Please define Good & Evil

[ZephrC]

Evil = hurting people
Good = helping people

The confusing bit is where most almost all actions hurt some and help others, and pretty much everyone gives different values to different people.

 

[Scobie]

DELETED

 

[Jack_Uzi]

It is difficult to say things are good or bad. Actions of people can be good or bad. Let's say someone robbed a bank (Evil) but didn't know any other way to get money for his children to feed or cloth(Good). So before we judge actions, let's first see if we can find the whole picture behind the actions taken (and maybe even then).

 

[Keava]

Good and Evil are just relative terms that humanity invented to make it easier to describe surroundings. There is no way to define otherwise than through our perception. Everything that for us is morally acceptable will be considered good, things we see as morally unacceptable we will call evil. Thus something evil for one culture might be perfectly fine with different culture that perceives morality differently.

And that's why i don't believe in the whole concept of good and evil to start with.

 

[James Joseph Emerald]

Good=Winners
Evil=Losers

So, using this definition, the Big Daddies are evil if you kill them, and good if you let them live, since you're the one who gets to go home and tell the story. Pretty much what you said.

 

[Radzilla]

Evil: Punching a kid for no reason.
Good: Punching a kid if he is being a little *****.

 

[bjj hero]

Good and Evil are both lies. They don't exist in any form. They cannot be measured, captured or evidenced.

You normally label something as evil if you want to distance yourself from it. It creates a distance between you and whatever you find undesirable or repulsive. Nazi concentration camp guards are described as evil to put a barrier between "us" and "them". The label makes them less than human, it keeps you from thinking that could have been you In the right spot, you could have been commiting those war crimes. How many of us have had to test that idea? I haven't. It hides their motivations which we all share in some way. "Evil" also lets you remove all empathy and understanding. Making the target less than human so that you can justify doing nasty things to them. Imprisonment, lynching, airstrike, execution, whatever.

Look at the wests talk about the axis of evil in recent year. A fantastic bit of propaganda. Conjuring up images of inhuman monsters, with echoes of nazis and fascists from world war 2. It make it easier to hate them, to make decisions that will result in death and hardship for thousands. Thousands whos motivations are not too far removed from your own. People who want to get on with their life, have their families be safe and prosper, have food and clothes etc. To enjoy life. Interestingly these axis countries do the same with the west. They just swap their imagery from WWII to the crusades.

The easy answer? The good guys are the ones that are helping you at the time. This is quite fluid though. Look at Afghanistan. When the cold war was on, and the Russians were there, the Warlords were the good guys, noble tribesmen defending their ansestral land from Commie invaders. Now they are evil tyrants and we are liberaters and peace keepers. Don't believe me? Go and watch Rambo 3 for a snap shot of western sentiment at that time.

 

[HardkorSB]

Evil: Punching a kid for no reason.
Good: Punching a kid if he is being a little *****.

I might be wrong here but a ccording to your interpretation, good and evil are pretty much the same thing form different perspectives.
You see, the kid being punched will assume that the bully is punching him for no reason, therefore he's evil.
Meanwhile, the bully will see himself as good because he's teaching a kid not to be a little *****.

Good and evil are abstract and unrealistic concepts created under the influence of our emotions.
Everything we do, we do it for ourselves.
Even the most altruistic things, we do for ourselves.
You save a child from a burning building because if you didn't, it would bother you.
Not because you really care about the kid or his family but because the thought of the kid dying and the family being sad would bother YOU.
You give a bum some money not because you care about his well being but because the sight of him bothers YOU.
Everything we do is selfish.
We do stuff to make ourselves feel better.

Being humble is also selfish.
It's basically saying: "I'm better than you and I don't need any reward for my deeds".
You don't get a reward from others but you praise yourself for doing things which you consider to be good.
Your own brain makes you feel better.
You're doing it just for that.
Even if you don't think about it, that's what's going on, subconciously.

