Archives for posts with tag: Good and Evil

He has the opportunity.
He feels good doing it.
And he doesn’t care. About the consequences experienced by those affected.
As long as those affected are not able to affect him back, of course!
And if you analyze the whole thing in a dispassionate manner,
this is a perfectly rational behaviour!

There is a difference. Between differences.
There is a quantitative difference and a qualitative difference.

There is a quantitative difference between moral and immoral behaviours/persons. An immoral person is someone who cannot restrain themselves in certain instances. Who knows the difference between good and bad and yet cannot resist. Cannot resist doing the bad thing.
And there is a qualitative difference between a moral/immoral person and an amoral one. The amoral one’s actions are not affected by morals. That person does anything they want to do as long as they is not affected by the consequences of their doings. Regardless of whatever consequences may have to be endured by others.

Which brings us to the difference between bad and evil. Also a qualitative one.
Which difference has nothing to do with the amount of damage caused to the bystanders. And everything to do with the attitude of the perpetrator regarding their actions!

As an aside, I have to remark that we are all ‘bad’.
In the sense that all of us commit bad things. That none of us is able to completely restrain ourselves from doing immoral things. From knowingly performing ‘bad’ things. Bad for ourselves or even bad for other people.

The difference between us, normal immoral people, and the evil amoral ones being simple.

The immoral perform things which are potentially bad. For themselves and for others.
For example we smoke. Which is bad. Both for us and for all those who breathe our smoke. But the damage isn’t obvious. We might die before developing a cancer, right?
And most of us have driven a car after having enjoyed one drink too many. With no intent to commit an accident, obviously.
Meanwhile, the amoral may commit things which will certainly cause harm to other people. Regardless of whatever rationales the perpetrators invent to justify their actions. From Ponzi schemes to terrorism.

I’ve saved the juiciest bite for the end of my post.
While immoral is necessarily bad, amoral is morally neutral. Anything in between necessarily bad and necessarily good.
For instance, using weapons of mass destruction and compulsory vaccination/quarantine are amoral. Both are used with a blatant disregard towards the feelings of all those who have to endure.
The first is ‘a certain killer’ while the latter has saved entire populations… go figure!

You are permitted in time of great danger
to walk with the devil until you have crossed the bridge

Bulgarian Proverb

““The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.”

Bulgaria is a Balcanic country. Having evolved more or less together, the Balcanic countries share many cultural traits. Nevertheless, individual countries do have their own characteristics. Bulgaria does have a particular one.
The name, Bulgaria, comes from a Turkic tribe. Who had conquered the area in the VII-th century and established the first Bulgarian Empire. Yet the Bulgarian people is mainly Slavic. Speaks a Slavic language and has remained Christian Orthodox despite having been ruled directly by the Islamic Ottoman Empire from 1396 to 1878. Hence it is safe to consider that the Bulgarians do know a thing or two about keeping their shit together, don’t you think?

On the other hand, who, in their right mind, would want to find themselves on the other side of the bridge? Alone with the devil?!?

Maybe ‘devil’ has different meanings for different people…

We, in our cozy world, where everything is just about fine, consider the devil to be the absolute evil.
We are taught to believe that.

Yet things were not so clearly cut in the good old days.

The Bulgarian experience suggests that when the shit hits the fan, maybe it is wiser to put aside some of the things which made you consider your neighbour was ‘untouchable’ and join forces with them. Until the real danger is gone…

An even older experience, the one shared in the Bible, suggests that the Devil had a defining contribution in us becoming ‘like one of them (Gods)’. After all, it was ‘he’ who had taught Eve to eat the fruit which empowered her to “know good and evil”. It was ‘he’ who prodded Eve, who prodded Adam, to become conscious human beings…

Let me continue this post by sharing a story. Not a funny one but which fits in this context.

