If you believe in evil- what does evil mean to you?

[YoureBeingASillyBilly]

Inspired by comments about recent news stories.

I am atheist and struggle (in fact get quite pissed off) when people describe people as 'evil' or having committed 'evil acts'.

To me evil doesnt exist. Its is just as made up as 'god' and used to keep 'good' believers in line. Calling someone evil is, to me, just the same as calling someone 'godly' however when evil is used it feels like its is being used to (understandably) declare a 'difference' between the person saying it and the person it is being said about. Of course most of us would never do such horrible things like have been in the news recently and consider ourselves incapable but we are just as human and in reality as capable (in that we have the ability)of such acts. To call them evil seems to me to be implying there is another force at work within that person that does not live within 'us' (the 'good' people). This is what i struggle with. I think it's an unhelpful or unhealthy way to think of them although i cometely understand the need to declare a difference between 'us' and 'them'.

However, on MN previoulsy people have said that they dont share my idea of what evil is so they are not doing what i think they are doing when they call someone evil.

So i would really appreciate if some could explain to me what they mean when they talk of evil. What does it mean to you?

TIA

Also, i really intend no offence by my comments but understand it is an emotive topic and accept that others will strongly disagree with my opinion.

^But we dounderstand it, in a way, don't we? It's because people WANT something (food, sex, ego) and justify how they SHOULD have it (she's rich and won't miss this Fifty pound note, she was flirting with me, she thinks she's above me in the pecking order)

I don't see what else we can understand to preempt another case, if you follow me? There are too many variables in (forensic?) psychology to meaningfully apply them to someone else who hasn't done anything yet. There is criminal profiling but you can't use that pre emptively can you? That's another moral dilemma

I might be missing your point^

Well we are trying to understand and learn all the time. I don't think we can ever do enough to design all nastiness out of society/humans. I think psychology is trying to understand something more complex than astrophysics or whatever. But we are working on it all the time, whether we know it or not. You can see that from different parenting theories which come in and out of fashion. So I don't really mean we can profile people and lock them up (that might be slight point-missing) but we can try to design it out of society as much as possible.

italics fail.

It is wrong to say that giving someone the label "evil" means that we are refusing to try to understand it. We are constantly trying to understand it. "Evil" men are studied and experimented on, insofar as the law allows.

Experiments recreate "evil" situations at a basic level and record the results.

We are constantly trying to understand evil.

But nobody does say that, Billy. Not any more. It's understood that it's basically self interest and the madness of crowds not the DEvil getting to them.

I agree that mostly people don't think that. some do though, even now.

I think it's a combination of many things.

Trying to design it out of society - how? This goes back to social control again - ostracisation, stigmatisation, outcasting people. You need simple concepts of us and them, good and evil for that.

Maybe for you that is what evil means (worst crimes) and yes i started the thread based on other posters comments referring to a very recent case (dont want to use names) and the perpertrators as evil. However evil has been used to describe all sorts of people aside from criminals, women declared witches for example, children with illnesses not understood by their community, people with MH issues (those who havent committed any crime- just to be clear). All those people have been called evil and in some places still are but there is no crime involved.

Di

Dione- are people trying to understand evil or are they trying to understand things people have done that some consider to be evil?

Is evil a psychological decision making process, then? I'm just wondering are we all talking with different definitions

Trying to design it out of society - how? This goes back to social control again - ostracisation, stigmatisation, outcasting people. You need simple concepts of us and them, good and evil for that.

Anything our parents teach us or school etc teaches us has an element of social control, of course it does. We're trying to bring our children up to be good people whatever than means to individuals/societies, it will vary.

What you need is psychology, neurology etc. Science. Understand how the brain works. Understand how societies evolve the way they do etc.

I think thats why i was struggling sal. People using evil meNt something different than what i thought they meant and so i assumed they were saying something they werent.

Rather weird. Would think the one thing many across cultures agree on is what evil is.....

It's all just shades if naughty or nice. One book, two sides. Nice and naughty or naughty and nice. It's perception that changes.

Except on agreed items like adultery, murder, rape, child abuse.

