Is "Evil" defined by action, intent, both or neither?
By
Agonus,
Posted on: 2010-03-19 09:52 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Shadow = Not evil, good. Becasue of his lost memory he was like a blank slate and was swooped up by robotnic from since he can remember giving him a violent and relentless nature. but deep down his heart is in the right place, but every time he realises his memory is once again lost. It is currently not known whether or not the true shadow is still alive, if the current shadow is a robot clone, or if shadow was even a real person to begin with. Shadow is one of my favorite Sonic characters mainly for this reason, and for his change of heart at the end of Sonic Adventure 2 so he could save humanity.
I did not read all 4 pages of this. But evil is not easy to define. Most people would say Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gasey were evil. But take a character like Shotimes Dexter. A serial killer that only kills killers(with one exception). Just because he is a killer some would argue that he is evil, even though he tries to do the right thing.
I'd have to say if good were white and evil were black, everyone would be a shade of gray. I am sure there are thing that you have done that still effect your conscious when ever you think about it.
Evil can only be determined by your own moral compass.
@Blood Beret(2)Twitter
I am a bad speeler, use poorer grammar, and am a frequent typoist.
MA ArcID: 1197
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. Winston Churchill
meh.
Evil spelled backwards is Live and we all want to do that, don't we?
Quote:
As for this, yes. My "morality" has been constructed based on what my parents taught me and what I learned from the consequences of my actions. Good and evil don't exist. Only consequences.
| I'd have to say if good were white and evil were black, everyone would be a shade of gray. I am sure there are thing that you have done that still effect your conscious when ever you think about it. |
Be well, people of CoH.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
meh.
Evil spelled backwards is Live and we all want to do that, don't we? |
Well god spelled backwards is dog... and I don't really feel like worshiping any canines this lifetime.
Quote:
How about when all of that "saved the world" nonsense is undone when the truth came out?|
Originally Posted by Silverado
Ozzymandias was a hero who saved the world when others, even with godly superpowers, failed to do so.
Saving the world from nuclear destruction is a great end, and great ends require great sacrifices. Was it humane of him to do what he did? by no means it wasn't, but you don't accomplish great things (such as saving the world) by being humane. He sacrificed millions to save billions, the needs of the majority outweigh the needs of the minority. And that's like the textbook definition of justice and fairness |
The sacrifice was made for nothing and the actions and their ramifications remain.
This would also be another example... Is it better to alter the course of humanity with acts of untold horror? Or better to let them approach some other untold horror down the road... Since all of that would (likely) be by their own hands... I don't suppose there is any difference (Other than, who among us should be worthy of making the decision to commit terrible acts upon others?)
To tread lightly (Hopefully) on the subject of history's views on what is or isn't evil... One doesn't need to look far for large numbers of innocent people being killed and also left with lingering, chronic terrible results. Dropping the bombs on Japan is something that many people today could highly disagree about. And, what is said about it might very well depend upon what nation's history books you read.
Not that this totally represents my own opinions of the aforementioned acts... Life tends be a situation not of rights and wrongs, but of how much wrong you are willing to live with.
*stops self from babbling further*
@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
Quote:
There's a local peace group that celebrates Hiroshima annually. I know one of leaders (former teacher of mine). I asked about what they thought about Nanjing, plus the various movements of the Japanese government to cover it up, hide it, or at least minimize it (even including news stories and the like for her to reference). Surely that would better show the horrors of war than the bombing of Hiroshima? After all the group tried to raise awareness of things going on in the world at the personal level. And given we're in Hawai'i, its a relevant part of history to more than a small portion of the population, maybe even giving insight into why North Korea likes to fire test missles now and then in Japan's direction, etc.|
Originally Posted by Electric-Knight
To tread lightly (Hopefully) on the subject of history's views on what is or isn't evil... One doesn't need to look far for large numbers of innocent people being killed and also left with lingering, chronic terrible results. Dropping the bombs on Japan is something that many people today could highly disagree about. And, what is said about it might very well depend upon what nation's history books you read.
|
She never wrote back on the matter.
While I don't like it (nukes = yuck), I think it was better than the alternative they thought they had (long, ugly land war). And the US did a lot to help Japan rebuild after that, also.
Of course, at the root, I wish Japan never decided to invade anyone. That's one thing to be considered, too - what was the root of things? There's a lot of things that happened, good and bad, that never would've if the problem never happened in the first place! Yes, I'm sure there's stuff going back further, but you still have to be accountable for your own decisions.
Quote:
That's insane.
|
Originally Posted by Silverado
Ozzymandias was a hero who saved the world when others, even with godly superpowers, failed to do so.
