It made me wonder, hearing from certain people who faced discrimination and harassment. They were hurt every single day intentionally and some of them had PTSD caused by their harm and became incredibly jumpy and traumatized.
Would that make the person who caused the harm evil?
Hurt people hurt people
Suffering is bad, and the intentional or neglient creation of suffering is evil.
Those that have created suffering have done evil, and those that are currently creating suffering, or plan to create suffering are evil. The larger the suffering, the greater the evil.
Those that have done evil, but are no longer willing to do evil are not evil.
In the end, evil is a simplification that allows us to take power from those that want to create suffering without needing to know what exactly they are doing or planning.
Depends if they did it on purpose
Even if not. If they dont appologice and show responsibility when confronted they are evil
I can’t think of a more reasonable definition of an evil person than a person who does a lot of evil.
Usually people have some kind of way of justifying an action to themselves, and there’s always a story that lead up to it. Everyone I’ve gotten to know well is part of one problem or another.
So, It’s not very interesting to ask where to draw the line, and even less useful. The important thing is what to do about it.
I think good and evil both are things you do more than things that you are.
I have a parent who will intentionally set his children up against each other to make them dislike each other. Why? Because he finds it entertaining.
He would take or break something you had, and blame one of the other siblings. When he got called out for it, he’d threaten with a beating. Physical abuse happened, but not nearly as often as psychological. And it was all so he could gain trust, power or just be entertained.
To me, that’s an evil person. Intentionally hurting others and taking joy from it, is pretty bad. But it’s a whole new level of evil when it’s your kids.
I don’t necessarily think people can be evil.
I know of some of my abusers that they were abused themselves. They knew what they were doing to me wasn’t right but it gave them feelings of power in a world where they otherwise felt powerless.
For others, bullying me was a social sport, just something you did to “belong” to a certain group.
I think what they did was evil, but I don’t think they were evil people. They were normal people with inadequate upbringing put into painful situations that resulted in bullying/abusing me being the only perceived “good” outcome for them. For almost all people who do evil things, this is the case.
I think we all possess the ability to do evil acts in response to certain stimuli, many are just lucky enough never to receive the set of stimuli that causes them to be evil, so they can allow themselves to think they are different, i.e. “good”, and start labeling other people a certain way, i.e. “evil”.
Conversely, I also think all the people who do evil acts are also able to do good acts in certain situations.
What we then call a “good” or an “evil person” is just a person where we perceive a larger share of behaviors attributed to that adjective. But are they evil or good people, is that a quality inherent to them? Or is the environment they grew up in evil or good? Or are humans in general evil or good? Is our perception of the share of each set of behaviors even right?
I think no one deserves for their whole self to be called evil. I think you can call actions evil, and some people may have a lot of these actions, and they’re worthy of being avoided because of that, but I believe they’re the same kind of person than everyone else, just put into terrible situations. So no, I don’t think people can be evil.
To me, evil is the absence of empathy. Or more broadly, the absence of a filter that would prevent someone from harming equals and the disadvantaged.
In my opinion, in order for an action to be evil, the actor must know what is good or what is right behavior. While sometimes the actor acts with intent to cause harm, sometimes, the actor is ignorant of such things.
What if they acknowledge it’s wrong, but it’s not when they do it
It is not about acknowledgement, it’s about understanding the morality of the action. Most of the time, only they know the answer to that question.
This “evil/not evil” metaphysical dichotomy is a moral framework. There are no intrinsically ”evil” people, and I would drop that moral framework.
Philosophy professor and YouTuber Hans-Georg Moeller:
Too vague of a description. I would need a more detailed explanation on what happened to define someone as evil.
As some people may perceive things certain way and other people may perceive them other way.
Even when trauma is implied, I have seem people create their own trauma and blame it on others.
So, there’s that. I would need more information before calling anyone evil or good.
If given all info I could conclude that the person purposely or by negligence of a responsibility caused harm to other person then yes, they would be evil.
The bourgeois are not human.
Not ontologically so. People are made evil by latching themselves onto systems that unperson others. That’s not to say they’re ever entitled to receive the respect of those they’ve victimised, or that anyone should shed any tears over their stock portfolio cratering
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This is a great way to frame this. To put this thinking into an example, most people who are abusive toward others have themselves been victims of abuse earlier in their lives and are reenacting patterns they were taught. I think those people deserve compassion and understanding
I realised recently that I seem to have a significant emotional response to someone stomping up stairs. It could’ve been as a result of a very mildly abusive parent during my childhood, stomping up stairs to confront me and/or physically punish me.
I don’t think of that person as evil, just… Damaging in some ways. Kind in others.
Some people are a detriment to society, enforcing destruction and devolution to slow the progression of humanity. Harmful to others. I believe those intentionally harming others are cruel and should be removed or banished, in order for the community in general to stay healthy. But for a being to be evil, as I would define it… They must be monstrous. They must create devastation, such as serial murdering of multiple beings for personal gratification; subjecting an immature mind to physically sexual environments; generating and leading an army of people into a witch hunt; directing a coalition towards maximum profit at the cost of the wellbeing and livelihood of thousands, even millions; or grooming, brainwashing people into oppressive, gated environments that breed fear and lies… If someone who causes PTSD does it repeatedly, they can also be classed as evil by my definition.