Once upon a time, there was a nonconforming sparrow who decided not to fly south for the winter. However, soon the weather turned so cold that he reluctantly started southward. In a short time, ice began to form on his wings and he fell to earth in a barnyard, almost frozen. A cow passed by and crapped on the little sparrow. The sparrow thought it was the end. But then the manure warmed him and defrosted his wings. Warm and happy, able to breathe, he started to sing. Just then a large cat came by and hearing the chirping, investigated the sounds. The cat cleared away the manure, found the chirping sparrow and promptly ate him.
Now, it may seem that there are no lessons here, but there are. In fact, there are three:
1. Everyone who shits on you is not necessarily your enemy.
2. Everyone who gets you out of shit is not necessarily your friend.
3. If you’re warm and happy in a pile of shit, keep your mouth shut.

Allen Klein

I’m not sure about 3. though. Keeping your mouth shut is not always the best option. Not in the longer run…
Use your better judgement instead of letting others tell you what to do.

Having just told you to use your own better judgement instead of letting others tell you what to do, I now suggest that you click on the following link. And read Niemoller’s life story:
https://hmd.org.uk/resource/pastor-martin-niemoller-hmd-2021/

And the LORD God said,
Behold, the man is become as one of Us,
to know good and evil;
and now, lest he put forth his hand,
and take also of the tree of life,
and eat, and live for ever.

“And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?

Adam called back and we all what happened next.

The serpent was cursed for his role, Eve was cursed for tempting Adam and Adam was cursed for….
In the end, all those involved – including the serpent, for whatever reason – were banished from the heaven. “Lest he put forth his hand…”

What are we to understand from all this?
That God, the omniscient and all powerful Father, was ‘evil’?
He must have known what was going to happen… he was omniscient, wasn’t he?

There are people who believe the Bible to be an accurate rendering of the past.
I happen to be one of them.
Only I don’t interpret what I read in the literal sense… the narrative is true, those things did happen, only not in the ‘real’ world. The Bible is not the story of flesh but a story of mind.

It is the story of what has happened in our minds. In our collective mind!

Genesis is the story of how we’ve grown conscious!
Starting from the sensations perceived during our interaction with the ‘real’ world – read ‘serpent’ – and using the evolutionary accrued ability to speak among ourselves – we’ve learned to identify ‘information’.
We, like all other living things, were already able to make the difference between good and ‘bad’. All living things ‘know’ what’s good for them and what to avoid. Or, at least, act as if…
We, like all other primates and along many other animals, were already adept at ‘reading minds’. Were already able to figure out intentions.
As conscious ‘human beings’ we have started to attribute intent! “To know good and EVIL”!

So evil is of a conscious nature, right?

‘How about ‘God’? Is it real?’

Sorry, I don’t have a reasonable answer for this question.
All I know is that the God so many of us believe in is nothing but a representation.
A figment of our collective imagination. And since we cannot imagine things but starting from the real world, there is a strong possibility that there is something, somewhere, which fits, however loosely, our concept. Our concept of a God…

Humberto Maturana, The origin and conservation of Self
https://constructivist.info/radical/pub/hvf/papers/maturana05selfconsciousness.html
Frans de Waal, Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30231743-are-we-smart-enough-to-know-how-smart-animals-are

And the Lord God said,
Behold,
the man is become as one of us, to
know good and evil.
Gen 3:22

Why are we doing all this?

?!?

You heard me. ‘Why are we doing all this?’
Everything that we do.

Is anything wrong with you?

No. Not anything that I know of.
Only this question which has arisen on it own.
Why don’t we just stop?
Stop doing everything that we do…

But doing what we do is the reason for our existence…
Otherwise we would not exist. At all!
The world itself would have been different.
Completely different!

So what?!?
Do you really care about the world?
What’s in it for you? For us…
What benefit do we have from the world being as it is?
Or at all…

Click here if this post doesn’t make any sense.


Who wrote the Bible?
Who considers God to be both omnipotent and wholly good?
Who had become human by learning ‘to tell good from evil’?
Does evil even exist outside our minds? Is anything actually evil unless considered so by one of us?

And no, I’m not hair-splitting when speaking about the huge difference between bad and evil!
An earthquake, for example, is bad for those affected. Yet no evil is involved here but for those who ‘question God’s actions’.
An individual who tortures animals for fun is also bad. Arguably less so than a major earthquake… but for everybody in their right mind that person is undoubtedly evil!

According to the Bible written by some of our ancestors, by “knowing good and evil” we have become “one of us“. “Like one of us“… Not (yet?!?) able to “live forever” and for certain ignorant of most things.

