The concept of evil is an interesting one- as kids we were told that some people are evil and that there are certain things that we do that would make us evil as well- lying, deceit and so forth. There were evil characters in fairy tales and cartoons and what not and the reason why such a black and white distinction between good and evil is made while telling stories to kids is partly because kids can easily relate to such explanations rather than ones saying that certain a character for instance is mostly good but does very evil things sometimes OR that the villain in a story has certain good things about him. As we grow up, we realise that there is a lesser distinction between good and evil and some may even theorise that there may be no absolute evil or good and bad and that it is all a matter of perception. Grown ups read fiction and watch movies which evidence this- adult themed stories have complex characters and in some cases the protagonist borderlines being pure evil himself- Breaking Bad for instance has a protagonist who was fairly good for most part of the series but became purely evil in the latter parts. I do not subscribe to either of these extreme beliefs- I do think that people and actions can be evil at an objective level(killing someone to make personal profits for example is evil, even if you are doing it for your family- it becomes slightly more evil if you're doing it for fun) but I also believe that nothing is absolutely good or absolutely evil.
Some say that there is no good without evil- and my interpretation of this saying is that we cannot identify good actions as 'good' if there were no evil actions. This is similar to identifying darkness as the absence of light. This isn't 100% true but is mostly accurate. A person can be good by helping others- this doesn't need anyone else's evil in order to be considered as good. However, someone who doesn't hurt other people becomes good only because there are other people who do hurt and kill people.
An interpretation of evil that I thought of recently is something like this: There are different ways of being good and some actions can be interpreted as good or evil depending upon the values of the person analysing them. There are numerous tradeoffs which we have to make in life and the moral consequences are often blurred. Slacking off a bit at work to come home early and spending time with your family can be good or bad depending on the work you normally do at your office, the time you spend normally with your family, the occassion on the specific day and a whole lot of other factors.
Now that this has been established- i introduce a term 'Renegade'. The term probably has a meaning different from how I'm about to use it here. The meaning I imply is the one that the Mass Effect series of games uses. As the protagonist, you are given several moral choices in the game that make us ether a 'Paragon' or a 'Renegade' to different degrees and this has an effect on the rest of the games. A paragon typically takes the safest and the 'by-the-book' approach to solving problems, empathises heavily with other characters and has a lot of patience in solving issues. A renegade is a 'no-nonsense' kind of person who wants quick resolution to problems and typically does not care much for others' feelings. To give an example, as the captain of a ship in the game - a paragon leader would forgive a crew member for making a mistake and request him to not repeat it while a renegade would shout and him and ask him to do a 100 sit ups as punishment. Although the renegade seems to be more evil, there is nothing to suggest that it is absolutely wrong to go the renegade way all the time. As human beings who live in a limited time frame ad have access to limited resources to carry out the things we wish to do, there will be times when it's more correct to go tough on your friends or enemies and be more direct in getting things done. Thus, you are a hero who saves the universe irrespective of whether you are a pure paragon or a pure renegade or a mixture (more realistically) of both.
My theory is that evil is born from a person who thinks that he's being a renegade but mis-judges his actions which are actually evil. (To repeat what I'd mentioned in an earlier paragraph, I do believe that there are some actions which are evil at an objective level.) Thus, when you have, say the option to wipe out a harmless alien species so that you get paid by warmongering species and thus improve humanity's resources- it would be evil. It seems that evil is thus a misjudgement of actions which are unacceptably selfish. Renegades can possibly be explained in a better way as people who do selfish actions(for their family/planet/species/themselves) without causing too much harm (but a little harm nevertheless) to others. Coming home early on a Friday to spend an evening with her after a long while while sacrificing a bit of work in office and making your juniors do some extra work is thus a renegade action. And as I've mentioned in a previous post, selfish (and more specifically- renegade) is sexy.
To summarise what I've written so far, evil is when you are too selfish while thinking that you are not. And apparently, this goes against what I earlier said- the idea that there is in fact pure evil. But as human beings on this planet and given that we live at this time and space- given such constraints, I'm sure that there are things that we can consider evil at an objective level. To summarise again, at a philosophical level evil is subjective and is when you misjudge acceptable levels of selfishness; however in practice there is always pure evil in any society in the world at any given point in time. I should mention a sentence about people who do evil actions without reason (the actions are thus pure evil) and these people are sociopaths/psychopaths/people with serious mental disorders.
Some say that there is no good without evil- and my interpretation of this saying is that we cannot identify good actions as 'good' if there were no evil actions. This is similar to identifying darkness as the absence of light. This isn't 100% true but is mostly accurate. A person can be good by helping others- this doesn't need anyone else's evil in order to be considered as good. However, someone who doesn't hurt other people becomes good only because there are other people who do hurt and kill people.
An interpretation of evil that I thought of recently is something like this: There are different ways of being good and some actions can be interpreted as good or evil depending upon the values of the person analysing them. There are numerous tradeoffs which we have to make in life and the moral consequences are often blurred. Slacking off a bit at work to come home early and spending time with your family can be good or bad depending on the work you normally do at your office, the time you spend normally with your family, the occassion on the specific day and a whole lot of other factors.
Now that this has been established- i introduce a term 'Renegade'. The term probably has a meaning different from how I'm about to use it here. The meaning I imply is the one that the Mass Effect series of games uses. As the protagonist, you are given several moral choices in the game that make us ether a 'Paragon' or a 'Renegade' to different degrees and this has an effect on the rest of the games. A paragon typically takes the safest and the 'by-the-book' approach to solving problems, empathises heavily with other characters and has a lot of patience in solving issues. A renegade is a 'no-nonsense' kind of person who wants quick resolution to problems and typically does not care much for others' feelings. To give an example, as the captain of a ship in the game - a paragon leader would forgive a crew member for making a mistake and request him to not repeat it while a renegade would shout and him and ask him to do a 100 sit ups as punishment. Although the renegade seems to be more evil, there is nothing to suggest that it is absolutely wrong to go the renegade way all the time. As human beings who live in a limited time frame ad have access to limited resources to carry out the things we wish to do, there will be times when it's more correct to go tough on your friends or enemies and be more direct in getting things done. Thus, you are a hero who saves the universe irrespective of whether you are a pure paragon or a pure renegade or a mixture (more realistically) of both.
My theory is that evil is born from a person who thinks that he's being a renegade but mis-judges his actions which are actually evil. (To repeat what I'd mentioned in an earlier paragraph, I do believe that there are some actions which are evil at an objective level.) Thus, when you have, say the option to wipe out a harmless alien species so that you get paid by warmongering species and thus improve humanity's resources- it would be evil. It seems that evil is thus a misjudgement of actions which are unacceptably selfish. Renegades can possibly be explained in a better way as people who do selfish actions(for their family/planet/species/themselves) without causing too much harm (but a little harm nevertheless) to others. Coming home early on a Friday to spend an evening with her after a long while while sacrificing a bit of work in office and making your juniors do some extra work is thus a renegade action. And as I've mentioned in a previous post, selfish (and more specifically- renegade) is sexy.
To summarise what I've written so far, evil is when you are too selfish while thinking that you are not. And apparently, this goes against what I earlier said- the idea that there is in fact pure evil. But as human beings on this planet and given that we live at this time and space- given such constraints, I'm sure that there are things that we can consider evil at an objective level. To summarise again, at a philosophical level evil is subjective and is when you misjudge acceptable levels of selfishness; however in practice there is always pure evil in any society in the world at any given point in time. I should mention a sentence about people who do evil actions without reason (the actions are thus pure evil) and these people are sociopaths/psychopaths/people with serious mental disorders.
