Stole a biscuit, bad dog!” The dog is saying, “Who are you to judge me? You human beings who’ve had genocide, war against people of different creeds, colors, religions, and I stole a biscuit?! Is that a crime? People of the world!”

“Well, if you put it that way, I think you’ve got a point. Have another biscuit, sorry.”

Cheers!


Homewrecker! There are no bad dogs. Only bad pack leaders. This is another thread topic, of course. But there are NO BAD DOGS. (-;
 

Don

All Living is Local
Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 28, 2008
Messages
24,567
Reaction score
4,007
Location
Agorism FTW!
Good and evil are human constructs, and lay the foundation for our morality.

The non-aggression principle sums up the difference between good and evil behavior succinctly. Evil is the initiation of physical force, the threat of such, or fraud upon persons or their property.

It holds that "aggression," which is defined as the initiation of physical force, the threat of such, or fraud upon persons or their property, is inherently illegitimate. The principle does not preclude defense or retaliation against aggression.

I like the way Heinlein addresses the issue of morality, so forgive me a few more quotes.

Morals — all correct moral laws — derive from the instinct to survive. Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level.

Correct morality can only be derived from what man is — not from what do-gooders and well-meaning aunt Nellies would like him to be.

All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or folly, which can — and must — be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function. As racial survival is the only universal morality, no other basic is possible. Attempts to formulate a "perfect society" on any foundation other than "Women and children first!" is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal. Nevertheless, starry-eyed idealists (all of them male) have tried endlessly — and no doubt will keep on trying.

I now define "moral behavior" as "behavior that tends toward survival." I won't argue with philosophers or theologians who choose to use the word "moral" to mean something else, but I do not think anyone can define "behavior that tends toward extinction" as being "moral" without stretching the word "moral" all out of shape.

Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative. An animal so poor in spirit that he won't even fight on his own behalf is already an evolutionary dead end; the best he can do for his breed is to crawl off and die, and not pass on his defective genes.

The next higher level is to work, fight, and sometimes die for your own immediate family. This is the level at which six pounds of mother cat can be so fierce that she'll drive off a police dog. It is the level at which a father takes a moonlighting job to keep his kids in college — and the level at which a mother or father dives into a flood to save a drowning child… and it is still moral behavior even when it fails.

Evolution is a process that never stops. Baboons who fail to exhibit moral behavior do not survive; they wind up as meat for leopards.

The next level in moral behavior higher than that exhibited by the baboon is that in which duty and loyalty are shown toward a group of your own kind too large for an individual to know all of them. We have a name for that. It is called "patriotism."
 

sunandshadow

Impractical Fantasy Animal
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 17, 2005
Messages
4,827
Reaction score
336
Location
Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Website
home.comcast.net
What, no choice for 'there is neither good nor evil'?
Edit: nvm, I read it wrong...

I would personally define evil as anything which causes someone pain. A virus like HIV would be an example of a nonhuman source of evil; a person torturing an animal is a slightly more arguable example of evil which does not have a human victim; but evil requires a human to be in the equation somewhere because only humans can define some object or event as evil.
 
Last edited:

reenkam

aka cupcake
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 5, 2007
Messages
19,092
Reaction score
4,059
In the mean time I've spoken with a friend in Hawaii, my "Sidartha," and he suprised me with an immediate answer: "Oh, evil doesn't exist at all. There is only Good. We're responsible for our own evil, we make our own hell."

Wouldn't the second bolded part meant that, Yes, evil does exist? Regardless of where it might come from or why or any of that, wouldn't this mean it's around.

So the first bolded part doesn't really fit anymore...


Personally, I'd say they both exist and can exist outside of human constructs, though the exact idea of what is good and what is evil would be personal, for humans and animals alike.
 

sheadakota

part of the human equation
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 4, 2007
Messages
3,956
Reaction score
1,151
Location
The Void
Perhaps I misunderstand the OP- But I take 'outside human society' to mean those other than human- animals?

If this is the case then no- good and evil do no exist outside human society- Good and evil are human creations, they exist because we give them the means to exist- we define the actions and label them.

Animals may do certain actions that we might label good or evil- but in their society, do they consider it so? Dolphins and Chimps have been recorded commiting actions we wouls label evil- murder of their own kind- our label-our definition-Do I think those species consider the actions evil?
No- I don't. They are no punished, they are not ostrcized by their their own kind- they do what they do and life goes on, no judgements that we are aware of, but as a different species we will never know the true ins and outs of another specie's social structure.
 

ColoradoGuy

I've seen worse.
Staff member
Moderator
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 11, 2005
Messages
6,696
Reaction score
1,534
Location
The City Different
Website
www.chrisjohnsonmd.com
Wouldn't the second bolded part meant that, Yes, evil does exist? Regardless of where it might come from or why or any of that, wouldn't this mean it's around.

So the first bolded part doesn't really fit anymore...


