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- There is nothing evil in nature. The only evil is moral evil in humans. Realising this makes a person serene and free, the only thing that counts is the purit

- There is nothing evil in nature. The only evil is moral evil in humans. Realising this makes a person serene and free, the only thing that counts is the purity of your own conscience. What about natural disasters and diseases? I would call earthquakes and smallpox evil. They've killed more people than people have. If you want to play games with definition and only count things as evil if they intend to do harm, well then I'd still say they're bad and I would prefer we fixed them.

gojomo 17y ago
Smallpox may have killed more people than other people have. Earthquakes, probably not. I think most people reserve 'evil' as a moral judgment of intentional acts. Plate tectonics and viruses having no intention would thus not be considered 'evil'. (That's not a word game; that's the common meaning.) Smallpox is pretty much conquered. What's your plan for fixing earthquakes?
- mapleoin 17y ago
  Spaceships!!
- AngryParsley 17y ago
  I meant combined, earthquakes and smallpox have killed more than humans have. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil Evil is defined as something that is immoral, causes pain or harm, is offensive, or threatening. The group of people I hang out with skew toward the definition I accept, but really it's just a definition. My real objection is that stoics (and many others) rationalize the current state of things as good. The alternative is to recognize that there are still a lot of big problems humanity needs to solve. I consider the eradication of smallpox the second greatest accomplishment of humanity so far. The first is the green revolution, headed by Norman Borlaug. His new strains of crops saved about a billion lives in the 20th century. With regards to earthquakes: Just because we can't solve a problem doesn't mean it's not a problem. I'm not offering a solution, just pointing out that earthquakes kill people. I don't want people to die, so that makes earthquakes bad in my book. It also makes disease, aging, and lots of other things bad. Is does not imply ought.
  - Quarrelsome 17y ago
    Are we sure of these figures? Adding the world wars together, civil wars, and the razings of the ancient world I would figure man has killed man much more often than nature has been able to.
    - AngryParsley 17y ago
      From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox : During the 20th century, it is estimated that smallpox was responsible for 300–500 million deaths. Smallpox has been around for over 10,000 years. In the 20th century it killed more people than all the wars in this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War#List_of_wars_by_death_toll http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War#List_of_wars_by_death_toll
      - Retric 17y ago
        War is far from the only way people kill people. Add up all the people in the US killed in auto accidents and you are going to be in the top 10 on that list.
  - froggy 17y ago
    "His new strains of crops saved about a billion lives" Yes, but with the extra 1 billion humans on earth, how many more animal species will be pushed into extinction each decade? How many more acres of rain forest will be destroyed every week? How many more barrels of oil will be pulled from the earth and burned into the air? I'm personally against mass-scale chopping, burning, and killing, which I know that more people on this planet leads to. Maybe the meme "the human species must expand at all costs" needs an evil check.
    - AngryParsley 17y ago
      Reverse the situation. Would you press a button that caused 1 billion people (mostly children) to starve to death? After all, fewer humans means less resources consumed, less pollution, and fewer animals going extinct. I agree that pollution is bad, but I care about human lives more than I care about the environment. Plants can't feel pain or suffer.
- ableal 17y ago
  > What's your plan for fixing earthquakes? If we had the means, this would do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_(The_Culture) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_(The_Culture) . Obviously, planets are not safe unless very dead, which is also inconvenient. (Not that I think that 'fixing' mortality would necessarily be a good idea ...)
SeamusBrady 17y ago
- "I would call earthquakes and smallpox evil." Ah, that you see is the challenge of Stoicism. A Stoic does not believe that there is anything evil in nature, impersonal perhaps, but not bad. There is nothing evil about death, earthquakes, viruses or asteroids. They just do their thing and sometimes happen to go against human interests. This does not make them evil. This is a difficult way to think at first, but it makes sense to me. Stand out under the stars and look up. Take a look at the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Ultra_Deep_Field http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Ultra_Deep_Field). The universe is just so much bigger than me, so much bigger than my species. Why would I be surprised that it does not always operate directly in my interests? Think about an ant in a busy railway station. If she gets trod on, does that make the commuter evil, or just indifferent to the ant's interests? That is one of the lessons I have learned from observing nature. The complete absence of self pity, ruthlessly so. The short poem 'Self Pity' by DH Lawrence illustrates this well: "I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself."
- AngryParsley 17y ago
  Yes, I recognize that the universe is completely indifferent to humanity (and life in general). Instead of accepting this, I wish to fix it. Think about an ant in a busy railway station. If she gets trod on, does that make the commuter evil, or just indifferent to the ant's interests? I'm going to say both, but that's a disagreement on definitions. To move this debate along, I'll use your definitions of evil and bad. OK, natural disasters aren't evil. Disease isn't evil. Aging isn't evil. They're all indifferent to us. With that out of the way: Would you prefer a world with more or fewer natural disasters? Would you prefer a world with more or less disease? Would you prefer a world where people lived shorter lives or longer lives? I guess I'll end with a quote as well: The Patrician took a sip of his beer. "I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect I never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I'm sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged onto a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to its day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature's wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior." -- Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals

gojomo 17y ago

Smallpox may have killed more people than other people have. Earthquakes, probably not. I think most people reserve 'evil' as a moral judgment of intentional acts. Plate tectonics and viruses having no intention would thus not be considered 'evil'. (That's not a word game; that's the common meaning.) Smallpox is pretty much conquered. What's your plan for fixing earthquakes?

