8 ms·

Interestingly, almost no one in NA justice systems talks about evil. The causality between life events leading to crime is often ridiculously clear, and choice

• berberous 8y ago
  I tend to be a bleeding heart and agree that many cases of criminal behavior are mental illness or environment/circumstances, but I still think there is a spectrum of morality out there -- not sure what you mean by "evil" exactly, but certainly a spectrum where people can range from high on empathy and kindness to those who care much less about others and are more amoral or even sociopathic.
  • hnuser1234 8y ago
    I agree, but let's go deeper... I'd wager is there is a way to rank "empathy/kindness" in a more objective way, and that the current social environment is distanced from that objectivity. Now even if we could perfectly, objectively rank it, should we immediately jail the bottom 1/3/10%, or should we wait for them to commit a crime? Should we give lighter sentences to more empathetic people who commit crimes, assuming they had better reasons to do it?
    • tonyedgecombe 8y ago
      We are starting to understand the parts of the brain that empathy originates from. The whole question gets more complicated when you realise that these regions could be diminished through no fault of the individual.
• ohiovr 8y ago
  Reminds me of the Monty Python sketch when the sketch artist police admit society is to blame and proceed to arrest everyone.
• ip26 8y ago
  Do you consider sociopathy and psychopathy to be sicknesses?
  • intralizee 8y ago
    Human events being unfavorable and resulting in sociopathy are as similar to how some linear process will trigger psychopathy. You can make the comparison as well to how an unfortunate person becomes ill of any illness.
  • gboudrias 8y ago
    Someone else already replied, I agree with them, yes. I'm curious if anyone wouldn't?
    • ip26 8y ago
      I guess it could be because I'm not a psychologist, but I was always under the impression psychopathy & sociopathy were innate. Like, I don't know, being gay.
      • zorga 8y ago
        I think the generally understanding is that psychopaths are born, sociopaths are made.
• barrkel 8y ago
  The ideas of free will, consequences and deterrence; morality, punishment and justice; mental illness and life choice determinism; all exist in different planes, different parallel reasoning systems about the world - rational, moral, biological/sociological. You can make linkages between the different metaphors of explication, but mixing and matching is a recipe for inconsistency. Worse, if you think mostly in a different plane to someone else, you'll forever talk past one another.
  • intralizee 8y ago
    I think the people who believe in free will can understand the notion of free will doesn't exist. They just have a problem with their ego and will not let go of the satisfaction the idea brings to them.
    • theprotocol 8y ago
      I'm not sure which discussion branch to reply to you on. But I would like to put forth the argument that people get closer to gaining the required awareness that would make them free as time passes and they gain experience. This is similar to limits in math. That is not to say that everyone moves in that direction at the same speed - that part is indeed out of one's hands. But it is undeniable that experience increases, and with it, awareness and thus freedom. I don't think I believe this because of ego. I just think it happens to be true.
      • intralizee 8y ago
        I think the assertion you make is flawed. Just because you've reached a point in time where you had experienced a great number of events and variables. Does not mean you are capable of having any will in how you're shaped into gaining a freedom or awareness that is truly your own.
        • theprotocol 8y ago
          That's a valid view, but I don't think it's possible for us to settle this definitively. I will think more on why I seem to find that free will is real. Just to clarify my view: I think there is a threshold of experience beyond which one becomes "formed" (as in, the word formative). Beyond that point, I think free will, and consequently, personhood is real and we're not just automatons. This is not a new argument; I just wanted to clarify my view.
• frakr 8y ago
  They still choose to continue down that path, or to not seek healing. Maybe it would be difficult to make another choice, but impossible? I find that pretty hard to believe.
  • nafey 8y ago
    The will power required to exercise such a choice might also be inequitably distributed.
    • jacksproit 8y ago
      Ah, yes!
  • chmod775 8y ago
    It would be pretty difficult to cut off your own right hand, but impossible? No. It just takes a considerate amount of willpower. This kind of discussion leads down a path where we try to quantify something that's incredibly hard to quantify in a vacuum. The question of willpower is also only relevant when you try to find an appropriate punishment for immoral offenses. And because this is hard, every country on earth has courts and trials - which can take forever for good reason. Because it's already hard on a per-case basis, let's not try to find an answer that would be applicable to every offence ever. Once you're through with your offender you should give them a probable path to redemption and back into society regardless of whether they lack willpower or not - especially if they lack willpower. Punishing someone for their lack of willpower and then closing every door in their face is a sure way to make them a criminal for life. And it's also petty.
