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

Ruv Draba

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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.
Hubris would be the prime example in Greek myth, so let's take a look.

Hubris was considered the worst of all sins, and a bad enough taboo that Greek societies would kill for it -- and unsurprisingly, gods punished people for it in Greek myth too -- the myth of Arachne, for instance. (There's also an Hellenic flood story based on hubris that I couldn't find... maybe someone has a link?)
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.
Even so, while Greek myth has many salutary lessons on the 'evils' of hubris, and hubris certainly leads to the death of thousands in some tales, it's more assigned to individuals than cultures. The Iliad is clearly epic, heroic fantasy, and Greek notions of sin are peppered throughout, yet it's not a war of 'good' culture vs 'evil' culture. Even the Persian wars weren't described as wars of good vs evil, despite the high stakes and all the pro-Hellenic jingoism.

So is 'evil culture extirpation' a more modern creation? Sure, we've had genocide in our story-telling since Ashurbanipal at least -- but genocide based on ideological rather than pragmatic arguments?

The earliest 'genocide the evil' myths I can think of date from the Crusades perhaps -- and even then, they're moderated by counter-myths like the tales of the noble Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn. Yet by the 20th century, Tolkien whose epic is redolent with laments about the military-industrial machine and its impacts on pastoral Britain, had no problems writing genocide into his High Fantasy good-guy narrative, and CS Lewis was right there with him. Kill the evil orcs; winnow the irredeemable (and very Persian-looking) followers of Tash.
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.
Are we, or is this a 'it's inevitable because we do it' argument?
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.
Or put another way, it's evil if Your Guy did it first and strategically, but My Guy can do it tactically in retaliation and be considered clever and good. Hollywood action movies love to use that little gem. On the other hand, you won't find a lot of it in Mallory, say... The good guys win only while they're acting good, and their flaws come back to bite them anyway. Good and bad behaviour scale right up through the narrative, but as with Greek tragedies, long-laid basilisks eventually come home to roost.
 
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Higgins

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The Iliad is clearly epic, heroic fantasy, and Greek notions of sin are peppered throughout, yet it's not a war of 'good' culture vs 'evil' culture. Even the Persian wars weren't described as wars of good vs evil, despite the high stakes and all the pro-Hellenic jingoism.

So is 'evil culture extirpation' a more modern creation? Sure, we've had genocide in our story-telling since Ashurbanipal at least -- but genocide based on ideological rather than pragmatic arguments?

Ashurbanipal was following a long tradition in Mesopotamian mass terror. The Sumerians had practiced mass impalings and even had a word for the horrific mass slaughter ment to inspire utter terror. Eventually they cut back on such things and the Assyrians were comparitively restrained though they still ran a empire based on ethno/theo-centric terror.
The Persians (after knocking over the Babylonians who had briefly taken over from the Assyrians) had a very different Empire, possibly because they relied on a sophisticated Aramaic-speaking elite and/or because they carefully inserted Persians among the regional elites in a kind of feudal fashion (feudalism being an administrative advance over driving hundreds of thousands here and there to die in the service of one's savage god) AND of course the Persians were at least incipient Zoroastrians and absolutely believed in absolute good and evil and tolerated other religions perhaps because of ideological reasons associated with the realm of Good and Evil defined by Zoroastrianism as Objective aspects of the cosmos.
Herodotus of course, grew up among the Persians and wrote his history of the Wars (just the first few of many)
between the Persians and the Greeks and made the hometown girl Artemisia (from Halicarnassus like Herodotus) who fought for the Persians and escaped from Salamis...a heroine...so its no wonder the Persians don't look particularly depraved in his story. Nor did the Persians in general look particularly evil to anyone else -- Cyrus the Great is the only person named as a messiah in the Septuagint for example.
Herodotus does call the Persians "barbarians"...but apparently this is just a generic term for non-Greeks and not a cultural condemnation.
So the notion of a totally evil other (super)culture (like the vaguely Oriental/Assyrian bad guys in Tolkien and CS Lewis) may be something more in tune with modern ideological structures which don't have any explicit elitist agendas unlike say Xenophon who is a pro-Persian Greek with an elitist agenda.
 
