we have a couple of reactions to make…….
in light of the good versus evil question……
we understand “good” and “evil” as two distinct
and separate issues, but we understand that “good”
and “evil” are really just perspectives……….
take the Holocaust, it has been classified as “evil” and yet,
and yet, was it? People did benefit from the removal of Jews
and communist and Gays into those concentration camps…
People were able to get better jobs, make more money,
have a better house because the Jews were taken away…
from this standpoint, the removal of people into concentration camps
was not “evil”… it was good because it benefited people
and any event that was a benefit to people cannot be counted as
“evil”
but take the Jewish people or the communist or Gays that were transported
to concentration camps to die, it was “evil” nothing more, nothing less…
so, is removal of people into concentration camps, “good” or “evil”?
depends on your viewpoint……… but take an event and let us look at it…
for example, a tree falls… in one case the tree falls and it kills a lion
that was about to eat some people… in another case, the tree fell
and killed some children… now for some people, the tree falling and killing
the lion was a “good” thing and for some people the tree killing children is an
“evil” thing……. depends on your perspective, doesn’t it?
so, how is one to understand the tree falling?
you see the act, the tree falls, you see the tree killing either the lion
or killing the children……………. but you cannot make a judgment without
bringing in some other evidence………… for example, the visual image
of the tree falling doesn’t allow one to make some moral judgement…
the fact the tree will kill one life form or the other life, still doesn’t
allow some moral judgement… to make a “moral judgement” one must
have facts outside the actions itself……
to make this clear, let us take two similar emotions…
let us say, that for me, to get a sexual thrill, I like watching two women,
now let us say, that for some person, raping and killing children, also
brings about a sexual thrill… if we just judge it based on the
result that the actions have on us, we both get sexual thrills…if that
is the criteria, then it doesn’t matter what the action we take to reach
the sexual thrill… the point is to have the sexual thrill………….
not how we got the sexual thrill.…………….
but to justify either action, we must go beyond the act of causing
the sexual thrill……. It can be argued that my looking at two women
having sex is “less” a danger then some person raping and killing children……
but we have to go beyond the action, go beyond the sexual thrill and
bring in outside reasons for our actions to be “judge” right or wrong………
Now one may object to both actions equally, as watching two women
debases and demean and destroys what women are and raping and killing
children destroys lives that had no choice of any kind………….
in other words, the path to understanding the “rightness” or “wrongness”
of any action lies outside of the action itself… you cannot call an action
“right” or “wrong” or “good” or “evil” based on just the actions themselves…
any explanations must come from outside of the actions……………
the criteria for judging “right” from “wrong” doesn’t come from the action itself,
the criteria comes from some outside source… society cannot function if we allow
people to rape and kill children but society can and does function if we allow
men (or women) for that matter to watch two women have sex………
and we can create other reasons for accepting one action or another, but
those reasons come from outside of the actions itself…
so the standard we might use to judge such matters arise from outside of
the actions because we cannot know from an action itself if it is “good”
or “evil” until we take some inventory of the event and note the pluses
or minus of any given event………. it is after the fact that we decide
if an event is “good” or “evil” or simply just neutral………………
and we use criteria outside of or beyond the event itself…………
So “good” and “evil” require some analysis, some full understanding
of the event and its aftermath before we can consider an event to
be “good” or “evil”……………
or said another way, understanding “good” and “evil” requires some
perspective and a full accounting before we can make some declaration
to the value of the words “good” or “evil” and apply the words “good” and “evil” to
any action………
to understand “good” and “evil” requires a judgement to be made…
and we must understand the basis of that judgement for the
judgement to have any value………………
and the judgement requires an explanation outside of the event
and outside of some personal moral understanding……………
is "good’ and is “evil” “subjective”?
the problem with that, is the fact that we must bring in outside
evidence to “correctly” understand any judgment we might make…….
we cannot properly understand an event until we use some outside
criteria and not just judge the event by itself… but we run into
another problem, which outside criteria should we use?
But Kropotkin, you haven’t answered anything, you haven’t solved
anything… you just have more questions………… yep……….
Kropotkin