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Knowledge of Good and Evil
The first in our Philosophy series...
What is Good, and what is Evil? Are there absolute definitions for these two terms? Can Good and Evil be generalized, or is it a cultural thing? Obviously morals are subjective, but there is definitely a general consensus. For example, murder is evil. Stealing is evil. Helping other people in need is good.
So I've come up with a General Theory of Morality and I hope to put it to the test here.
Good is defined here as the sacrifice of self for others in a community. Conversely, Evil is defined as the sacrifice of others in that community for one's self.
While most people look at Good and Evil as part of religion, I tried to approach this definition by looking at things that societies consider good and evil. From there, I looked at why a society would come to those conclusions. I think this theory generalizes it pretty well.
Over the course of the development of human society, we can look at morality as another set of laws governing social interaction. These rules were agreed upon by groups of people living together in order to overcome obstacles and grow the community.
As humanity evolved socially from families to tribes to towns to cities to nations, the people in those societies needed rules and re-assurances that people would act in a somewhat predictable manner. In other words, you needed to know that some stranger on the street is not going to want to club you over the head and take your stuff.
So Good came about as a way to encourage people to work together and advance their community. Evil is discouraged in turn because it would disrupt the community.
Let's take a simple case: Theft. People might try to justify it in different ways, but stealing is generally agreed upon as wrong. It's Evil. Why? Well, if stealing is not discouraged in a community, there is no trust within that community, which hampers social interaction within the group. Inevitably, the lack of trust would cause that community to fracture. Thus, in order for a group of people to advance their society, they need to discourage behavior contrary to its growth and encourage behavior that would further the culture.
[Blog getting long, so one last thing for now.]
It's important to note that even though this is a general theory of morality, it is still applied in a subjective, relative sense. For instance, I think it's safe to say that killing someone to take their belongings is Evil. However, killing someone to defend your country is not quite so clear cut. The distinction there really depends on how you define "community". If you define community as humanity in general, then you'd probably think that war is evil. If you define your community as your country, versus some other community, then you probably don't have much of a problem with war.
That's enough for now. I can take this further depending on comments...
What is Good, and what is Evil? Are there absolute definitions for these two terms? Can Good and Evil be generalized, or is it a cultural thing? Obviously morals are subjective, but there is definitely a general consensus. For example, murder is evil. Stealing is evil. Helping other people in need is good.
So I've come up with a General Theory of Morality and I hope to put it to the test here.
Good is defined here as the sacrifice of self for others in a community. Conversely, Evil is defined as the sacrifice of others in that community for one's self.
While most people look at Good and Evil as part of religion, I tried to approach this definition by looking at things that societies consider good and evil. From there, I looked at why a society would come to those conclusions. I think this theory generalizes it pretty well.
Over the course of the development of human society, we can look at morality as another set of laws governing social interaction. These rules were agreed upon by groups of people living together in order to overcome obstacles and grow the community.
As humanity evolved socially from families to tribes to towns to cities to nations, the people in those societies needed rules and re-assurances that people would act in a somewhat predictable manner. In other words, you needed to know that some stranger on the street is not going to want to club you over the head and take your stuff.
So Good came about as a way to encourage people to work together and advance their community. Evil is discouraged in turn because it would disrupt the community.
Let's take a simple case: Theft. People might try to justify it in different ways, but stealing is generally agreed upon as wrong. It's Evil. Why? Well, if stealing is not discouraged in a community, there is no trust within that community, which hampers social interaction within the group. Inevitably, the lack of trust would cause that community to fracture. Thus, in order for a group of people to advance their society, they need to discourage behavior contrary to its growth and encourage behavior that would further the culture.
[Blog getting long, so one last thing for now.]
It's important to note that even though this is a general theory of morality, it is still applied in a subjective, relative sense. For instance, I think it's safe to say that killing someone to take their belongings is Evil. However, killing someone to defend your country is not quite so clear cut. The distinction there really depends on how you define "community". If you define community as humanity in general, then you'd probably think that war is evil. If you define your community as your country, versus some other community, then you probably don't have much of a problem with war.
That's enough for now. I can take this further depending on comments...
