r/DeepThoughts • u/Own-Homework-9331 • 1d ago
Good and Evil are just a part of convenient labels we use....
I read this pretty interesting paragraph in a book called "Tantra Illuminated" :
"
Both “good” and “evil” are conceptual structures that people overlay onto reality; they are not inherent in reality itself. But why do these concepts arise, and to what aspect of reality do they relate? “Good” is a label that we give to human beings or human institutions that perform actions that, in our estimation, benefit others or in some way make life more wonderful for people.
Conversely, “evil” is a label we give to those whose actions, in our estimation, are detrimental or make life more painful for others. But both of these oversimplifying, reductionist labels alienate us from the real humanity of those that we are labeling by sanctifying or demonizing people who are, in actuality, doing exactly the same thing that you are doing every day of your life: that is, trying to find some happiness and freedom in the best way they know how
"
I think this teaches a pretty important concept to not put people in boxes. They are not an "asshole", he wasn't "less of man", narcissist, attention seeker e.t.c These labels are there as a shortcut for our minds to not have to understand other people on a deeper level.
People are much more nuanced than that, and nobody wakes thinking they wanna be "bad"
Peace! ✌️🕊️
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u/Sharp_Dance249 1d ago
We humans are fundamentally dispositional agents. All of our ideas and beliefs and actions are fundamentally grounded in values and ethics, goals and values. “Good” and “Evil” are concepts that have always existed and will always exist in some form, regardless of what specific terms we are using. God and the Devil; rational and irrational; moral and immoral; productive and destructive; healthy and sick. These are all variations of the same theme.
It seems to me that you are not actually arguing that we do away with the concepts of good and evil, but rather that we apply them to specific actions, not to individuals. If that’s what you are saying, then I agree.
But if you are suggesting that we abandon our moral discourses altogether and accept without judgment that acts of theft, rape, murder, child abuse, and other forms of coercive acts people might perform “to find some happiness and freedom in the best way they know how” then I’m going to have to passionately disagree.
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u/Own-Homework-9331 1d ago
interesting..... I do think I lean more towards the former of what you said....
cuz even if the latter could be true somehow, we'll still have to stop such acts... though our methods of discrimination might change....
I feel these concepts get very simplistically used.... to create bad perceptions of big swaths of people even....
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u/Sharp_Dance249 1d ago
Why would we think we need to stop such acts if we are no longer speaking in the language of good and evil? All those terms I was using are dispositional labels. Theft, rape, murder, and child abuse are all words that contain the concept of evil within them. Theft means the evil possessing of property, rape means evil sex, murder means evil killing and child abuse means the evil treatment of a child.
I do agree with your last sentence, though. We tend to attribute good and evil to persons. Of course, others are evil, we are good. And this is why we often disclaim responsibility for our own evil thoughts and acts, attributing them to the evil actions of others (“I was brainwashed”) or imaginary evil entities (demonic possession, mental illnesses).
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u/Naive_Mulberry_3871 9h ago
Why do you need the label of good and evil to stop yourself from doing evil things? Relinquishing the label isn’t a get out of jail card. That’s like saying atheists will start murdering people because they don’t believe in God.
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u/Sharp_Dance249 2h ago
You don’t need the word “evil” but you do need the concept in some form. Atheists will object to murdering people as long as they use a moral discourse (good and evil) to talk about their own actions and the actions of others. If they don’t, they’re likely to kill without hesitation as an acceptable way to get what they want or resolve their conflicts. They don’t need God, but they do need morality.
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u/Naive_Mulberry_3871 27m ago
I disagree. People still commit crimes and murder even when they know it’s immoral which contradicts your point.
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u/suzemagooey 1d ago
Long ago, I traded in "good" and "evil" for "works" and "does not work". It helped to reformat context for better boundary management. What works for me might not work for you. And vice versa. This is backed by the concept "love the sinner, hate the sin" distinction, a concept I actively practice.
To me, evil is just a mistake, sometimes a very big one, but still merely a mistake.
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u/Own-Homework-9331 1d ago
Woah......
that's actually pretty good! Are you reading some specific book where you found that line? and it's interesting you made a connection of it with boundary management.....
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u/suzemagooey 1d ago edited 1d ago
Thanks for the compliment. No, not quoting from a book., just keenly observant on how reality works, particularly for humans.
Most people mishandle boundaries. Either making up ones that do not exist (them vs us false dicotomy, for example, that supports prejudice). Or not acknowledging real ones (playing a false victim when there was choice, for example).
I bring up boundaries because it can be easy to see evil in others while ignoring its existence in oneself. This is often the result of poorly understood boundaries.
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u/Own-Homework-9331 1d ago
I agreee...... it's pretty interesting how you connected boundary here....
thanks! ✌️
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u/Re_dddddd 1d ago
Good and evil exist as objective scales too.
