Sunday, March 26, 2017

EVIL!!!




I thought, it being Sunday, it would be a good day to post about "evil."  Now, personally, I don't believe in "evil" in the theological sense, some dark force in opposition to good, but rather the secular notion as defined by the Merriam-Webster definition...
  1. 1a :  morally reprehensible :  sinful, wicked an evil impulseb :  arising from actual or imputed bad character or conduct a person of evil reputation
  2. 2a archaic :  inferiorb :  causing discomfort or repulsion :  offensive an evil odorc :  disagreeable woke late and in an evil temper
  3. 3a :  causing harm :  pernicious the evil institution of slaveryb :  marked by misfortune :  unlucky
Now, often is the case that the "evil" of the sectarian world and the "evil" of the secular world coincide.  Most of the time, really.  I'd say the vast majority.  It's of course no coincidence.  Religious institutions have long been held to be the deciders of what is evil or good through much of our history, mostly varieties of Christianity in the West.  It has been multi-generationally inculcated into our culture for many hundreds of years.  Of course, many secular tenets of evil and good have been as well.

But, whether you take the religious view or the secular view, how can it be good to leave a massive debt on our posterity, let Social Security and Medicare struggle to survive, let millions more people lose their health coverage, gut all the agencies responsible for our clean water and air and safety in the public sphere, while cutting taxes taxes for the wealthy even more just when we have the most wealthy people on the planet in this country, by far in a long way, when just a small increase in their taxes could literally clear up all those other problems?

How is that good?

JMJ

18 comments:

  1. Given the depth of our national financial problems it is highly unlikely that just a small increase in their taxes could literally clear up all those other problems.

    Our problems are complex and would require a combination of tax increases, restructuring how we do business, squeezing the shyte out of the military budget, seriously considering how we direct foreign aid and to whom we direct it.

    Boomers (born 1946-1964) are going to place an increasing burden on the nation's resources. The nation better be very smart in how it handles the increased strain.

    Trump and republicans are clueless as to how to successful approach resolving our growing national dilemma.

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  2. I hold very similar views with respect to evil. Evil exists. However it is not IMO the result of some super struggle between opposing supernatural forces of good and evil.

    No one knows for certain, nor can they know. But someday we'll all find out. There will be something (AD) or nothing. I think it be the later.

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  3. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/17/business/putting-numbers-to-a-tax-increase-for-the-rich.html?_r=0

    Here's a great break down from just a couple years ago.

    It adds up!

    JMJ

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  4. Nietzsche, "Human, all too Human"

    Double prehistory of good and evil. The concept of good and evil has a double prehistory: namely, first of all, in the soul of the ruling clans and castes. The man who has the power to requite goodness with goodness, evil with evil, and really does practice requital by being grateful and vengeful, is called "good." The man who is unpowerful and cannot requite is taken for bad. As a good man, one belongs to the "good," a community that has a communal feeling, because all the individuals are entwined together by their feeling for requital. As a bad man, one belongs to the "bad," to a mass of abject, powerless men who have no communal feeling.

    The good men are a caste; the bad men are a multitude, like particles of dust. Good and bad are for a time equivalent to noble and base, master and slave. Conversely, one does not regard the enemy as evil: he can requite. In Homer, both the Trojan and the Greek are good. Not the man who inflicts harm on us, but the man who is contemptible, is bad. In the community of the good, goodness is hereditary; it is impossible for a bad man to grow out of such good soil. Should one of the good men nevertheless do something unworthy of good men, one resorts to excuses; one blames God, for example, saying that he struck the good man with blindness and madness.

    Then, in the souls of oppressed, powerless men, every other man is taken for hostile, inconsiderate, exploitative, cruel, sly, whether he be noble or base. Evil is their epithet for man, indeed for every possible living being, even, for example, for a god; "human," "divine" mean the same as "devilish," "evil." Signs of goodness, helpfulness, pity are taken anxiously for malice, the prelude to a terrible outcome, bewilderment, and deception, in short, for refined evil. With such a state of mind in the individual, a community can scarcely come about at all--or at most in the crudest form; so that wherever this concept of good and evil predominates, the downfall of individuals, their clans and races, is near at hand.

    Our present morality has grown up on the ground of the ruling clans and castes.

