There's this man named Adam. He's a pretty fucked up guy: he steals, kills women and children and tortures people. Adam is the leader of a group called "The Bastards." This group is in conflict with the common people of Teller city - commiting horrible acts on the citizens. One day, Adam travels to a region of the land he's never been to. He walks inside a bus station where a man, who has never knew of Adam or his crimes, shoots and kills him. The mystery man kills Adam because of the clothes he was wearing. It was an act of hatred, and his intentions were that of hate. As a result of Adam's death, "The Bastards" are crippled from a lack of leadership, and fall apart. Teller city is now free from senseless crime and hatred. No more evil. Now, my questions: 1) Did Adam's murderer commit an evil act even though he brought peace to an entire city?? 2) The people of the land where Adam died saw his death as an act of evil, senseless murder. Where as Teller city saw it as a blessing and an act of good on the murderer's behalf. Did Adam's murderer do good when he shot him to death even though his intentions were bad?? This one's got me confused Type away!!
Evil because it was simply an act of hatred. In some situations, killing an evil person can be a positive thing, but in this case he had no knowledge of Adam's evil doings
limping off tour cause i made more off my second leg do it big, i get on and have a heart attack, lol
'Good' and 'evil' are in the mind of the beholder. As OP said, if you're in Teller City you're going to extol killing Adam as a good deed. If you're one of Adams' crew, you're going to label it evil, cold-blooded murder. And so on... so, we have many variations and perspectives upon the ethnical standing of the deed. From this, is it possible to give any kind of universal judgement? Once again, depends on how you weight it. If you are of the belief that murder is ALWAYS evil and is intrinsically an evil deed (no matter who commits it), then you'll surely declare that the murder of Adam was evil because murder is an evil deed - Adams' history of evildoing is irrelevant, because killing him violates the golden rule (Thou shall not kill!). If you're like me, you'd probably look at it like this - Adam killed far more people than the old man, who killed Adam and that was all. However, his deed was in cold blood, and that's a bad thing - for a killing to ever be 'justified', it must be a vicarious act of love (killing someone to prevent them killing others - an act of love towards the 'others'), not an act of pure hated commited purely for the sake of it and not with the intention of helping anyone at all. So, even though the old man has only killed one person (a murderer who had killed many other people), the killing itself was 'wrong', and was 'evil' according to my definition - but the consequences of this 'evil' deed, I would argue, are 'good'. Teller City is far safer and the Bastards are non-operational, both of which are 'good' outcomes for the huge majority of people - of course, this is a bad outcome for the Bastards, but if one group has to be happy at the expense of the other it's far better that the larger, non-violent, non-'evil' group are happy than the smaller, 'evil' group. Why? Many reasons, all of them probably obvious. So! It's an 'evil' act with a 'good' outcome, sorta like a somewhat abstract situational representation of that phrase 'You've got to be cruel to be kind'. That's my 2 cents on the issue...
I agree, but I think if he found out afterward that he did something good, he would have retained good karma.
So if the murderer knew of Adam's crimes then it wouldn't have been "evil," right?? So this tells me that the act of murder is not necessarily evil, but the intention behind it is. Let me use this another way, then: I cure a man of aids, but I only cured him because I wanted him to suffer more throughout his life. I guess it makes sense?? Nice post. It made a ton of sense all around. If I read it correctly, you're trying to say it's all perspective, right?? And that good&evil is defined circumstantially. Man, this is confusing Not your post, just this idea in general. Wow, we just go further down into the hole!! Then we involve karma. All these posts are great, but something tells me this: nothing means nothing until you make it something. Nothing is defined in any form or fashion, just a potential of it. To me it seems that it's possible to never do good or evil as long as you keep on redefining or justifying an evil or good deed. It's like this: I think you're bad but he thinks you're good. They think your good, but everyone else thinks you're bad. It's like you can never do anything bad or good as long as there is someone else to throw a different spin on it. You know what I mean??
Evil is a 3 legged dog condemning itself for not having 4. Good is a 3 legged dog proud of his tri-set and draws uniqueness from that fact
Thats just the inception let the thought build and consider why one 3 legged dog is good and one 3 legged is evil
if 1 man has to die to bring world peace, i say theres someone willing to sacrifice, is your question?