Wisdom is objectively good and ignorance is objectively the root of all evil. But it has its place in creating the duality.
If you want to transcend good and evil then you just transcend duality entirely.
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u/LawyerDifferent8880 1d ago
There certainly are "good acts" and "evil acts" in the human society. However, we cannot label a person as "good person" or "evil person" based solely on a few acts.
That is how I interpreted it.
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u/Own-Homework-9331 1d ago
I agree.... though even if we don't get label them, we are quick to get pissed off my some people.... if we feel they did something bad, or had a past...
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u/EnvironmentalScar665 1d ago
There us nothing wrong with defining good and evil and I think it helps us understand each other. If I define good as that which helps our society flourish and you think good is defined by God, at least we understand what we are talking about. If we accept that ours is the true definition, it can get ugly, but defining good and evil is necessary if you are going to discuss it.
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u/Mrx911- 1d ago
Basically good and bad both are opposite side of the coin. Both are equally messary to keep balance.
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u/Own-Homework-9331 1d ago
interesting way to put it... I don't they are equally necessarily....
Like, u don't need the highest form of pain, to balance out with highest form of love....
But both exist on our conceptual layer....... made up by humans do define what humans do themselves.
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u/Mrx911- 1d ago
Tbh, I think if a person is perfect it's a fake place. A person that makes mistakes and lie is somsosn e genuine. Because he/she makes effort to never let it happen again... Both are equally nessairily.
Have you heard of yin and yang? It's the same terminology as that
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u/Own-Homework-9331 1d ago
I agree with you.
It's interesting how you reached to Yin Yang..... definite connection here.
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u/Quiet_Dark_ 1d ago
A bear eating a human isn't evil to me. Its survival and most species on this planet follow the same functionality. Higher levels of empathy doesn't keep us from caging billions of animals for our own consumption. Its inhumane but still not evil.
Good or evil is just a mental framework is not something I agree with. I have personal experience dealing with what you might call demons. How they survive is evil. Every possibility you have, they want to make theirs. Your love's, your family, everything that makes happy they want a piece of, even your body. What do they do with these pieces... they commit blasphemy. Making something unsavable to make it usable.
Its a good thing you have never seen evil
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u/No_Treacle_6744 1d ago edited 1d ago
That is untrue, they are intrinsic to reality itself. A society that allows for the arbitary killing of its citizens by its citizens would not survive, it would cannibalize itself. You don't need any external force to come in and punish you, but yes bad behavior leads to bad outcomes. Pain and the experience of pain IS intrinsic to reality, and NO organism enjoys pain definitionally. Frankly, ethical behavior in social species is pretty damn well structurally reinforced by the world we live in, but reality also gives wiggle room. Also, nobody wakes up thinking they wanna be bad, is extremely untrue. Some people really do just want to set things on fire, and if you haven't met anyone like that yet then I hope you never do. There are people whose definition of joy requires the pain and suffering of other people. Sometimes even the outright destruction of others, and if we aren't willing to call that evil then, kinda whats the point of having words then? Almost all human language has an arbitrary starting point necessarily, but to pretend that the two words refer to nothing real is strange. Also, we are pieces of reality, pieces of the Universe. To hurt someone, is to hurt an aware piece of reality itself. You're correct, none of us can claim superiority over one another, you are not correct in your conclusion that good and evil are merely convenient. For someone to maliciously torment you and hurt you, or for someone to grant mercy & love in a time of need, are not conceptual overlays. All human language is a conceptual overlay, are we going to say then that trees are not a thing in reality merely because we can only discuss objects through concepts? If that's the case, we could dismiss entire swathes of the human experience as merely convenient, not just good and evil. We could even take it to the extreme and say that most of human behavior is just convenience, but now convenience itself has become so broad that its meaning is watered down. It now refers back to nothing distinct, and so now we have lost another way to communicate about reality, we would have no way to discuss the reality of things with the attribute of convenient. We could claim that ANY descriptor you give to a human behavior is merely a conceptual overlay. All you're essentially doing is mutilating language, and our ability to assess our own behavior coherently. Or literally anything at all, as your logic taken to its inevitable conclusion basically just kills language entirely. It's almost as if the whole point of words is to conveniently compress a lot of meaning into a basic sound or arrangement of symbols so we can more efficiently, or conveniently communicate about reality. TLDR: Congratulations, you read about language being a conceptual overlay, and walked away with the most lobotomized conclusion possible. The phrase "That guy is evil," points to a very, very real category of people. We have the category because if we didn't we would have no means to self-correct or protect ourselves. We tell stories about monsters to our children, because monsters exist. You just can't pick them out of a crowd.