Minnie what is rather weird?

There are two levels so BillyBanter, becuase the ordinary person on the street cannot* learn the intricacies of neurology and all the rest of it. That's where the simple concepts come in, how you teach kids, how you motivate people to police each other.

• Not because the ordinary person is thick, because there aren't enough hours in the day to become expert in every field.

I wonder is there an innate element to the disgust we feel?

What an interesting thread. I haven't read it all yet, so this is basically a bookmark. I don't believe evil exists as an entity or force, neither do I find any living creature evil. Some do evil things (that anyone, at any time in history, would call bad) because it is simply their nature or, in the case of humans, out of extreme selfishness or misguidedness.

But then you get into definitions of evil, and who decides? There is probably no human act, however harmfully depraved, that hasn't been praised and admired by at least some people. And many wilful acts of extreme cruelty have been re-interpreted or whitewashed, both at the time and historically.

As you can probably tell, 'evil' is not a word I use unless I'm telling a story! Real life isn't black & white, good & bad. I'd better shut up until I've read all the other posts ...

Well if an example of evil is the case the OP is specifically not mentioning then we want to know what causes someone to behave that way. If we can understand the causes we can work on preventing that perfect storm of circumstances happening. And we do try to do that but there isn't really enough funding in any of the areas which could help to prevent it - research, Social Services, education, psychiatry, medical drugs etc.

Many people (and often the media leading the way) just say 'evil! leave them to rot in prison! You can't help people like that! They're monsters!' etc. which I think is dismissive and unhelpful.

Nodding in agreement with everything you are saying billybanter.

It's occurred to me to question a validity of god or higher being.

It has never occurred to me to question evil, primarily because I watch the news. Or in its basic, naughty. To wonder if evil exists seemed odd. Still does and I've been mulling it now a few mins to Allen Carr....

Using the word 'evil' to describe terrible actions is not the same as describing as people as 'monsters'. The latter is unhelpful and there is a level of denial there.

As I say, strikes me many people across cultures and pay/money divides agree on evil. Even prisoners have codes for example....

YY, Billy.

That said, one of my many books on sociopathy tells the story of some lovely, peaceable tribe somewhere, which handles crime very compassionately, calling on the criminal's shame and desire to rejoin the community. They have no other system of punishment, and it works. The author was interested to know if sociopathy develops in such a community. They didn't have a word for it, but instantly recognised the behaviour pattern that was described. When asked how they deal with a criminal sociopath, they said "We walk him to the edge of the high cliff and invite him to jump off"!

I may have misremembered the story's details, but the message was clear.

There is absolotely no discussion here about whether horrible people exist and do horrible things. That is not what i am asking. Watching the news shows us these bad things on a daily basis. They exist- no question. What i am questioning is what other people think evil is, if they do believe in it's existence.

Most of the things we call 'bad' are acts we have decided to classify as bad. Even murder is a matter of opinion given that killing a soldier in a battle is something you can get a medal for.

So we can't really think of evil as being a separate state can we.

An example that came up recently was the age of consent. It varies from country to country so what is illegal and immoral in one place is perfectly normal in another.

There are two levels so BillyBanter, becuase the ordinary person on the street cannot* learn the intricacies of neurology and all the rest of it. That's where the simple concepts come in, how you teach kids, how you motivate people to police each other.

* Not because the ordinary person is thick, because there aren't enough hours in the day to become expert in every field.

I wonder is there an innate element to the disgust we feel?

They did an experiment where they tried to get people to drink apple juice from a newly opened carton out of a brand new out of the wrapper potty. Not many takers.

I think stigmatising etc actually comes quite naturally to humans but I think it only gets us so far. I don't think everyone needs to be an expert. But we need the experts. And we need the learning to be filtered down to us somehow. And it is to an extent. The parenting books that I mentioned earlier for instance. What we do now is different from before because someone studied these things and got better results using one method over another. eg higher expectations from teachers = better results from student. lower expectations lead to worse results.

Well again I'd say obvious. Light /shade. Happy /sad. Good evil.

I mean how do you recognise good if you don't have an appreciation of evil? Or what it might be?