Personally, I'd say they both exist and can exist outside of human constructs, though the exact idea of what is good and what is evil would be personal, for humans and animals alike.
There's a theological tradition going back to St. Augustine in the 5th century that evil is not a thing in itself, but a lack of something. In his construct, it was distance from God, from the Good. George Fox in the 17th century had a similar view -- there is an Inner Light (the Good) in all of us. Evil happens when that Inner Light is ignored. In both world views evil requires human involvement.
 

Ziljon

Tortilla di Patate
Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 19, 2007
Messages
1,316
Reaction score
417
Location
In the midst of 1000 Oaks
Website
www.daviddepalo.com
I came across this recently. Similar to what the Colorado Guy pointed out. I wonder if it can really be attributed to Einstein, though.: Does Evil Exist?

(Just pasted from the link above)
Does Evil Exist?

Does evil exist? The university professor challenged his students with this question. Did God create everything that exists? A student bravely replied, "Yes, he did!"

"God created everything?" The professor asked.

"Yes, sir," the student replied.

The professor answered, "If God created everything, then God created evil, since evil exists, and according to the principal that our works define who we are then God is evil."

The student became quiet before such an answer.

The professor was quite pleased with himself and boasted to the students that he had proven once more that the Christian faith was a myth.

Another student raised his hand and said, "Can I ask you a question professor?"

"Of course," replied the professor.

The student stood up and asked, "Professor, does cold exist?"

"What kind of question is this? Of course, it exists.

Have you never been cold?"

The students snickered at the young man's question.

The young man replied, "In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat. Everybody or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-460 degrees F) is the total absence of heat; all matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction at that temperature.

Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe how we feel if we have no heat.

The student continued. "Professor, does darkness exist?"

The professor responded, "Of course it does."

The student replied, "Once again you are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either. Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness. In fact we can use Newton's prism to break white light into many colors and study the various wavelengths of each color. You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you know how dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of light present. Isn't this correct? Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when there is no light present."

Finally the young man asked the professor. "Sir, does evil exist?"

Now uncertain, the professor responded, "Of course as I have already said. We see it every day. It is in the daily example of man's inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. "These manifestations are nothing else but evil."

To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is not like faith, or love that exist just as does light and heat. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light."

The professor sat down. The young man's name? -- Albert Einstein
 

AMCrenshaw

...
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 26, 2008
Messages
4,671
Reaction score
620
Website
dfnovellas.wordpress.com
What an interesting logic. To say Evil is an absence of God, or of Good, must assume that God or Good exists:

Heat does exist. Light does exist. If God exists (a big IF), this logic is excellent. Since gods may or may not exist, this logic is clunky at best.

AMC
 

Ruv Draba

Banned
Joined
Dec 29, 2007
Messages
5,114
Reaction score
1,322
I wonder if it can really be attributed to Einstein, though.: Does Evil Exist?
Most unlikely.

Einstein was deeply religious until the age of 12, when he discovered that a lot of his religious beliefs were contradicted by his science texts. In his teens he rejected the idea of a personal god, though he wrote of God often and never had much time for atheists either. You can find some of his comments on morality and religion here:
All men should let their conduct be guided by the same principles; and those principles should be such, that by following them there should accrue to all as great a measure as possible of security, satisfaction, and as small a measure as possible of suffering.
In other words, his view of morality was largely secular and pragmatic.

Einstein's tertiary education was in the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School, where he studied maths and physics, and flunked French, chemistry and biology. He studied topics so advanced that much of the time he studied alone. Before that he studied under a Prussian education system in Münich -- not the sort of place where you could contradict a teacher. Moreover, the whole dialogue looks contrived for rhetorical effect rather than recorded.

This has all the hallmarks of a dialogue fabricated for instructional purposes, then misattributed to steal some authority.
 
Last edited:

Higgins

Banned
Joined
Sep 1, 2006
Messages
4,302
Reaction score
414
There's a theological tradition going back to St. Augustine in the 5th century that evil is not a thing in itself, but a lack of something. In his construct, it was distance from God, from the Good. George Fox in the 17th century had a similar view -- there is an Inner Light (the Good) in all of us. Evil happens when that Inner Light is ignored. In both world views evil requires human involvement.

As a fantasy writer, I need something like good and evil to excuse the cosmic rhetoric of some moments in my plotting. Ultimately, though, the judgement that X is good or evil implies a high degree of irony in that while we know evil is icky and that good is pleasant, the real plot fun is in those times when good is icky (time to get an injection or a cancer removed or a mudbath or shoot a badly injured animal) or evil is pleasant (Mister Thumpkins seems very friendly but when he has you over for dinner, he eats you).
Anyway, from a fantasy writer point of view, I rely on some running tabulation of goods and evils that the reader keeps and often finds misleading but fun.
 

Ruv Draba

Banned
Joined
Dec 29, 2007
Messages
5,114
Reaction score
1,322
As a fantasy writer, I need something like good and evil to excuse the cosmic rhetoric of some moments in my plotting.
I don't know if you write high fantasy, Higgins, but a lot of high fantasy does that, from Tolkien and Lewis onward. Low fantasy though, generally doesn't. Whether it's Conan, Elric or Thieves' World it's still the sympathetic bad guy and the unsympathetic bad guy duking it out. What keeps us interested is how ruthless and clever and tragically doomed they are.