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Ruv Draba

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So the notion of a totally evil other (super)culture (like the vaguely Oriental/Assyrian bad guys in Tolkien and CS Lewis) may be something more in tune with modern ideological structures which don't have any explicit elitist agendas unlike say Xenophon who is a pro-Persian Greek with an elitist agenda.
Zoroastrianism is the first known religion with a serious eschatology... and its Hell is a forerunner of the Abrahamic versions of Hell. They consigned all their damned into a lake of molten metal, while true Zoroastrians skate (figuratively, not literally). If that isn't an elitist 'chosen people' agenda, what is? (Zoroastrianism is alive today by the way -- but you have to be born into the religion)

Notwithstanding all that though, in terms of myths about cultures extirpating cultures for moral reasons (as opposed to gods doing so), I'm still struggling to find a really solid pre-Tolkien example. Yet it's become the staple of High Fantasy nowadays, from Middle Earth to Star Wars.

Why do we need Holy Genocide in our myths nowadays when our ancestors, who often fought wars for survival and not just empire, apparently didn't? I don't feel that we're less elitist than our ancestors (consider the rise of nationalism in 20th century Europe for instance), and I don't fully see the connection anyway. I can't see that genocide is a sign of more sophisticated morality -- rather, it seems more simplistic than the treatments of the Iliad, say. What's the attraction of greater tribalism in the last century? I'm still trying to fathom.
 
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Higgins

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Zoroastrianism is the first known religion with a serious eschatology... and its Hell is a forerunner of the Abrahamic versions of Hell. They consigned all their damned into a lake of molten metal, while true Zoroastrians skate (figuratively, not literally). If that isn't an elitist 'chosen people' agenda, what is?

An elitist "chosen people" ideology is never a genocidal ideology. The whole point of Zoroastrianism or Judeo-Christian Humanism or 18th century Navajo ceremonialism or Calvinism is that the value of a person comes from positive behaviors that situate them in a very specific relationship with evaluative structures in the cosmos. In an elitist "chosen people" ideology a person's value comes from an inventive set of behaviors that are assumed to have internal correlates. I suppose (as do quite a few others) that the growth of mass ideologies with rather superficial ways of evaluating people is part of the world's current love affair with wiping out whole ways of life, whole cultures, whole ethnic groups.
 

Ruv Draba

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An elitist "chosen people" ideology is never a genocidal ideology. The whole point of Zoroastrianism or Judeo-Christian Humanism or 18th century Navajo ceremonialism or Calvinism is that the value of a person comes from positive behaviors that situate them in a very specific relationship with evaluative structures in the cosmos.
Except that with modern Zoroastrianism at least, you have to be born into the faith. (And perhaps in older versions too -- or perhaps not.)

I suppose (as do quite a few others) that the growth of mass ideologies with rather superficial ways of evaluating people is part of the world's current love affair with wiping out whole ways of life, whole cultures, whole ethnic groups.
I've been tippy-toeing around the religion/genocide question and will continue to do so because several modern religions have to wrestle with the morality of that belief in a pluralistic world.

But with respect to myth in a literary sense you're suggesting that xenophobia engenders the Last Battle sort of good/evil myths... which is exactly what I'm wondering too. I see your argument for how that might occur, but what's the evidence that xenophobia is indeed a cause -- that it's not caused by something else like certain kinds of imperialism or oppressive occupation, say, instead? We can safely guess where Lewis got his Last Battle from, but did Tolkien get his final battle from Revelations, or from staring at the ruins of Europe?
 
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Higgins

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Except that with modern Zoroastrianism at least, you have to be born into the faith. (And perhaps in older versions too -- or perhaps not.)

I've been tippy-toeing around the religion/genocide question and will continue to do so because several modern religions have to wrestle with the morality of that belief in a pluralistic world.

