Are Humans Stupid or Evil?
- Thread starter Slick Samurai
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like James hetfield said: "were are all born with the same size soul and all are good when we are born" its just what happens to us that affects us to be good or evil 
A bit of both. It's generally tolerable in the average person, but when we all get together, well...
Not stupid or evil, evil often is misinterpreted and at times, usually debated as in the eye of the beholder (for instance, Hitler always thought he was doing good) which is true to some extent. I'd say we are unenlightened definitely, constantly evolving (sorry creationists) and as mentioned already, far too ignorant and greedy for our own good. One thing all of us have in common is that we rarely think outside our own box, that's usually the start of many problems.
Fair enough, I'm just cautious of the near inevitable flamewar as soon as religion or evolution is mentioned.Razorback0z said:
I think we first need to define good and evil. Are good and evil what is acceptable and what is not or have they some higher connetations? Personally I think that it is the later but for the moment let's go for the former. What is acceptable is based on two things, knowledge and predisposition (i.e. evolutionary morality).
Taking your invasion example, the informed will know the real reason behind the invasion and who is the aggressor. However they will still have a casus belli, however weak or faked because they, or rather the population, know instinctively that unwarranted aggression is wrong, something that has been breed into social creatures. Thus an excuse, however weak provided it's not discredited, allows us to act without pangs of conscience because this rule is over-ridden by the others percieved aggression (i.e. knowledge over-rules predispotition in this case).
No, I'm really just playing devils advocate, all I'm saying is that not everyone conforms to a certain set of views, if they did then yes, evil would have a more concrete meaningAkai Shizuku said:
"In our position as rulers of Earth"? Oh, hell yes. If you take the actions of those who decide how things will be done en masse as though they were condensed into one person, that person is unquestionably both stupid and evil. Wasteful, genocidal, oblivious, self-destructive, and with a remarkable lack of foresight, to boot.
But just to throw a wrench into things, on the individual level, I rather think most people are pretty good. Smart? Well... Maybe not. But good. I find the number of people who would steal from you, lie to you, hurt you largely for the sake of hurting you, and/or kill you is remarkably small, and I'm optimistic enough to think that it's more because most people would really rather get along with others and do good for others rather than that they think they're being watched and payback is a fang-toothed mongrel with twelve hungry pups. When there's a crisis- a drought, a blackout, a heavy snowstorm- it's often quite remarkable the extent to which people who are near-strangers will pitch in to help one another out. And I know that I, in my small way, try to do the same. I really don't think any community can exist for long without a multitude of small benevolent acts and resisted opportunities to do harm, performed every day.
The problem is that humans have a fairly remarkable ability to abdicate responsibility to those in authority. We believe the nine out of ten experts without ever looking at their credentials, and we frequently believe that if there was something wrong with the way we are presently doing things, someone [else] would have done something about it by now. And if someone actually has the temerity to suggest we do do something differently, we drag our heels at best, and become downright hostile (how dare you attack our blessed way of life, our forefathers have been doing things this way for generations, blah blah blah) at worst. Most of us are conditioned to strive, not for the best, but for a comfortable status quo.
And then we get to the people on the very top, and with some exceptions, that's where you find the real stupidity and evil. The stupidity to believe that your position actually qualifies you to make the big decision (and the fear of looking weak if you hesitate), the stupidity to believe the comforting assumption is the accurate one, and the sheer evil to know better and to take the way that is easy or rewarding in the short term or vindictive, despite that knowledge.
When someone's car is in a snow drift, we're all there to pitch in with shovels. When (for example) wasteful use of water, overfishing, monoculture crops and feedlot practices forewarn massive starvation?... Ah, I'm sure someone smart will figure out a solution without me having to give anything up.
Moo.
But just to throw a wrench into things, on the individual level, I rather think most people are pretty good. Smart? Well... Maybe not. But good. I find the number of people who would steal from you, lie to you, hurt you largely for the sake of hurting you, and/or kill you is remarkably small, and I'm optimistic enough to think that it's more because most people would really rather get along with others and do good for others rather than that they think they're being watched and payback is a fang-toothed mongrel with twelve hungry pups. When there's a crisis- a drought, a blackout, a heavy snowstorm- it's often quite remarkable the extent to which people who are near-strangers will pitch in to help one another out. And I know that I, in my small way, try to do the same. I really don't think any community can exist for long without a multitude of small benevolent acts and resisted opportunities to do harm, performed every day.
