What is your definition of evil?

[iceaura]

Wow, I suppose a crucifixion is in order for the sins of the world

Your legacy of a world of lies is not a sin of the world. It's an evil done by you.

No, I won't carry that cross for you, but you are welcomed to carry your own.

You are the cross, that decent Americans have to carry. We are obligated - by shared national identity and political association - to clean up after you and your world of lies.
Like I said - if you ever wake up, face your own posted definition of evil and its direct application to your entire adult political life, it's going to be a hard day for you. Personally, I doubt it will ever come. As with most Republican voters, you've been jacked around so much by the Republican media manipulation you don't have the memory capacity any more. You can't remember what you believed and did in years past, any more than you can remember what actually happened.

Take an obvious and uncontroversial evil that was done in the past - a big one, that everybody saw happen and knows about, and that is directly relevant to the moral situation we face in US politics right now: The military invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Right now, without research or reminder or double checking, you have no idea how it happened, or who was responsible, or what it involved, or what of today's circumstances derived from it. You are oblivious to your role in the major evil of your time.

 

[Write4U]

Aliminum tubes are the cause of all evil......

 

[DaveC426913]

Your legacy of a world of lies is not a sin of the world. It's an evil done by you.

Maybe I've been following along too lightly, but where did Bowser, the poster, become a liar and the target?
I thought this was an academic discussion about opinions of evil. Did Bowser start preaching while I wasn't watching?

( Honest question, not sarcastic. And it doesn't have to be answered by IA; pointing at a post # will do.)

 

[Beer w/Straw]

I thought this was an academic discussion about opinions of evil.

On that note: If I'm not evil, how can I really know what evil is?

 

[Write4U]

On that note: If I'm not evil, how can I really know what evil is?

Abstract imagination.

 

[wegs]

Can a person be born ''evil,'' or is it a byproduct of how he/she was nurtured as a child? When I think of evil, it borders on someone who lacks a well formed conscience, like a psychopath.

 

[river]

Beer w/Straw said: ↑
On that note: If I'm not evil, how can I really know what evil is?

Abstract imagination.

Define further .

Many people have abstract imagination without the thought evil .

 

[Write4U]

Define further .

Many people have abstract imagination without the thought evil .

Are people who write horror books all evil? Our imagination seems practically infinite.
One does not have to be evil to imagine evil. One is evil when he/she does evil.

 

[iceaura]

Maybe I've been following along too lightly, but where did Bowser, the poster, become a liar and the target?

He's always been a poster of lies, especially political- that's a field mark of his posting on this forum.
When he posted his definition of maximum evil, in 142, he became a relevant target - I mean, c'mon. That was pretty raw.

 

[Write4U]

Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”

I think the absence of empathy is typical of psychopaths.

In a brain study, psychopaths responded to thoughts of their own pain but felt no empathy for others in pain. Decety. J, Chenyi. C, Harenski. C, and Kiehl. K, A. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2013

In nature, the psychopath feels no pain beyond his own, an island unto himself in an emotional wasteland.

As many as one percent of people — and nearly one in every four inmates in American prisons — may exhibit traits consistent with the personality disorder of psychopathy: a lack of empathy and remorse, shallow affect, glibness, manipulation, and callousness. Under the lens of modern brain scanning technology in a study of U.S. prisoners, people with psychopathy to varying degrees not only fail to experience empathy for another’s pain, but also derive pleasure from the thought.

https://www.medicaldaily.com

 

[sideshowbob]

I think the absence of empathy is typical of psychopaths.

Lack of empathy is a relative thing:

complete lack = psychopath
slight lack = jerk​

 

[DaveC426913]

When he posted his definition of maximum evil, in 142, he became a relevant target - I mean, c'mon. That was pretty raw.

142? 'Creating a world of lies' Seems pretty harmless. Are you sure that's the right post#?

 

[Write4U]

Lack of empathy is a relative thing:

complete lack = psychopath
slight lack = jerk​

But evil is not rampant either and the term should apply only to the extreme lack of empathy.
Everyone can recognize a jerk, they are a nuisance.
But it is difficult to recognize a psychopath. They are often very intelligent and manipulative.


