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I'd argue that it's a form of nihilism, and that nihilism itself is at best benign and at worst destructive. You can't build a functioning society or legal cod

I'd argue that it's a form of nihilism, and that nihilism itself is at best benign and at worst destructive. You can't build a functioning society or legal code based on "good and evil don't exist, we're all just animals". Even acknowledging that partial truth you eventually have to choose a subjective value system to make moral decisions. Perhaps it's a somewhat useful perspective in evolutionary science/research, but that's as far as it goes. I wouldn't recommend it as a life philosophy unless you just want to be an ascetic hermit, and there's a reason ascetic hermits are viewed as more zoo animals than anyone of importance, and they aren't very common or influential. Not that a true ascetic would care, their entire existence is eating their own tails to feel superior.

unsupp0rted 4y ago
> You can't build a functioning society or legal code based on "good and evil don't exist, we're all just animals" Of course you can. As long as the animals we are have the ability to understand the consequences of their actions, to themselves and others, and make rational choices about that. I wouldn't put in prison or on death row a person who killed even a hundred people but functionally has an IQ of 45. That person likely couldn't make rational choices and couldn't understand what they were doing, why they were doing it, or what would happen next. Whereas I would incarcerate a person with a 100 IQ who drove drunk in a well populated city, whether or not they hit someone. Good and evil don't have much to do with either case.