Good and evil don't exist outside of our brains.
There are as many definitions of good and evil as there are people.
What is good to some might be evil to others, and vice versa.

That is all, for now.

 

[Jonathan Scott]

Good:Shigeru Miyamoto
Evil:Jack Thompson

In all seriousness, I agree there is no real good and evil, just many, many, many shades of gray.
Plus, there is a lot of good response in this thread and I learn a new word, altruistic.

 

[Whitethunder]

Whitethunder=Good...great...truly among the best ect.
Evil=fat people

 

[Lazy Kitty]

Evil: Me and my minions.

Good: All those fools who oppose me. A.K.A: Victims/Potential tools

Neutral: Those who don't pick a side. A.K.A: Also Victims/Potential tools

 

[SnowdensOfYesteryear]

Good: The side that wins, and it's allies.

Evil: The side that doesn't, and it's allies.

EDIT: Hehehe. I'm talking about widescale views, not personal morality, by the way. Though I suppose I could be like the old man from Catch-22.

 

[Prince Regent]

I personally think things are Beyond Good And Evil....

Nice one

 

[Axolotl]

If you really want to know, it'd be a good idea to go read some serious philosopical works on the subject.

 

[Tony2077]

I'd give a quote i heard from a game but i can quite recall how it went. It was some Shakespeare line can't recall which one damn I'm useless

 

[Jonluw]

Good: Whatever, through means you deem honourable, benefits you.

Neutral: Whatever, through means you deem unjustified, benefits you. Or whatever, through means you deem honourable, does not benefit you.

Evil: Whatever, through means you deem unjustified, does not benefit you, or directly harms you.

 

[Kurokami]

Today, while my nephew was playing Contra Reborn on my Wii, I was in my room playing some Bioshock on my 360. When he finished playing it, he came to my room and simply stared at the screen for a couple of minutes, watching as I brutally burned, electrocuted, smahed, bludgeoned and shot to death some splicers.

Then he asked me, "are they the bad guys?", that was fairly easy, I only replied, "more or less, yes, they're the bad guys, because they are crazy and they think you are the bad guy". He bought on that answer. Then, the Big Daddy and the Little Sister came in and he asked me again, "He's a bad guy too?".

Somehow, I simply muted myself, thinking on a good answer to that, but I simply couldn't find it. I told him, "well... he's not evil...", "so, he's a good guy?", he said almost immediatly, almost interrupting whatever I was going to tell him. Then I told him, "well, he's not evil, but also he's not a good guy", "so, he's half evil, half good?" he asked me. I simply told him that "he's only evil if you attack him".

He would have bought that answer if it was not for the Little Sister... "Is he evil too?", he asked me, by obviously not seeing "he" was a "she". "It's a little girl" I told him. Then he asked me "is he her daddy?". Heh, he almost did all the job for me trying to answer his question. Then, I told him, "I'm going to kill it", then he suggested me that I "first needed to kill that little girl and..." "whoa, not so fast, I'm not going to kill her, I'm going to rescue her" I told him. And he asked me, "rescue her from what?"...

Back in the day of the 8 and 16 bits, gaming was as simple as "good fights evil". But now, morallity on videogames has been bluring a lot, at the same time, doing better stories, multi dimentional characters, interesting and sometimes fascinating stories, such as Bioshock.

I think we as kids had it fairly simple, but also the industry has grewn up with us. But what about the new generation?, I had a pretty hard time trying to define a simple concept as what's good or what's evil.

Can anyone please define me what's good and what's evil?.

Good and Evil are perceived, they aren't some universal standard but instead a personal definition. To many these include double standards, something that isn't evil maybe considered so if it happens to you, or opposite if it happens to someone who 'had it coming' etc. To answer a question about morality however, I subscribe to a theory I have never heard before, that's not to say its never been published or thought but it is my own explanation of morality and it concerns the ego. An individual has only himself to look through when viewing the world, morality applies to how those actions would affect you and often times how relevant they are, for example seeing an animal being killed doesn't bother me because I hold a much more definitive line of separation between myself and animals in compared to say a vegan animal rights activist who would argue that he "Is living, and they are living, and are therefore the same". Similarly this applies to criminals and 'bad guys'.