The problem is that humans have a fairly remarkable ability to abdicate responsibility to those in authority. We believe the nine out of ten experts without ever looking at their credentials, and we frequently believe that if there was something wrong with the way we are presently doing things, someone [else] would have done something about it by now. And if someone actually has the temerity to suggest we do do something differently, we drag our heels at best, and become downright hostile (how dare you attack our blessed way of life, our forefathers have been doing things this way for generations, blah blah blah) at worst. Most of us are conditioned to strive, not for the best, but for a comfortable status quo.
And then we get to the people on the very top, and with some exceptions, that's where you find the real stupidity and evil. The stupidity to believe that your position actually qualifies you to make the big decision (and the fear of looking weak if you hesitate), the stupidity to believe the comforting assumption is the accurate one, and the sheer evil to know better and to take the way that is easy or rewarding in the short term or vindictive, despite that knowledge.
When someone's car is in a snow drift, we're all there to pitch in with shovels. When (for example) wasteful use of water, overfishing, monoculture crops and feedlot practices forewarn massive starvation?... Ah, I'm sure someone smart will figure out a solution without me having to give anything up.
Moo.
I'd disagree. And while I do hate people that can't think for themselves, I still don't see them as evil.geldonyetich said:
Ignorance isn't evil. There are plenty of people who the world would deem evil who know very well what they are doing and why. It is the why that may be confusing to other people, but as for what they are doing most know what it is and why it is wrong to do in a sense, yet they choose to do these unethical things in order to achieve what they believe are ethical outcomes (If you will allow me to invoke that law we all know; hitler did unethical things because he wanted what was best for his people. Whether or not things would have been better for the his people is fairly subjective, but I'm sure he knew that he was killing people and he definately had his reasons.)
If ignorance is evil, then a very happy and nice person would be evil for merely believing creationism or something along those lines. The ignorant should be pitied and taught, but not considered evil.
Closer to the root of all evil would be experience, namely traumatic or shaping experiences. Everyone has a reason for their values and opinions, and they all stem from experience throughout their life. Be it hating another race through only bad experience with them (Say, getting mugged by a black guy), or hating them simply because you have only experienced racism in your upbringing and made a subconcious move to conform (See many parts of America), the experiences you have will shape you into a good, bad or morally grey person and so it is that all evil stems from a persons interactive experience within their world.
Amen to that.Captain Picard said:
But what's with the strong vein environmentalism running throughout this thread? How can it genuinely be considered 'evil' to destroy the earth? The only thing you're arguably committing an evil against in doing so is other human beings. The earth is an inanimate object, it's insentient, it doesn't care if it's one huge fragment supporting life or dashed into trillions of little fragments all over the galaxy. You can't commit an act of evil upon something which cannot receive said act. I'm not even really sure that we can commit acts of evil upon animals, since they aren't capable of partaking in the institution of 'morality' (think about it, do you consider a lion to have committed an immoral act when it kills its prey?). There's definitely something to be said for not committing acts which cause undue pain to animals, because no-one should have a laissez-faire approach to causing a pain-feeling being pain, as such an attitude would cause the holder to have the same dispassionate attitude towards causing pain to people.
But, in response to the OP and all the other morally superior posters, please state specifically what we humans do that would class us as evil and stupid.
I don't really think there's such a thing as evil. And on the whole, people aren't stupid. We often do stupid things, no one can deny that, but if we were ALL stupid ALL the time we'd probably be extinct by now.
The things we do that are seen as evil are probably things we do to live how we do. It's like a Mink killing a Water Vole. It's nature, the Mink's gotta live so the Water Vole's gotta die.
Only we're the Mink and the Earth's the Water Vole...
On a side note, I need to stop watching nature documentries.
The things we do that are seen as evil are probably things we do to live how we do. It's like a Mink killing a Water Vole. It's nature, the Mink's gotta live so the Water Vole's gotta die.
Only we're the Mink and the Earth's the Water Vole...
On a side note, I need to stop watching nature documentries.
This is all working on the presumption that the currently prevalent carbon dioxide driven climate change models are actually correct. There's large disparities between the theories in the C02 camp and reality. For a start, there's massive temperature hikes that they can't account for. For instance, in the middle ages it was so hot in England that we could grow wine, now we have a single vineyard and it's hardly world-famous. Why was this the case? Clearly we weren't producing more C02 back then, so why did we have a temperature peak? Why did that peak fall into a trough heading into the industrial era when C02 emissions began to rise?Gormourn said:
I'm all for modernising the way we create energy, we're fast running out of fossil fuels so we've got to modernise whether we want to or not. But, surely people can see how beautifully this C02 model works for the government: if the public believe that fossil fuels are the modern age devil then they'll desperately want to be rid of them. When the government modernises power production not only will they meet no resistance from the people (people don't like change unless they can be duped into thinking they chose to make the change), they'll also be hailed as heroes.