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I'll probably maintain for all my days that there is no good or evil, just acts. Yes, cry "moral relativism!", but morals are social constructs, whether you lik

I'll probably maintain for all my days that there is no good or evil, just acts. Yes, cry "moral relativism!", but morals are social constructs, whether you like it or not - there is no universal law of morality, even if your name is Kant. Hitler thought he was good. Those who followed him thought he was good. In the narrative and perceptive reality of nazi Germany he was good. My grandmother waxes lyrical about the wonderful and charismatic Herr Hitler (she's Austrian, was a hitlerjugendherberge), and listening to her makes oh so clear the dreams and glory that hitler successfully sold to the very disillusioned masses. He wasn't evil. He just served a moral code so alien and repulsive to us today that we write it off as "evil". In fact, at the time, his politics were aligned with those of the US, UK, and other allied powers - eugenics, fascism, and antisemitism were rife in all - but it was their expansionist policy which ultimately led to the branding as evil and ww2. Don't get me wrong - I'm no apologist - but I do try to understand events from a contemporaneous and empathic perspective.

bsder 11y ago
> I'll probably maintain for all my days that there is no good or evil, just acts. Yes, cry "moral relativism!", but morals are social constructs, whether you like it or not - there is no universal law of morality, even if your name is Kant. Actually, "do unto others as you would have done unto you" is a pretty damn near universal law of morality. It doesn't encompass things like when to punish bad actors, but it covers a huge range of situations that we encounter every day. However, what most people never recognize is that apathy is the mechanism that allows small evils to persist long enough to turn into great evils. Often even a few individuals standing up at the beginning can thwart a rising tide that will be impossible to resist once it gets going.
- throwaway344 11y ago
  If Hitler and his followers had been more apathetic, they wouldn't have displayed the zeal that they did in trying to change the world according to their ideals. The problem with it is that you don't know whether you are the brave person speaking out against injustice or the lunatic that stands against obvious progress.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- madaxe_again 11y ago
  It's a reasonable seeming law, yes, just as the categorical imperative is - but what if your culture says that the more skulls you collect, the better a person you are? It's easy to define a law in isolation from social pressures which defy that law. Take the inquisition - by burning hereticks you saved their souls, and this was therefore good - so do as you would be done by applies, even if it comprises an auto da fé. With re: apathy - "all that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing" - sure, but this still relies on a fixed idea of good and evil, and that you can recognise "evil" at its inception. The issue there is that tragic consequences tend to only become apparent in hindsight. I do personally agree with "do as you would be done by", but you can't apply it as a universal law without the complete homogenisation of global culture - and even then folks will develop their own ideas of what constitutes good and evil. Ultimately, it's all about societal consensus, which these days (since bernays in particular) is media led.
  - thaw13579 11y ago
    > It's a reasonable seeming law, yes, just as the categorical imperative is - but what if your culture says that the more skulls you collect, the better a person you are? It's easy to define a law in isolation from social pressures which defy that law. Take the inquisition - by burning hereticks you saved their souls, and this was therefore good - so do as you would be done by applies, even if it comprises an auto da fé. I think the point is this--if the skull collector became the source of a skull, or the burner became a heretic, they would probably stop thinking those were "good" practices (due to the suffering and death and such), so those acts wouldn't satisfy the "do as you would be done by" rule. Even when those deemed heretics were part of the culture at the time, it's doubtful they thought "oh well, I guess this is the right thing to do".