‘What?!? “Ignorant of most things” yet still “knowing good and evil”?!?’

Yep!

A more relaxed reader of the Bible may notice that what’s written there recounts, symbolically, the becoming of Man. The foremost apes notice the difference between night and day. And name both. The difference between ocean and dry land. And name them both. Notice the stars above and the living things, plants and animals, with whom they share the place. And name them all.
“Apes”, not ape, because nobody can learn to speak by oneself. Nor become self aware. As in ‘able to observe oneself while observing other things’. (Maturana, 2005)

That same relaxed reader may also notice that the very ‘fallen nature’ of Man stems from the ‘inconsistency’ noticed above.

We’re basically ignorant yet still able to call out evil!

Oops…

Humberto Maturana, “The origin and conservation of self consciousness…”, 2005, https://cepa.info/702

James Garvey, “Ethics is invented, not encountered…”, 2017, https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/philosophy/ethics-is-invented-not-encountered-why-the-philosophy-of-jl-mackie-remains-essential-reading

Many people consider man – as in ‘human people’, is a fallen creature.

For the simple reason that we had failed to obey our father.

Failing to obey your father may be considered a bad thing. The particulars of the incident should also be taken into account but, generally speaking, we should indeed obey our fathers. At the bare minimum, we should pay attention to what they have to say about things.

Coming back to us, humans, being fallen creatures, let’s examine what we’ve done to deserve this label.
According to the ‘many people’ I’ve already mentioned, we are fallen creatures because we have eaten – against our father’s specific interdiction, “from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil“.

Further more, the guilt for our transgression is unequally shouldered between men and women. Since it had been Eve who had talked Adam into eating that fruit, women are considered to be the ‘weaker’ amongst us, humans.

Now it’s the moment for me to remind you about Cain.
Abel and Cain had been the two children brought to life by Eve.
For whatever reason – and, again, against God’s advice, Cain had slain his brother Abel.

We – according to what the ‘many people’ continue to believe, in a literal manner – are the direct descendants of Cain. And of Eve, of course.

Yet we are ‘fallen’ because Eve had helped her husband, Adam, to develop a conscience. To learn the difference between good and evil.
Cain killing his brother has nothing to do with our promiscuous nature …

To me, it’s more than obvious that our fallible – not fallen – nature consists in the fact that we are prone to ‘misunderstandings’. We tend to see things in the most favorable manner.
Favorable for us, those who get to call things as being good or evil.

Whenever we are able to do it, we distribute ‘guilt’ and appropriate success.

Eve had offered us the ‘apple’. The opportunity to see ‘the’ difference.
From now on, it’s up to us to consider the facts.

Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.””

“….a combination of Gnostic Christianity, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and various other elements, with a basic doctrine of a conflict between light and dark…..”

And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil”  Genesis 3:22

Light and Dark, Good and Evil… sets of two different things which exist by themselves but make no sense until somebody sees the difference between them.

A wall has two sides.
A room – four walls with a floor and a roof, determines an inside and an outside. Because the walls have two sides and because somebody built it.
A room is empty when nobody is inside it and ‘disappears’ when nobody remembers its existence. Even if its walls continue to stand …

Two points are distinct if there is some space between them.
Two points belong to the same line if the distance between them is full of other points.

Matter is discrete.
Even atoms, which have long been considered as impossible to be divided further, are constituted of smaller components. Electrons, protons, neutrons, … quarks… all the way ‘down’ to quanta …
All this discreteness is made possible by space.
Which simultaneously encompasses each of the discrete pieces of matter and separates them.

On the other hand, matter is discrete in yet another manner. In time.
Manny trees live longer than us and mountains last way longer than trees.
Yet nothing is forever. Nor have existed for always. Not our Sun nor even the small pieces which inhabit the subatomic world.
Each piece of everything comes into existence and decays into oblivion.
Each organism is born into this world and eventually dies – releasing its components for further use.
All this discrete becoming being made possible by time.
Which simultaneously encompasses and separates each event.

Similarly to the aforementioned room, neither matter, space or time makes any sense on its own. Not even together.
They might exist but they have no significance until noticed.

By us, by God…