Saving the world from nuclear destruction is a great end, and great ends require great sacrifices. Was it humane of him to do what he did? by no means it wasn't, but you don't accomplish great things (such as saving the world) by being humane. He sacrificed millions to save billions, the needs of the majority outweigh the needs of the minority. And that's like the textbook definition of justice and fairness |
Agua Man lvl 48 Water/Electric Blaster
"To die hating NCSoft for shutting down City of Heroes, that was Freedom."
Quote:
Change "sacrificed" to "murdered" and that might be a bit easier.|
Originally Posted by Mental_Giant
That's insane.
|
Sacrifice, when willing, is a noble, tragic thing. To lay down your life for someone or something.
Sacrifice as in "sacrificed"? Not so much. Candy coating.
Also, could be wrong, but did Ozy did anything to try and stop global nuclear annihilation any other way? If anyone had the intelligence to do so out of the bunch, he did. I don't recall, in the comic or movie (been years since I read it), that he tried to influence governments, diplomacy, etc., in any way.
First, let me explain where I am coming from. I am a Christian. As such, evil is a matter of intent. It involves free will, choice.
To kill deliberately a million people, regardless of your ultimate intent, is an act of evil. Despite any good intentions you are lending yourself to evil in this action. Even if your goal is to save the world and you consider yourself to be the savior of mankind, you've comitted an act of evil. Despite the purity of your intentions you have defiled yourself and committed murder.
To dig a hole with the intent of entrapping someone and killing them is evil. To dig that hole with the intent of creating the foundation of a house, but someone falls in it and dies, is an unfortunate accident. There was no intent to kill or even harm in the consequences involved. At most, it is neglect.
To lie is to lie, to steal is to steal, to murder is to muder. Notice I did not say kill, killing is justified in self defense and war if you understand the original language of the bible which had different words for 'murder' and 'kill' despite the English translation. (This is why study is so important for Christians, to understand what underlies a translation. I'm a translator. No significant translation is ever flawless, languages have nuance, meaning, and complexity relative to one another. But that's a whole different issue. Send me an email if you're interested. I won't digress here.)
All this moral relativism of today is a sham. It disguises personal choice in ambiguity, and cloaks it in dissembling justification.
As far as the game goes, I think it is important to note that there are four different moralities: Hero (white), Resistance (grey), Vigilante (dark grey), and Villain (black). It is not simply a matter of black and white. Deliberately choosing evil stains you from white progressively to black, from hero progressively to villain. And the reverse applies; that is redemption.
Together we entered a city of strangers, we made it a city of friends, and we leave it a City of Heroes. - Sweet_Sarah
BOYCOTT NCSoft (on Facebook)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/517513781597443/
Governments have fallen to the power of social media. Gaming companies can too.
This might be a better discussion for the Unleashed forum... I'm not sure if the mods are going to like where this might go here...
Hrm - the Resistance would likely be like marble or granite - because there are many people involved you can't really call the group a single thing but rather a range. As I've told Golden Girl, I'm hoping the resistance spans the gamut from real do-gooders to people that would be even worse than Emperor Cole if they got into power, along with everything in between.
Likewise, I'm hoping there's opportunity to see more than just facist thugs in the Loyalists. Lets face it - there will be some really good people wanting to sign up in various parts of it but won't know what the core of things is like. Even within a corrupt government/culture there's still room to do good things.
That's just me. The shades make for interesting reading/fiction, yes? Of course, so do start contrasts. I like Superman because he's a big boy scout 
Quote:
Sorry - trying to be civil.
|
Originally Posted by Westley
This might be a better discussion for the Unleashed forum... I'm not sure if the mods are going to like where this might go here...
|
Quote:
Since this is obviously targeted in my direction, what with quoting my exact phrasing, my point had nothing to do with whether or not an action was justifiable but regarding the affixing of arbitrary definitions.|
Originally Posted by Psyte
I would be scared to meet anyone who could seriously look at the **** of Nanjing, the Holocaust, or any number of things in our history and still say "everything is relative." If everything is relative, then every "evil" (and I say that loosely because if everything is relative then there really isn't an evil) is justifiable, somehow, someway, and noone should say anything except the narrow minded people who can't open their minds to see the full picture of things (and even then, that's just how they were raised).
|
I don't really want to get into it on a forum setting like this but even in the cases you reference, while the actions and their results are undeniably atrocious, affixing the title of "good" or "evil" to those at the front of the line feels unsound. Not trying to continue the Godwin, but if you want to bring up the obvious guy, you have to answer the question: Had the rest of Europe not allowed the ideal conditions to be set in place, would he have come to power? What of all the relevant parties involved sitting on their collective haunches, when the dangers were readily apparent? Or for some more recent conflicts, how far back should we assign the blame, particularly when it comes to having ignored Lawrence and letting something like the Sykes-Picot Agreement go through?
It's not that I'm acting as some sort of apologist for the obvious people but I just don't feel comfortable affixing such a weighted label when the greater sum of humanity is rarely innocent of some of the guilt. Again, it's not an apology for those that carried through with their decisions, just an affirmation that a stock label only begets blindness to full understanding and the ability to learn.