    • intralizee 8y ago
      The question of will power glosses over the cause/event resulting in the desire to cut off your own hand. Will power is merely a representation of all the preceding events with starting variables at birth, factoring into if the person will do the action of cutting off their own right hand.
  • anvandare 8y ago
• test6554 8y ago
  Theres always a choice, and choices have consequences. The kind of people who believe they had no choice are the worst because it shows a total lack of remorse for their selfish decisions. Phrases like “Look what YOU made me do” and “It’s societies fault” are warning signs that they learned nothing and you have a likely repeat offender on your hands.
  • neuralzen 8y ago
    The problem to me is more an issue of repeat offenders not knowing what they dont know. They can't conceive of a better option, so they choose the option they understand, which is not usually a particularly helpful one, for themselves or others. We expect them to use better tools, but we dont help then find or make them, just punish them for using the wrong ones.
    • colordrops 8y ago
      This thread is great. Very insightful comments about a topic not discussed nearly enough.
  • baumgarn 8y ago
    people can learn, but only after the fact.
    • socceroos 8y ago
      That's not true though, is it.
      • btschaegg 8y ago
        There's a wonderful quote from Douglas Adams on that: > Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
    • labster 8y ago
      Books are magical devices which allow humans to bypass this part of their nature, 5 stars highly recommended
• vahji 8y ago
  Believing in evil is the privilege exerted by those who've lived a life of righteousness or, at least, have tried their best.
  • gboudrias 8y ago
    I happen to have tried my best at that so far and I think this line of thinking is mostly an excuse not to develop empathy and show compassion.
• wisty 8y ago
  A lot of murderers are low socioeconomic status males, but the vast majority of low socioeconomic status males are not murderers. It seems a lot like there's a choice.
  • intralizee 8y ago
    To me it just seems like a system and currently it's too complicated to understand why the similarity exists. It doesn't give any reason to believe there's a choice.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
• throwaway713 8y ago
  > Believing in evil is its own kind of privilege. Tell that to holocaust survivors. If you want to redefine commonly used words like "evil" until they no longer have any sort of meaning, go ahead, but in that case you might as well accept a nihilistic existence as an automaton obeying the deterministic time evolution laws of physics. I feel like the rest of society will ignore you in that case, and that's probably for the best.
  • chillacy 8y ago
    Those prison guards found it all too easy to slip into their roles, it’s sadly a rare characteristic to resist and see the right and wrong. The majority go along with the currents. I’d like to think that I’m different but statistically I probably already engage in acts that future generations will consider evil, like eating farm raised animals or reaping the benefits of living in a first world country which invades and destabilizes weaker nations.
    • PavlovsCat 8y ago
      If you look at the night sky you'll see more dark areas than points of light, but you still use those points of light and the contrast to define what brightness and darkness is. That would hold even if there was just one visible star besides the sun in the whole universe. > I probably already engage in acts that future generations will consider evil It's nothing to do with new insights coming about. If for example you reap the benefits of wars of aggressions and don't speak out against wars of aggression, what future generations think of it doesn't matter. When you see a homeless person sleeping in the cold, and you put a warm blanket over them and they don't wake up and nobody sees it, was it a good deed? I would say yes. It will even remain a good deed if you yourself forget about it. So why would that be different for bad deeds? It can only be bad for reasons that are present at the time. If someone is getting deceived it's hard to blame them. But if someone is ignorant because they made many little choices to remain ignorant, it's different. If someone couldn't have possibly known because of scientific discoveries made later, it'd be silly to "blame" them. But that's hardly relevant to the Holocaust. And nobody "statistically" does x murders and y good deeds each year. We do nothing statistically, we just do what we ourselves actually do. > Of course, the terrible things I heard from the Nuremberg Trials, about the six million Jews and the people from other races who were killed, were facts that shocked me deeply. But I wasn't able to see the connection with my own past. I was satisfied that I wasn't personally to blame and that I hadn't known about those things. I wasn't aware of the extent. But one day I went past the memorial plaque which had been put up for Sophie Scholl in Franz Josef Strasse, and I saw that she was born the same year as me, and she was executed the same year I started working for Hitler. And at that moment I actually sensed that it was no excuse to be young, and that it would have been possible to find things out. -- Traudl Junge While we might "pity" people in the past for not knowing many things, moral judgement has to do with the options someone has. Even if the majority is using their options badly, that doesn't mean those options didn't exist, just like there being less stars wouldn't make the rest of the night sky brighter. > The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil. -- Hannah Arendt