​

 

[sideshowbob]

But evil is not rampant either and the term should apply only to the extreme lack of empathy.

It isn't something you can easily quantify. There are warning signs of future evil - e.g. abusing animals - which can escalate. But is everybody who kicks a dog "evil"?

 

[iceaura]

But evil is not rampant either and the term should apply only to the extreme lack of empathy.

The term should apply to the behaviors engendered by such a lack - including those of minions and collaborators and the complicit.
Such as the invasion and occupation of Iraq, by the US Republican Party, in 2003.
That was fairly "rampant".

 

[Write4U]

The term should apply to the behaviors engendered by such a lack - including those of minions and collaborators and the complicit.
Such as the invasion and occupation of Iraq, by the US Republican Party, in 2003.
That was fairly "rampant".

Agreed, but the Dark Lord in that scenario was Dick Cheney. Witness his influence in drafting the "Halliburton Loophole", which basically exempted the oil industry from any environmental liabilities as a result of fracking.

Despite the widespread use of the practice, and the risks hydraulic fracturing poses to human health and safe drinking water supplies, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) does not regulate the injection of fracturing fluids under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

The oil and gas industry is the only industry in America that is allowed by EPA to inject known hazardous materials — unchecked — directly into or adjacent to underground drinking water supplies.

This exemption from the SDWA has become known as the “Halliburton loophole” because it is widely perceived to have come about as a result of the efforts of Vice President Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force.

Before taking office, Cheney was CEO of Halliburton — which patented hydraulic fracturing in the 1940s, and remains one of the three largest manufacturers of fracturing fluids. Halliburton staff were actively involved in review of the 2004 EPA report on hydraulic fracturing.

https://earthworks.org/issues/inadequate_regulation_of_hydraulic_fracturing/

Being that this is directed against the US population's right to safe water and air, I consider that evil in the highest degree.

 

[iceaura]

It isn't something you can easily quantify. There are warning signs of future evil - e.g. abusing animals - which can escalate. But is everybody who kicks a dog "evil"?

A study came out a few weeks ago that indicated animal abuse in childhood did not predict psychopathology in adulthood,

with one exception: stabbing.

Stabbing a vulnerable animal with a knife in childhood strongly predicted future evil. Kicking, beating, starving, smothering, did not. Go figure.

 

[Write4U]

A study came out a few weeks ago that indicated animal abuse in childhood did not predict psychopathology in adulthood,

with one exception: stabbing.

Stabbing a vulnerable animal with a knife in childhood strongly predicted future evil. Kicking, beating, starving, smothering, did not. Go figure.

IMO, empathy is developmental phenomenon. Empathy is the ability to place yourself into someone else's shoes. To imagine their reality as if was truly yours. It produces a chemical response, such as wincing when you see someone hurt themselves. That is a strange thing when you think of it. You are not the one being hurt, yet your system responds with producing the same chemical reaction as in the person actually experiencing the pain.

It is a result of the mirror neural network. If that network is not cultivated properly or under adverse conditions, the result may well be a complete lack of empathy.

A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting.

Neuroscientists such as Marco Iacoboni (UCLA) have argued that mirror neuron systems in the human brain help us understand the actions and intentions of other people.

In a study published in March 2005 Iacoboni and his colleagues reported that mirror neurons could discern whether another person who was picking up a cup of tea planned to drink from it or clear it from the table.[10] In addition, Iacoboni has argued that mirror neurons are the neural basis of the human capacity for emotions such as empathy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron

I believe this starts as part of the early "bonding" between mother and child.

 

[akoreamerican]

what do you know of emotion ?

If someone lacked empathy does that automatically make that person evil?
Do you not believe that people who lacked empathy can learn to empathize with others?

 

[Seattle]

"Evil" is a religious concept. I don't consider that there is "evil" in this world. There are "bad" people doing "bad" things. To me "evil" has some supernatural implication.