Talk:Evil
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I cannot with 100% certainty claim to know if all cultures (major, minor, historical or current) have or endorse use of good/evil. I do not even know if such concepts are present in all languages, or if translations into good/evil are contextually correct. Since Lee Daniel Crocker knows that such is the case, i'll leave the current wording in the fist paragraph alone, although I usually prefer vaguer statements :-) --Anders Törlind
I have nothing against "weasel words" when appropriate, but there actually is quite a bit of good research in this area, and there are many universals of human culture and human language; among them a concept of good and evil (and even more specific concepts like formalized marriage). Margaret Mead may have set back anthropology for decades, but she's been thoroughly debunked now, and we're coming out of the dark and realizing that there is indeed such a thing as "human nature" and it influences all cultures. I'm all for vague prose when there is a genuine lack of knowledge, but not for the sake of dogmatic relativism. --LDC
I don't like it (or perhaps even the whole article) because I personally don't believe in good or evil as such; perhaps I'm just a "slippery relativist" but I often notice that what is "evil" for one person is "good" for another (substitute "cursed" or "blessed" if you want). We do what we do; some things are beneficial to some people and detremental to others and calling them "good" or "evil" is trying to turn a value judgement into an absolute. --Justfred
Such relativism is a common viewpoint, which is why I mentioned it specifically. But this is an encyclopedia; our job is to accurately report what the various cultures and individuals believe. Every culture has a concept of good and evil; some are more absolutist than others, but they all have it. Whether or not we like that fact is irrelevant. To say anything else would be bad reporting. --LDC
The following was on the article page and shows POV problems:
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1 Definately one sided |
Why Evil Exists
REASONSEvil is needed in the world, sometimes more than good is. Evil counteracts good, forcing the world to remain neutral and stopping it from ending. What most people consider evil is usually done by people who would be considered good at any other time. People constantly confuse evil with unlawfulness, which is very troubling for me, since I am evil.
Does anyone else think that malicious deserves it's own article? Currently, it redirects to evil. This is problematic as it is untrue to characterize malicious as a synonym for evil (which the redirect essentially does). --Dante Alighieri 10:57 13 Jul 2003 (UTC)
While in my personal vocabulary Evil and Malicious are synonymous, I must agree with Dante that perhaps the redirect is not wise.
-FB
Yeah, its kind of a tough call, though. -戴眩sv</Strong> 07:00, Aug 17, 2003 (UTC)
- I've made the change, not only does malice have a semi-specific legal sense, but there's also a 1993 movie, Malice. --Dante Alighieri 19:31, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
The recent change which suggests that sociopathic behavior has "recently" been identified with "evil" is a bit weak. I'll be removing it, unless there is objection. Mkmcconn 16:37, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)
To my knowledge, Judaism does not recognize evil. Judaism recognizes "bad". The difference between evil and bad, is evil is a noun, similar to a tangabile force. Bad, however, is an adjective, describing a choice presented to a person.
If a religion believe there are good and malevolent forces, they believe in Good/Evil, yet, if they believe in the power of choice, they believe in Good/Bad. Xtians believe in Good/Evil, Judaism believes in Good/Bad. I am not aware of what Muslim's believe.
Because of that, the reference to Abrahamic religions is probably incorrect. If anything, it should be "Eastern Religions". -- Chacham
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It seems the unsubstantiated assumptions about "almost all cultures" or "many cultures" are projecting Western moralism on cosmologies about which writers of this article have little understanding.
The duality of Oriental cultures is expressed as Yin and Yang. Who can tell me which of those is good and which is evil?
If that fundamental oriental division of dark and light does not align with good and evil, then what is the Oriental duality of good and evil? And if the writers cannot cite a beleivable duality among oriental populations that aligns with Western notions of Good and Evil, they have already excluded a major portion of the worlds population.
The authors are also implying a cultural cohesiveness that is erroneous. Asia can scarecly be described as one culture. It is home to a diverse plethora of cultures that include communism, capitalism, Taoism, Bhuddism, myriad divisions of each and numerous other major cultural influences.
What we have here is a personal essay by a few people who grew up in a Christian culture and who have not a clue that others don't see the world the way they do. The writers of this article are projecting their own personal beliefs about good and evil on people from other cultures, yet do not understand the actual research their own scientists have conducted to refute the niave notion of good and evil. These uninformed sophomoric projections are demeaning to those about whom the writers purport to be writing. DontMessWithThis 00:55, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Definately one sided
While I don't think this article is bad, per say [sic], it is one sided. It is absolutely un true that every culture has a concept of good and evil, the most obvious being the Far East.