- EliRivers 11y ago
  "do unto others as you would have done unto you" is a pretty damn near universal law of morality It's insidiously evil. Many of the root versions (and in particular, the early Zoroastrian version, which I think might predate others and was influential in religions that followed) were to not do to others that which is abhorrent to you, but this corruption of it turns it into something else entirely.
  - kapilkaisare 11y ago
    Would you elaborate? I'd like to understand why you see it as evil.
    - EliRivers 11y ago
      It suggests that what you like having done to you is the correct thing to like, and that you're doing good works by forcing it on other people. It doesn't allow for the possibility that other people have different preferences; your preferences are the correct preferences and you are morally correct in applying them on others. Take this to extremes and you end up taking people's children away because they're being raised in the wrong culture, for example.
Houshalter 11y ago
The Nazis weren't evil, but they were wrong. The whole "Jewish conspiracy" thing was bullshit. As was many of their beliefs. You could have Nazi values, and still disagree with the Nazis on a completely factual basis.
- jimrandomh 11y ago
  On the contrary, they absolutely were evil. It just turns out that evil doesn't look quite like we would have thought--hence the importance of studying history from primary sources, to know what evil actually looks like, to be able to recognize and oppose it today.
  - AlexandrB 11y ago
    I think a great documentary that explores this territory (but within the context of Indonesia) is The Act of Killing [1]. It can be hard to watch because it lays bare the banality of "evil". No cackling madmen or volcano fortresses, just ordinary-seeming people who committed mass murder while still believing themselves to be just. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Act_of_Killing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Act_of_Killing
  - meric 11y ago
    Evil is "good people" thinking "the ends justify the means". "It's unfortunate we have to persecute these even the women and children, but it's required to make a more fair and just world." "It's unfortunate we have to go to war in Iraq, but it's required to defend peace in the region, from the threat of mass weapons of destruction." Of course, "the ends" are never achieved, because the "means" they use will cause even more problems to be solved. Persecuting Jews to achieve justice and fairness for the German people => Destruction of Germany. War in Iraq to remove dictatorship and mass weapons of destruction => Rogue terrorist group governing by coercion and hundreds and thousands of civilian deaths. I ask you. What other examples of evil can you see in our world, today? What other evil things are people are doing in the name of good? Most important to remember: Evil is stopped by being persistently good ourselves, even when pressured and coerced to do otherwise, and that's all that we have to do.
  - 11y ago
gizmo686 11y ago
There may not be good and evil, but there is right and wrong (factually). Indeed, if I were to grant Hitler that everything he proposed as fact was true, then I would be complaining that he failed to solve the Jewish problem.
codesushi42 11y ago
Nicely flawed and lazy logic here. You don't have to take your reasoning much further to claim that all of human perception is relative, unprovable, and therefore basically nonexistent. You sound like a nihilist. As another poster pointed out, "do to unto others as you would have them do unto you" is a good baseline for determining whether an action is good or evil. I'm an atheist and I even realize this.
- madaxe_again 11y ago
  Nice ad hom. Works when you've nothing else to say, eh?
dawnbreez 11y ago
There's an old anime called "Legend of the Galactic Heroes" that explores this very idea through the POVs of two sides in an interstellar war. Very good show, from what I've seen of it.