But with respect to myth in a literary sense you're suggesting that xenophobia engenders the Last Battle sort of good/evil myths... which is exactly what I'm wondering too. I see your argument for how that might occur, but what's the evidence that xenophobia is indeed a cause -- that it's not caused by something else like certain kinds of imperialism or oppressive occupation, say, instead? We can safely guess where Lewis got his Last Battle from, but did Tolkien get his final battle from Revelations, or from staring at the ruins of Europe?

Modern Zoroastrianism has the problem that it has been legally redefined by being submerged in an Islamic context. Since it was originally an "evangelical" faith, conversion must have been possible originally.

I think Tolkien and CS Lewis built their evils with the mass ideologies of fascism and stalinism in the back of their minds. And Tolkien gave Mordor plenty of Assyrian names (Barad-Dur certainly seems to relate to Assyrian such as Dur-Sharrik (Fortress (Dur) of Sargon).


OIM_A7366.gif
 

semilargeintestine

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This is slightly off topic, but it always makes me laugh when I see the term "Abrahamic version of hell", because Abraham was a Jewish convert who didn't believe in hell (and yes, I realize that Christianity and Islam fall under the heading of Abrahamic religions).

Anyway, I am not very well versed in religions apart from Judaism, so I will refrain from speaking on them. Personally, I believe--as do others on here, I'm sure--that good and evil are just terms we have given to describe things we like and don't like. When one questions whether or not it exists outside humanity, I think that it does, but that you cannot apply the same constraints we do. I think you also cannot expect it to be on the philosophical level that we place it. Zebras don't like when lions attack them, but I don't think there are zebras sitting around wondering if the lions think they are being good or evil.

Anyway, humans invent a lot of things based on our higher level of consciousness and ability to observe things of which other animals may not necessarily be aware. The difference between good and evil is just one example.
 

Ruv Draba

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Modern Zoroastrianism has the problem that it has been legally redefined by being submerged in an Islamic context.
I only know one practising Zoroastrian and she has no Islamic identification at all. Her definition is cultural rather than legal.

Since it was originally an "evangelical" faith, conversion must have been possible originally.
Yes, but perhaps within a limited ethnicity -- somewhat like traditional notions of Judaism. You must be of the tribe to be of the faith. My friend believes that you must be Persian to be Zoroastrian -- though as with all ethnic identification questions, 'Persian' is hard to define. :)
 
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semilargeintestine

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Actually, converts to Judaism are considered to be just as Jewish as those born into the faith. What makes one Jewish is the acceptance of the Torah. When a person does that, they are Jewish as far as the community is concerned. Don't forget that Abraham himself was a convert. That makes it difficult for anyone to consider converts of being on a lower level.
 

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There's no such thing as pure good and pure evil. There are times we're at peace and there are times we're at the brink of insanity. It's just a matter of how you handle yourself. We tend to lean to our crazy side every now and then, of course.
 

Dale Emery

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So what is evil? What is good?

Good is that which you perceive satisfies your needs. Evil is that which you abhor, which you perceive to thwart your needs (especially that which you perceive to have an intention to thwart your needs).

Do they exist outside of society, outside of consciousness?

No.

Any thoughts?

A judgment of good or evil says little about the thing itself, and more about the judge's attitude toward the thing (and, perhaps indirectly, about the judge's needs that the judge perceives to be met or unmet by the thing).

Dale
 

shackleton

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Aren't the last two options a bit dodgy? I mean, surely you can't have good without evil? If you could, you could have a one-sided coin, or black without white. Don't words need to have a binary opposite to work?
 

Romantic Heretic

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Good and evil are human concepts. They are infinitely variable according to culture and individual.

They do serve a purpose though. They help the individual and the society to survive. Those with poorly imagined concepts of good and evil don't survive.
 

Rufus Coppertop

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Does fast exist? Does slow exist?

Good and evil are adjectives.

Good people exist, evil people exist. The attributes themselves don't exist except as qualities of the substantives to which they are attributed.

If I have a fast car, does that mean that fast exists? How much does the fast weigh? What size box can I keep it in? Why can't I lend some of it a friend whose car has broken down?
 

Rufus Coppertop

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Good is that which you perceive satisfies your needs. Evil is that which you abhor, which you perceive to thwart your needs (especially that which you perceive to have an intention to thwart your needs).