Both China and Japan, from what I know, don't have a concept of good and evil, and even with such exposure to Western culture, the idea has not much taken. As someone else pointed out, the idea of Yin and Yang is as close as you get in China to any absolute, metaphysical morality - and anyone who knows the slightest thing about Yin and Yang knows how absurd it would be to try and say, base a legal system of its goodness/evilness.
Unfortunately, I don't know my Social Anthropology well enough to edit this article, but as it stands, it's incomplete, and needs to acommodate the vast range of views there are on this topic, as opposed to the typical western ones. Alex404 21:19, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
- Alex....you and I must be seeing different articles. :-) The article, when you wrote the above, did not say "every culture has a concept of good and evil"....to the contrary, it only asserted "some cultures" do. That's far too limiting -- I have changed it to say "many cultures" because many cultures have a very dualistic approach to morality. I would never say that "all cultures" do or even "most cultures", and I don't see this article saying that. If it does, why not change it?
- I don't see that the article suggests that China and Japan have strong concepts of evil -- where do you see this? And certainly the article doesn't say that "evil" is always something to base a legal system on. If you wanted to add a paragraph addressing why Eastern religions seem less focused on the idea of evil, I think you should. I think, though, it is fair to say that almost all religions do describe behaviors that are desirable and undesirable; that all cultures have taboos and restrictions of some kind. Whether or not we want to call these things "evil" may be more a question of semantics and definition than of substance. I think the article actually does quite well in explaining what "evil" is often used to describe, and where the definition of "evil" finds its roots in Western society.
- Ultimately, I don't see any reason to leave a disputed tag on there. The allegations you make (e.g., that the article asserts that all cultures have a concept of good and evil) do not appear to be backed up by the article's text itself. If you think it lacks some information about Eastern Asian cultures, I encourage you to add it. I'm certainly not skilled enough to. But I can say that the article doesn't do anything to try and mischaracterize Eastern beliefs....it simply emphasizes that "evil" is a concept limited to a group of cultures, most notably "Western society". I think this is actually a pretty enlightened stance, though of course the article could use some work. Unless you post some examples here of a pretty blatant systematic bias, I'll take down the disputed tag in a week or so -- after all, if there are only a few instances of bias, we can work together to eliminate them. "Disputed" tags should be reserved for articles where two sides simply cannot agree on the facts, and we haven't even started talking. :-) Hope this comes across as friendly -- I think we can work together on this. Jwrosenzweig 22:43, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Nah, you're being perfectly friendly, Jwr :)
I'm just new at this whole wikipedia thing, so I don't really know all the rules of the game, quite yet.
If you want to talk down the disputed flag, go ahead, as long as we can discuss this article as well.
Upon reading it again, I realize that some of my points weren't fair - on the other hand, I do think this article is in heavy need of reorginization, and while it doesn't say that all cultures have a concept of good and evil, I think that we need to put in alternative cultural view points, because I suspect some people might have difficulty in even imagining morality without a concept of evil (especially in this day and age, seeing how often the word is thrown around). I'd even be willing to do it, though I'd have to do some research before I felt comfortable.
In the mean time though, I think what's important is that the article is structured more effectively so as to show the contrasts that go on in the different views. Right now it more reads as a list of fairly isolated paragraphs, and an article on evil seems suited to me to being fairly substantial.
Perhaps if we create one of those bookmark headings (with all the links and stuff), we could have headings as follows
1.Religious conceptions, where we can compare and contrast those with strong metaphysical concept of good and evil - namely, the Abrahamics, with, for example, the more pragmatic far eastern thoughts.
2. Philosophic conceptions, where we can talk about the various ideas of ethics, and their ideas of evil (evil as pain, evil as deception, etc)
3. Social conceptions, where we can talk about the use of evil in terms of cultural values, such as patriotism and other social mores, as well as evil in a legal sense.
4. Scientific conceptions Where we can present how modern understandings in psychology and even neurology have had an effect on our popular ideas of evil.
Anyway, discussion would be welcomed, as I'm now feeling all pumped about this.
In the next few days I'll write up an article as I'd like to see it, and maybe post in here in the talk section or something.
