To me, these terms are ambiguous and vary based on an individual’s beliefs. If you strip away unproven ideas what can we truly tie Good and Evil to? In my mind the only answer is that Good and Evil are synonymous with Love and Hate. convince me I’m wrong
of course "good" and "evil" are ambiguous. they are inherently relative terms. their definitions depend upon personal morality and subjective experience. as such, they cannot be "truly" tied to anything. if by "truly" you mean "objectively," the current perceived closest "objective" idea of "good"/"bad" you can try to suggest is one that is based on community. and that opens an entirely new can of worms
Interesting thoughts. Yes I clarified the obvious a bit. By truly I suppose I mean to the best of our ability. That’s all we can ever do isn’t it? Our best. So my question to you is, are you disagreeing that the terms good and evil are synonymous with love and hate? Can you explain what you mean by basing good and evil on community? I would agree with that idea in the aspect that a good moral guideline to fall in place with community is the Golden Rule. Treat others how you want to be treated. I hold the belief in this moral guide as well as my previous mentioned thoughts.
my point is that I’m trying to take personal morality or whatever that means out of the picture and find something that could be agreed upon by a larger majority than at present.
I am making my best attempt to better define good and evil universally. Still convinced … good & evil = love & hate
‘Good’ and ‘evil’ are purely human concepts. It would never occur to anyone to argue about whether a fish, or a tree, were good or evil, because ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are concepts humans made up in order to compare ourselves with one another.
I think they sort of are on the same highway parallel with each other. Love is good but sometimes hate is good, giving you motivation to do something good.
I think they sort of are on the same highway parallel with each other. Love is good but sometimes hate is good, giving you motivation to do something good.
Exactly, it depends on which side of the fence you are on, say Hitler or Churchill. Each side hates the other...
There is a psychological disorder that I can't remember the name of, basically the individual has no conscience. A friend of mine has a son who, for instance, if you had something he wants, he will ask you for it. If you say no, he might walk away OR he might hit you with a rock... And think nothing of it. He literally could commit murder but never go to prison because he is mentally incompetent to understand the seriousness of what he did. He's in his early 20's and is institutionalized because basically, he has to either be isolated or watched 24/7. He is extremely smart but can't tell the significance of the difference between hitting someone with something or tying his shoes...
I’m gunna go ahead and reply to all of your comments in this response, I love the input. Very intellectual. Im going to sort of think and type so as to break down my process… we have your 3 main points: -church hill vs hitler (each has hate for the other) - hate can be used for good (for instance church hill hating hitler lol) -these concepts do not apply to certain people & life who are incapable of understanding the difference of love and hate or good and evil — first I would like to ask you for the opportunity to provide more examples of how hate can be used for good. I think that if you break this down it is not as it seems. It is our response to hate that is important. I refer back to the golden rule, treat others how you want to be treated. So, when someone or something begins to perform acts of hate how do we approach that having sided with ‘good’ or ‘love’? The answer is that you must be willing to respond with an equal action to their action. However, the intent of the two sides is what is the deciding factor. Churchill wants freedom, hitler wants control. Now we also have to factor in that neither of these individuals are good examples because we can’t say whether either one has philosophically “sided” with love yet. I hope this is a sufficient reply for your first two points I leave you to respond. for your third point, similar to the psychopath, I believe that these are extreme outliers of our major population for a purpose. Each case is unique and teaches us something about human experience. However, just as we cannot say because one man is ill the rest of the word should base their existence on his recovery, we cannot compare a majority to such extreme cases. I think these individual’s actual understanding of these concepts vary’s widely and should be looked at closely to help understand what happened biologically and psychologically. It can also be drawn in comparison to predatory animals. Just because they kill without giving it any thought does not mean that is a good basis for the rest of our morality. I’ll end here for reply and again I still hold my ground on my opinion
After thought: you could say church hill’s love for his country was his primary motivation while hitlers hate for Jews was his primary motivation. Therefore making the distinction. *edit: I realize this is an oversimplification but the point stands *
I'm not arguing against you, just saying there are a multitude of ways at looking at the same issue. Almost everyone thinks of John Lennon and his song 'Imagine' as a wonderful song full of love, yet John Lennon was a misogynist who beat women almost his entire life. Two sides of the same coin. Can you be loving and hateful at the same time? Sure we can, let me smoke weed and you can set off a nuclear bomb and I'm good with it, straight? It's a horrible thought. This is an interesting discussion though.
I agree, very fun discussion. I think I’m on to something tho… I’m also a big believer in balance.. we don’t exist without the balance of temperature the earth exists in… it’s kinda key to life… so we all have some form of balance inside of us of love and hate …. Aka good and evil …. My goal is to help people see this so they can start to add “weight” to the side of love/good