Or the needs of humanity or the needs of earth or the needs of life.
 

Archullus

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Do good and evil exist outside of society?
I think it depends how you draw the lines. Concepts such as good and evil belong to the society writing the rules. The writ (or cultural mandate) of humanity extends to the four corners of the Earth, but not much further.

Could I imagine a universal definition of good and evil? Only in the event of a dominor vox. In such a circumstance, our values and belief systems would necessarily be subservient... consider where we are technologically.

What I would I like to believe in is not the same as what logic suggests to me.
I would like to believe in a compassionate God and some of the other baggage that comes with it.
Logic suggests to me that is only a matter of time before the radio / TV plume of transmissions (nearly 200 light years across at present) is tracked back here. The prospect of being 'discovered' is daunting and at the very least would bring the failings of our belief systems into sharp relief.

Footnote: I write more on this here
 
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DWSTXS

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Not the answer I was hoping for -


Does every question have an answer?

If there is nothing to unlock, is a key still a key?
 

Rufus Coppertop

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Can you explain what you mean by this?

A possibility.

Duality is self and other. Objectifying others arises from dualism. Evil is objectifying others, rather than allowing them to be the subjects of their own lives.
 

wrangler

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I've been thinking about motives, about protagonists and antagonists, and about good and evil.

I'm confused. Are good and evil absolute or are they relative? And if they are relative, then how can they exist at all when the most common assumed definition for both of them entails being the opposite of the other?

Everything I come up with as an example of pure evil turns out not to be when attributed to nature (you try).

So what is evil? What is good? Do they exist outside of society, outside of consciousness?

Any thoughts?

I've read a great deal of literature and books on the oldest people living here on earth (The Bushman) who are descendants of the first human beings. In a book, titled The Old Way: A Story of the First People, the author asked the elders of the tribe about good/evil.

the elders told her that they regard stealing, jealousy, murder and anger as normal facets of the human spirit and treat it as such. If a man steals something from another male in his tribe, the issue is resolved amongst the elders. And that's it, literally.

If a man in a fit of anger, kills another member from his tribe, this too is resolved by the elders. And at most, the "murderer" would have to give to the widow and any children that came from that union whatever the elders deemed the man to be worth at the time.

They would not believe in shunning the person who killed another in anger, because they are extremely dependant emotionally on the sense of belonging and companionship.

Remember, these are the same people whom whenever we see them on television are always in a circle together, dancing together, hunting together, feasting together. So they would not make someone an outcast for taking his brothers life.

However from what I've read, cases of murder are extremely rare. One other thing that I think is worth mentioning, is the main reason something like murder is rare is, from a young age they are taught to supress their anger, feelings of agression and fears.

(1) because they hunt wild animals and animals smell fear, anxiety and excitement

(2) they did everything together as a tribe therefore they believed in maintaining peace at all costs. Being unable to control your emotions could cause more harm than good.

These people do not believe in god, or evil the way we do. As many people have already stated, we have attached certain feelings and beliefs to these words, but a member of the Bushman has no concept of what "wrong" or "good."
 
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Avisek

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I believe in these two sayings -

'There is no white. There is no black. There are only different shades of gray.'

and

'The world is what you believe it to be.'

Hitler slaughtered thousands of Jews. So many people were killed, families destroyed, people were marked as unfit to live not for what they've done, but just because they were born in a certain family. He will be remembered as the best example of Satan on earth forever. So can we call him evil. Dark evil, or black. Maybe to Hitler, the killing of Jews was a way of cleaning up the Earth. He might have considered Jews to be the black filth that made the wonderful white world a dirtier place to live in. So he might have considered himself to be a God and went ahead to clean up the Earth. Why would he think in this way is of course another question.

Religion has caused more death throughout the ages than anything else. Yet we all consider religion to be sacred because we associate it with God and everything pure, so its supposed to be good. White.

My point is that any action can be called good from a certain perspective, and bad from another. So its basically gray, someone who thinks in a certain way might think its white, to someone else it might be black.

For the record, I hate Hitler and I am not against religion.