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  5. Nietzsche, as always, made a good point. The clans and castes are more what determines good and bad than anything else, even religion, and religion itself may be broken down the same way. But we see emerging today a homogenization of morality around the world, as with much else, in this new communications age. This is what caused all those uprisings in the Middle East we saw a few years ago. Unfortunately, religious zealotry folded into those movements too, as such movements often turn to the clergy for moral justification, and the uprisings didn't do much good in the end. It's like a never-ending "Reign of Terror" over there. Even here, with "conservative Christianity," "prosperity theology," and the "personal Jesus," and "salvation through grace alone," we see a deep moral corruption of the church. Should we ever come to a situation like they have in the ME these days, our churches would probably be not be very helpful. It's a shame, as the church in America did bring us many great civil rights strides over our history. Now it just seems to stand in the way.

    JMJ

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    1. Nietzsche, "The Gay Science" (115)

      The Four Errors. Man has been reared by his errors: firstly, he saw himself always imperfect; secondly, he attributed to himself imaginary qualities; thirdly, he felt himself in a false position in relation to the animals and nature; fourthly, he always devised new tables of values, and accepted them for a time as eternal and unconditioned, so that at one time this, and at another time that human impulse or state stood first, and was ennobled in consequence. When one has deducted the effect of these four errors, one has also deducted humanity, humaneness, and "human dignity."

      ...and as for your "assumptions" about Christianity, I think you should re-think some of your assumptions.

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    2. The homogeniuzation of morals is being accomplished through "capitalism" as the transcendant principle and "cause" of the inter-civilizational conflict..

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    3. "Good" is money. "Lack" is the new "evil".

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  6. Forgive me, but I'm not sure why you sent me those two links or what "assumptions" you believe I'm making. If you could clarify?

    You could say the homogenization is connected to "capitalism," though much of the technology itself came from government, government institutions, NGOs, government contractors, or is controlled by them. You could say "capitalism" is a convenient unifying enemy, but it's not always the driver of everything moral, and class conflict is not always the driver of change.

    There are still a wide variety of moral systems, and yes we have plenty of conflicts there too, but the moral homogenization I'm talking about are things like the wide-spread end of the death penalty, more humane treatment of one another in general (the world is less violent than ever before), crime in America and many other countries is down to half what it was a generation ago, and so forth. These are tangible effects of better (more sociable) behavior spread through the new mediums. It's okay not to act like a savage. Other cool people do it all the time. We will find shared values and lift them up.

    It just so happens that certain shared values do come to conflict with vested interests at times. This should not be a surprise. For the vested interest, there is always some ideological argument to support their position, and they will always define their opposition as being ideologically opposed, rather than opposed in matter at hand. Distraction 101. ;)

    JMJ

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  7. Christianity is religion's "vanishing mediator"... yet to you, it's "just another religion. And there's a reason why the death penalty is falling by the wayside (Nietzsche, GoM Essay 2). It's all about wealth... the kind that capitalism generates (it doesn't have to be an 'enemy'). The enemy is in the abuses of capitalism... the shortcuts (loans/debt) w/o a basis in "productive" capital. The largess of government dictat that yields no "profits".

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    1. I'm not sure how capitalism generates more civil behavior, though it could be said that the optimal environment for capitalism is the most civil...?

      JMJ

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    2. The society of reciprocity competes w/communality... and domination.

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    3. It offers independence and "social distance" from the obligatory "communal" social relationship. In game theory, tit-for-tat is the most effective game strategy.

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  8. Predatory capitalism is evil, it destroys the very principles upon which capitalism allegedly stands.

    Free markets are wonderful, if they are indeed free. Logically for markets to remain free they must be regulated. Totally unregulated markets, what Lbertarians and Trump want, are not synonymous with free markets. They do however result in monopoly which limits choices and drives up prices.

    In short the sharks swallow up the minnows (the competition) and then the sharks charge whatever they like. Because options are limited.

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    1. And capitalism where it doesn't belong, as in private health insurance, or in unregulated control of utilities, as with the cable carriers should Net Neutrality be abandoned, is flat-out piracy!

      JMJ

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  9. Perhaps there is a golden mean in the mix of socialism and capitalism. -JH

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    1. It may not be golden, but given what we humans know so far, that mean is the the key to a happier and healthier society.

      JMJ

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