While high fantasy has enjoyed a strong recent tradition, in terms of moral struggles the ancient historical fantasies seem more low to me than high. The tales of Heracles or Beowulf are stories of admirable bad-boys, while the Iliad is a story of good guys on both sides, and the Odyssey is more about trying to get home from strange lands than Making the World a Better Place. It's not really until Mallory and a couple of his predecessors that good vs. evil becomes embedded in characters -- then there's a slew of moralistic fairy-tales picking it up until Tokien, who kicked off the current fashion.

Which leads me to my question: why? Why have heroic good vs evil stories become popular? They seem so ubiquitous today that we see them as the quintessential fantasy. But are they? Every culture has morality tales, but not all morality tales insist that all the good lives on this side of the fence, while all the bad lives on t'other side.

Crom forbid that I of all people get postmodern in this forum, but is high fantasy about our morality or our xenophobia?
 
Last edited:

Higgins

Banned
Joined
Sep 1, 2006
Messages
4,302
Reaction score
414
I don't know if you write high fantasy, Higgins, but a lot of high fantasy does that, from Tolkien and Lewis onward. Low fantasy though, generally doesn't. Whether it's Conan, Elric or Thieves' World it's still the sympathetic bad guy and the unsympathetic bad guy duking it out. What keeps us interested is how ruthless and clever and tragically doomed they are.

While high fantasy has enjoyed a strong recent tradition, in terms of moral struggles the ancient historical fantasies seem more low to me than high. The tales of Heracles or Beowulf are stories of admirable bad-boys, while the Iliad is a story of good guys on both sides, and the Odyssey is more about trying to get home from strange lands than Making the World a Better Place. It's not really until Mallory and a couple of his predecessors that good vs. evil becomes embedded in characters -- then there's a slew of moralistic fairy-tales picking it up until Tokien, who kicked off the current fashion.

Which leads me to my question: why? Why have heroic good vs evil stories become popular? They seem so ubiquitous today that we see them as the quintessential fantasy. But are they? Every culture has morality tales, but not all morality tales insist that all the good lives on this side of the fence, while all the bad lives on t'other side.

Crom forbid that I of all people get postmodern in this forum, but is high fantasy about our morality or our xenophobia?

High fantasy is just another level of narrative irony to play with. In your own analysis of Conan you imply a High Fantasy reading. Moreover, while good and evil may not be written all over the Iliad...it is written all over the Odyssey, perhaps because the Odyssey digs at more complex sexual issues than simply the importance of sulking after being deprived of one's rightful sex slave.
Odysseus is a complicated guy and the traces of good and evil (there's no doubt that the Suitors are very bad and that Athena is not just good but has a good sense of humor) help the reader navigate a wildly complex narrative. I think the Odyssey is a deeper story than the Iliad and good and evil help the reader make sense of it.
 

Ruv Draba

Banned
Joined
Dec 29, 2007
Messages
5,114
Reaction score
1,322
In your own analysis of Conan you imply a High Fantasy reading.
Only if 'bad' equals 'evil', which I've stipulated earlier it's not. Every culture loves its bad boys, from Gilgamesh to Arnie.

I think the Odyssey is a deeper story than the Iliad and good and evil help the reader make sense of it.
Well, there's certainly the Reclaiming Rightful Property theme, and there's a bit of xenophobia around the other contenders, but does that also make it a Good vs Evil theme? Or is each construction equally valid?
 

Higgins

Banned
Joined
Sep 1, 2006
Messages
4,302
Reaction score
414
Only if 'bad' equals 'evil', which I've stipulated earlier it's not. Every culture loves its bad boys, from Gilgamesh to Arnie.

Well, there's certainly the Reclaiming Rightful Property theme, and there's a bit of xenophobia around the other contenders, but does that also make it a Good vs Evil theme? Or is each construction equally valid?

Hmmm. Let's make evil simpler and go from there. I can't remember all the ins and outs of the Odyssey so...
Let's suppose a cosmic order where if certain rules are broken very bad (and let's just say plain evil) things happen that entail huge amounts of destruction. This is to bring in vast metaphysical consequences to simple taboo violations...but that's a simple way to get evil out of a cosmic order. Thus we have: violate taboo and produce evil versus leave cosmic order alone and maintain good by inaction. Any story is going to have to involve the taboo violation and the cascade of evil that results at least if we embed the story in that simple cosmic context. So there's one lesson: the Higher the story the more cosmic the evil. This leaves us with a few left over ambiguous/ironic thematic elements such as: the Innocent Taboo violator and the Virtuous Bringer of Terrible Retribution. So just one step down from a fairly clear if simplistic idea of evil (taboo violation with a cascade of destructive consequnces) we are well on our way to enlisting the reader to track all of this. So here's another lesson: at each drop in level (from say cosmic structure to cosmic value) all the indicators of good and evil can potentially flip and this is the sort of thing that readers like to follow. It gives an aesthetic release like resolving a chord in music. Or so it seems to me.