Anyway, sorry for being so hasty, and hopefully we can sort this article out to everyones tastes, and any more points on due process, please feel free to point out. Alex404 01:01, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)
- *Breathes huge sigh of relief* Thank you, Alex, for being so positive! I was worried this was going to be a big fiasco -- anything related to religion around here tends to get that way unless all are very careful. I like very much your ideas about restructuring the article -- it's grown in an odd manner (often by being semi-vandalized, and then some of us coming through and trying to sort out what's useful and what's not), and you're right that it doesn't flow as well as it should. I will take down the disputed flag with your permission, mostly because I dislike tagging articles unless it's absolutely necessary, and it seems as though you and I are going to be just fine talking this one through. Here's my suggestion -- copy the text of the article at Talk:Evil/Proposed article and then start making edits to that copy, so it's clear what you're keeping from the existing article and how you're rearranging and adding to it...since you mentioned you're new here, I'll just note that this tends to be standard practice for overhauling an article. It helps the overhaul be as collaborative and visible as possible. I like your four main topics, and suggest we give that a try. Any objections to me casting around for other editors who might be interested? I will say up front that the only names I can think of are all members of Western religions, but they are fairly open-minded and know a lot about other religious and philosophical ideas. I think more that two minds will be helpful here (particularly as my life is hectic right now and I worry I won't be able to help you as much as I'd like), but I don't want to give the impression that I'm "ganging up on you" by hauling in cronies of mine (to clarify, the editors I'm thinking of aren't necessarily people I work with often, and we can often disagree, so I won't be bringing in yes-men for my perspective....whatever that is, come to think of it...but rather trying to find people with additional perspectives that might help round out the article). :-) I don't anticipate you and I are going to be adversaries, though, so perhaps I'm being a little too cautious. I still like to make sure, though, that everyone's comfortable with what we're doing. It may be, by the way, that there are nice snippets on evil in our articles on Eastern religions and philosophy -- perhaps you and I should both take a quick look and see what we can find. Generally, though, this sounds great, and if you're fired up, I'd say you should jump right in, and we'll sort it out on that proposed article page. Jwrosenzweig 16:07, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Sorry that I dissapeared all of a sudden.
Unfortunately, I have a test on the 15th (tomorrow) which I'm studying busily for.
I'll try to have an adequate article up for the 16th. And please, fish for editors. While some of the headings I'll be good for (philosophic and scientific views I got covered fine), the other two (religious, and social) will deserve a better treatment then I'll be able to give it.
Anyway, hopefully I can put this in motion sooner rather then later. Alex404 04:11, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
concept of evil is not so simple.
Concept of evil is not so simple
It is dangerous that people have a simple concept of "good and evil" without thinking deeply about the actual realities of the real world. Adolf Hilter does not believe that he is evil. The last statement is very hard for a lot of people to understand.
Consider the statement "Evil is as Evil does". It means that a person can believe that they are doing good. A person can believe that they are doing God's work. But if that person behaves in a way which causes harm to others then to other people whom they had harmed, that person is EVIL. This seems to be very hard for some people to understand.
My Rewrite
I attempted a major improvement of the article. I have added an additional definition of evil as well as included critical views on how the term evil is often currently used. The article could still use further imrovement, especiallally by adding information on eastern views of evil (Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism). -Cab88
Yet another evil
M. S. Peck in his book "The People of the Lie" has yet another definition for "evil" people. See [1] (http://members.tripod.com/ejm/people.htm) I find this interesting as an exploration of absolute definitions of "evil," rather than the relative definition we so often assume. Peck proposes that our personalities convert from "bad" to fully "evil" when, first, we cultivate a blindness to our own unwanted character "flaws" and/or "bad" behavior, then second, we develop a mental disorder of subconscious psychological projection where we see imaginary character flaws in others and try to destroy them, yet we ourselves suffer from those exact character flaws. Evil people see themselves as fighting against a disgusting foe in order to advance "goodness," yet their victims are innocent. This definition of "evil" would be independant of culture, since the personal characteristics which are denied and then projected could be anything. It's the denial and the subconscious projection which defines the concept. Under this definition, Hitler was evil because, rather than subjecting his country and perhaps himself to honest introspection and attempts at self-improvement, he decided that Jewish and other minority groups were the true cause of Germany's troubles. He saw himself as doing good, yet outside observers saw him as suddenly lashing out at weak victims. --Wjbeaty 20:15, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)
A Poetic and Ontological Attempt at Accounting Evil.
At the bottom of social ontology - a recondite yet ubiquitous phenomenon which upon recognition undergoes amplification. Its essence is best described as: <profanity>.
All this against the backround of the lack of care in the cosmos - that which "shores up" humanity against its notable stark realities.
Also, as backdrop, a predominantly(and growing) centrifugal human market world in which this appears as a centripetal force.
See also: Talk: Cruelty.
--Scroll1 23:21, 16 May 2005 (UTC)