bsder 11y ago

> I'll probably maintain for all my days that there is no good or evil, just acts. Yes, cry "moral relativism!", but morals are social constructs, whether you like it or not - there is no universal law of morality, even if your name is Kant. Actually, "do unto others as you would have done unto you" is a pretty damn near universal law of morality. It doesn't encompass things like when to punish bad actors, but it covers a huge range of situations that we encounter every day. However, what most people never recognize is that apathy is the mechanism that allows small evils to persist long enough to turn into great evils. Often even a few individuals standing up at the beginning can thwart a rising tide that will be impossible to resist once it gets going.

throwaway344 11y ago
If Hitler and his followers had been more apathetic, they wouldn't have displayed the zeal that they did in trying to change the world according to their ideals. The problem with it is that you don't know whether you are the brave person speaking out against injustice or the lunatic that stands against obvious progress.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
madaxe_again 11y ago
It's a reasonable seeming law, yes, just as the categorical imperative is - but what if your culture says that the more skulls you collect, the better a person you are? It's easy to define a law in isolation from social pressures which defy that law. Take the inquisition - by burning hereticks you saved their souls, and this was therefore good - so do as you would be done by applies, even if it comprises an auto da fé. With re: apathy - "all that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing" - sure, but this still relies on a fixed idea of good and evil, and that you can recognise "evil" at its inception. The issue there is that tragic consequences tend to only become apparent in hindsight. I do personally agree with "do as you would be done by", but you can't apply it as a universal law without the complete homogenisation of global culture - and even then folks will develop their own ideas of what constitutes good and evil. Ultimately, it's all about societal consensus, which these days (since bernays in particular) is media led.
- thaw13579 11y ago
  > It's a reasonable seeming law, yes, just as the categorical imperative is - but what if your culture says that the more skulls you collect, the better a person you are? It's easy to define a law in isolation from social pressures which defy that law. Take the inquisition - by burning hereticks you saved their souls, and this was therefore good - so do as you would be done by applies, even if it comprises an auto da fé. I think the point is this--if the skull collector became the source of a skull, or the burner became a heretic, they would probably stop thinking those were "good" practices (due to the suffering and death and such), so those acts wouldn't satisfy the "do as you would be done by" rule. Even when those deemed heretics were part of the culture at the time, it's doubtful they thought "oh well, I guess this is the right thing to do".
EliRivers 11y ago
"do unto others as you would have done unto you" is a pretty damn near universal law of morality It's insidiously evil. Many of the root versions (and in particular, the early Zoroastrian version, which I think might predate others and was influential in religions that followed) were to not do to others that which is abhorrent to you, but this corruption of it turns it into something else entirely.
- kapilkaisare 11y ago
  Would you elaborate? I'd like to understand why you see it as evil.
  - EliRivers 11y ago
    It suggests that what you like having done to you is the correct thing to like, and that you're doing good works by forcing it on other people. It doesn't allow for the possibility that other people have different preferences; your preferences are the correct preferences and you are morally correct in applying them on others. Take this to extremes and you end up taking people's children away because they're being raised in the wrong culture, for example.

Houshalter 11y ago

The Nazis weren't evil, but they were wrong. The whole "Jewish conspiracy" thing was bullshit. As was many of their beliefs. You could have Nazi values, and still disagree with the Nazis on a completely factual basis.

jimrandomh 11y ago
On the contrary, they absolutely were evil. It just turns out that evil doesn't look quite like we would have thought--hence the importance of studying history from primary sources, to know what evil actually looks like, to be able to recognize and oppose it today.
- AlexandrB 11y ago
  I think a great documentary that explores this territory (but within the context of Indonesia) is The Act of Killing [1]. It can be hard to watch because it lays bare the banality of "evil". No cackling madmen or volcano fortresses, just ordinary-seeming people who committed mass murder while still believing themselves to be just. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Act_of_Killing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Act_of_Killing
- meric 11y ago
  Evil is "good people" thinking "the ends justify the means". "It's unfortunate we have to persecute these even the women and children, but it's required to make a more fair and just world." "It's unfortunate we have to go to war in Iraq, but it's required to defend peace in the region, from the threat of mass weapons of destruction." Of course, "the ends" are never achieved, because the "means" they use will cause even more problems to be solved. Persecuting Jews to achieve justice and fairness for the German people => Destruction of Germany. War in Iraq to remove dictatorship and mass weapons of destruction => Rogue terrorist group governing by coercion and hundreds and thousands of civilian deaths. I ask you. What other examples of evil can you see in our world, today? What other evil things are people are doing in the name of good? Most important to remember: Evil is stopped by being persistently good ourselves, even when pressured and coerced to do otherwise, and that's all that we have to do.
- 11y ago

gizmo686 11y ago

There may not be good and evil, but there is right and wrong (factually). Indeed, if I were to grant Hitler that everything he proposed as fact was true, then I would be complaining that he failed to solve the Jewish problem.

codesushi42 11y ago

Nicely flawed and lazy logic here. You don't have to take your reasoning much further to claim that all of human perception is relative, unprovable, and therefore basically nonexistent. You sound like a nihilist. As another poster pointed out, "do to unto others as you would have them do unto you" is a good baseline for determining whether an action is good or evil. I'm an atheist and I even realize this.

madaxe_again 11y ago
Nice ad hom. Works when you've nothing else to say, eh?

dawnbreez 11y ago

There's an old anime called "Legend of the Galactic Heroes" that explores this very idea through the POVs of two sides in an interstellar war. Very good show, from what I've seen of it.