mapleoin 17y ago
Spaceships!!
AngryParsley 17y ago
I meant combined, earthquakes and smallpox have killed more than humans have. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil Evil is defined as something that is immoral, causes pain or harm, is offensive, or threatening. The group of people I hang out with skew toward the definition I accept, but really it's just a definition. My real objection is that stoics (and many others) rationalize the current state of things as good. The alternative is to recognize that there are still a lot of big problems humanity needs to solve. I consider the eradication of smallpox the second greatest accomplishment of humanity so far. The first is the green revolution, headed by Norman Borlaug. His new strains of crops saved about a billion lives in the 20th century. With regards to earthquakes: Just because we can't solve a problem doesn't mean it's not a problem. I'm not offering a solution, just pointing out that earthquakes kill people. I don't want people to die, so that makes earthquakes bad in my book. It also makes disease, aging, and lots of other things bad. Is does not imply ought.
- Quarrelsome 17y ago
  Are we sure of these figures? Adding the world wars together, civil wars, and the razings of the ancient world I would figure man has killed man much more often than nature has been able to.
  - AngryParsley 17y ago
    From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox : During the 20th century, it is estimated that smallpox was responsible for 300–500 million deaths. Smallpox has been around for over 10,000 years. In the 20th century it killed more people than all the wars in this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War#List_of_wars_by_death_toll http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War#List_of_wars_by_death_toll
    - Retric 17y ago
      War is far from the only way people kill people. Add up all the people in the US killed in auto accidents and you are going to be in the top 10 on that list.
- froggy 17y ago
  "His new strains of crops saved about a billion lives" Yes, but with the extra 1 billion humans on earth, how many more animal species will be pushed into extinction each decade? How many more acres of rain forest will be destroyed every week? How many more barrels of oil will be pulled from the earth and burned into the air? I'm personally against mass-scale chopping, burning, and killing, which I know that more people on this planet leads to. Maybe the meme "the human species must expand at all costs" needs an evil check.
  - AngryParsley 17y ago
    Reverse the situation. Would you press a button that caused 1 billion people (mostly children) to starve to death? After all, fewer humans means less resources consumed, less pollution, and fewer animals going extinct. I agree that pollution is bad, but I care about human lives more than I care about the environment. Plants can't feel pain or suffer.
ableal 17y ago
> What's your plan for fixing earthquakes? If we had the means, this would do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_(The_Culture) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_(The_Culture) . Obviously, planets are not safe unless very dead, which is also inconvenient. (Not that I think that 'fixing' mortality would necessarily be a good idea ...)

SeamusBrady 17y ago

- "I would call earthquakes and smallpox evil." Ah, that you see is the challenge of Stoicism. A Stoic does not believe that there is anything evil in nature, impersonal perhaps, but not bad. There is nothing evil about death, earthquakes, viruses or asteroids. They just do their thing and sometimes happen to go against human interests. This does not make them evil. This is a difficult way to think at first, but it makes sense to me. Stand out under the stars and look up. Take a look at the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Ultra_Deep_Field http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Ultra_Deep_Field). The universe is just so much bigger than me, so much bigger than my species. Why would I be surprised that it does not always operate directly in my interests? Think about an ant in a busy railway station. If she gets trod on, does that make the commuter evil, or just indifferent to the ant's interests? That is one of the lessons I have learned from observing nature. The complete absence of self pity, ruthlessly so. The short poem 'Self Pity' by DH Lawrence illustrates this well: "I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself."

AngryParsley 17y ago
Yes, I recognize that the universe is completely indifferent to humanity (and life in general). Instead of accepting this, I wish to fix it. Think about an ant in a busy railway station. If she gets trod on, does that make the commuter evil, or just indifferent to the ant's interests? I'm going to say both, but that's a disagreement on definitions. To move this debate along, I'll use your definitions of evil and bad. OK, natural disasters aren't evil. Disease isn't evil. Aging isn't evil. They're all indifferent to us. With that out of the way: Would you prefer a world with more or fewer natural disasters? Would you prefer a world with more or less disease? Would you prefer a world where people lived shorter lives or longer lives? I guess I'll end with a quote as well: The Patrician took a sip of his beer. "I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect I never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I'm sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged onto a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to its day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature's wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior." -- Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals