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One thing that interests me about human nature is that EVERYONE tries to be a good person. There dont seem to be any exceptions to this.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying everyone IS a good person. Only that everyone tries to convince themselves that that their morality is good.
Even serial killers often claim they were doing "gods work" as if somehow murdering innocent people is a good thing.
I think it is in this quality that there is the most hope for humans, even when we loose our way. The fact that everyone, no matter how disturbed they are, is always looking towards a moral compass, even if that compass is broken.
@freemo just like universal grammar for languages, I wonder whether there is some test for universal moral grammar. Children should be the best candidates for this. But then again the universal grammar is some sort of meta-axiom which is useful to conceptualise stuff but doesn't really have some empirical reality. What do you think?
@freemo God has given us all a sense of morality, yes, it has been skewed because of sin, but we all internally know what is right and wrong.
@masterofthetiger @freemo These are all interesting perspectives. I don't believe in religion, but I always found the taoism idea that good doesn't exist without evil to make the most sense. As for morality, I think it's interesting to read up on what parts of our brain dictates right from wrong and how this part is damaged on people who commit pure evil, or even people with no compass who don't necessarily kill people. (Jon Ronson goes into that in The Psychopath Test)
@hashtaggrammar
Agreed the psychology and biology to such things is completely fascinating.
@hashtaggrammar @freemo evil is the absence of something good. It is not a thing in and of itself. The world was originally made "very good", but is corrupted by the evil things we do.
@masterofthetiger I'm not sure I see evil that way. I don't consider empty space "evil" or "good", fill it with people hugging each other and its "good", fill it with people torturing each other and its "evil"
I will say when there is no good you will get evil rising though, maybe thats what you mean.
@freemo @hashtaggrammar Maybe. God created the world good, but we have strayed from His purpose for things in this world. That is what evil is.
For example, murder is the destruction of (good) human life. Adultery is the absence of a good marriage. Etc.
Something like that.
@freemo this is why it saddens me when I see people jump to calling people who disagree with them evil in some way, which shuts down engagement from both sides
- if "we" see "them" as "evil," then it makes sense to not listen to them... because they're evil, and we shouldn't listen to evil, because we're good. And because they see themselves as good, they'll be more likely to disengage with us, because they know they're "good", and us calling them evil is then likely to earn an evil label in return.
I think that at a basic/fundamental level, people share goals, and each person is doing the best they know how. If we can identify the common goal, maybe we can have a conversation.
@freemo
Nobody is the bad guy themselves. We all come up with a narrative that justifies our actions, usually by blaming others for things we would normally consider mis-deeds. Some of the current theory of the human mind backs this up. I recently read an interesting book: The Mind Is Flat by Nick Chater which is a good intro to some of the current ideas.
@freemo very interesting. I have always wondered whether human beings are born with some kind of universal moral grammar, something akin to Chomsky's universal grammar for natural languages. Except that this would be for morality. I think it would tie into what you are saying. Essentially everyone in their head is a good person, but the "moral language" they use is at odds with the socially accepted one. Know what I mean?