Anyway I haven't the time to complete that thought, but if you've any questions/care to disprove it I'll be happy to discuss.

 

[CroMagnon]

Good people pet cats.. Evil people string them up from the ceiling and use them for batting practice.

This guy is good?

 

[Rad Party God]

Haha, good ol' Inspector Gadget and The Claw guy, that cartoon was great. At that time, as I said, it was very simple, good guy vs bad guy. For a kid's view point, this and most Disney cartoons are very straightforward. The same happens to videogames, mostly any 90's games involving Sonic or Mario.

Well, Mario not so much, at first it was simply to rescue the princess, but later in Mario RPG (including the other RPGs like Paper Mario and the Mario & Luigi series) it had a bit more depth and it was no longer as simple as rescue the princess, you had to save the world from an ancient and mischevious evil.

Today, there are still pretty straightforward games about the eternal battle of good & evil, like Halo or Gears of War, but even those are about some aliens/monsters trying to destroy mankind for the sake of it (Halo) or for survival of the fittest (Gears of War). Bayonetta is about a witch battling angels. From a religious viewpoint, it's ridiculous, witches were considered like some devil's spawns, so they are kind of evil and angels, well, are good.

To me, the definition comes as, the good guys are the ones helping me and the bad guys are the ones trying to kill me. I sometimes wonder and question some games and stories, broadening the definition. But as somebody else said here, there's no definition to it, it's mostly a perspective of the person I'm asking. I think it's part of life itself and part of growing up, trying to tell the difference of what's good and what's evil.

And though, with this said, I still can't think of a way to tell a 6 years old boy if the Big Daddy is either evil or not.

EDIT:

Before you define Good and Evil, you must consider context. For your young nephew to understand whether a Big Daddy is a Good Guy or Bad Guy, he must understand the context of Bioshock. Of course, a fully competent understanding of Good and Evil in the context of Bioshock, one must have a solid understanding of the background of Objectivism and Collectivism in modern socioeconomic development, and how the history of these philosophies has affected popular culture.

For a young nephew, there's no need to spend 2 weeks studying Atlas Shrugged to ensure a competent understanding of the role of the individual will and group mindset in the foundation of moral judgments. I recommend a one-week primer, primarily focussing on Ayn Rand's 752-page individualism-defining novel, The Fountainhead. Be sure to focus on the fundamental conflict between various religious philosophies and Objectivism, and I'd recommend studying the works of Marx to establish to your young nephew the concept of collective Good or Evil.

If you intend to give a more satisfactory answer to the question of whether Big Daddies are Good Guys or Bad Guys, make sure your young nephew understands the impact on philosophy of world instability after the end of World War II. Take a course to help explain the way Objectivism was shaped by the deteriorating US-Soviet relations in the wake of the Berlin Blockade. Pay close attention to obscure interpretations of The Fountainhead that were briefly popular during the Korean Conflict and McCarthy era, and discuss whether or not these interpretations influenced Rand's philosophy in her later novels.


tl;dr: Defining Good and Evil for a complex issue is very difficult. It becomes almost hopeless in a context like Bioshock, where you can't be sure whether the context itself is fundamentally a result of good or evil. Much of this depends on philosophy, particularly the games possibly flippant interpretation of Objectivism.

tl;dr the tl;dr: Big Daddies might be good or evil depending on your interpretation of various obscure details.

THIS... heh, I couldn't say it better than this, the only problem is that my nephew is 6 years old, he barely understands what's good or evil, even more with games like Crysis , Duke Nukem and even Contra Reborn, wich he loves them a lot, where you just shoot and kill whatever thing gets in your way.

I was "this" close from telling him something like, "you can't understand it, ask me again when you're a bit older". I love that kid, even if he's a bit annoying sometimes.