Bleargh.
Blue: ~Knockback Squad on Guardian~
Red: ~Undoing of Virtue on [3 guesses]~
Quote:
I could say something about how much I venerate god(s) vs. dogs, but that might erupt into a thread lock.
|
Originally Posted by Westley
Well god spelled backwards is dog... and I don't really feel like worshiping any canines this lifetime.
|
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
Quote:
Negative.| All this moral relativism of today is a sham. It disguises personal choice in ambiguity, and cloaks it in dissembling justification. |
Example: I am faithful to my wife not because it is the "good" or "right" thing to do. I am faithful to her because cheaters get caught and she will leave me if I cheat on her. As I would her.
I don't kill those that annoy me because it is "wrong" to do so. I choose not to do so because I know what the consequences are for that action.
I don't steal. My choice not to steal comes from my belief that what a man "owns" is his and I have no right to that which isn't mine. That and I know the consequences for theft.
Morality handed to someone by something outside of one's own logic and perceptions is meaningless to me. Such morality leads to pro-lifers, homophobes, crusaders and jihadists.
Be well, people of CoH.
Quote:
Is it just me, or is this the type of response that gets threads locked?
|
Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
Morality handed to someone by something outside of one's own logic and perceptions is meaningless to me. Such morality leads to pro-lifers, homophobes, crusaders and jihadists.
|
BrandX Future Staff Fighter
The BrandX Collection
Fascinating Thread. I hope you are all watching the final episodes of Lost.
205723: A Different DESTINY
When Soldiers of Arachnos got their names added to the Destiny List, Longbow managed to get a copy of the list and began rounding villains up. But one name on the list shocked them...
Quote:
Yes it is. Let's no go there.|
Originally Posted by BrandX
Is it just me, or is this the type of response that gets threads locked?
|
This thread is to elicit opinions, not case personal aspersions. I gave mine, many others have given theirs, we're not all going to agree. It's fascinating reading.
Together we entered a city of strangers, we made it a city of friends, and we leave it a City of Heroes. - Sweet_Sarah
BOYCOTT NCSoft (on Facebook)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/517513781597443/
Governments have fallen to the power of social media. Gaming companies can too.
Good and evil are not relative - there is absolute good, and there is absolute evil.
People who are more inclined to evil are also more likely to claim it doesn't exist.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
Quote:
Prove it.
|
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Good and evil are not relative - there is absolute good, and there is absolute evil.
|
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
Quote:
Understood.|
Originally Posted by LostHalo
Since this is obviously targeted in my direction, what with quoting my exact phrasing, my point had nothing to do with whether or not an action was justifiable but regarding the affixing of arbitrary definitions.
I don't really want to get into it on a forum setting like this but even in the cases you reference, while the actions and their results are undeniably atrocious, affixing the title of "good" or "evil" to those at the front of the line feels unsound. Not trying to continue the Godwin, but if you want to bring up the obvious guy, you have to answer the question: Had the rest of Europe not allowed the ideal conditions to be set in place, would he have come to power? What of all the relevant parties involved sitting on their collective haunches, when the dangers were readily apparent? Or for some more recent conflicts, how far back should we assign the blame, particularly when it comes to having ignored Lawrence and letting something like the Sykes-Picot Agreement go through? It's not that I'm acting as some sort of apologist for the obvious people but I just don't feel comfortable affixing such a weighted label when the greater sum of humanity is rarely innocent of some of the guilt. Again, it's not an apology for those that carried through with their decisions, just an affirmation that a stock label only begets blindness to full understanding and the ability to learn. Bleargh. |
For me its a matter wrongs compounding wrongs compounding wrongs. I'm a big believer in "there's enough blame to go around" versus trying to find a single explanation or party to blame. In short - its quite plausible, to me, that everyone was wrong and everybody screwed up.
Sorry - I've heard some stupid people use "everything is relative" and either never think that out or use it as a cop out ("Well, he didn't think it was wrong.").
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Fleeting Whisper
Prove it.
|
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
Quote:
I would disagree on your second point. They would likely, however, claim that they aren't evil. And for whatever bad things they might do, they'll likely have examples of things far, far worse, or acutely point out what they believe is your evil (ignorance, casual and contented hypocrisy, etc).|
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Good and evil are not relative - there is absolute good, and there is absolute evil.
People who are more inclined to evil are also more likely to claim it doesn't exist. |
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Fleeting Whisper
Prove it.
|
And even more fun: try to get everyone to agree on definitions of what constitutes absolute good and absolute evil. I think its one of those things where you're exceptionally unlikely (regardless if there is or isn't) to come to an agreement @_@
Quote:
Cheap shot is cheap. They're people over there too, ya know |
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
|
Okay, times for some tangentially relevant quotes.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt