The Soapboxx
Friday, March 16, 2007
Does 'Evil' Have A Face We All Know?
If I said to you: think of something 'evil', what picture forms in your mind?
The Devil? Hitler? Jeremy Beadle?
Now think of something 'good'. What do you see?
Family? A loved one? An animal? God?
The concept of good and evil is, of course, a difficult one to truly define. Indeed, some philosophers argue that both terms are essentially useless because they fall very much into the one man's meat/poison argument: terrorists are 'freedom fighters' in some parts of the Middle East, many religious groups think abortion is 'evil'. Hence, the process of motivation becomes somewhat important in regard to the categorisation.
Wikipedia suggests:
More Wiki on this:
In religious philosophy, the 'problem of evil' concerns itself with the suggestion that a truly good God would not have created a world/universe that contained even the slightest whiff of a hint of a flutter of a glimmer of a shadow of evil. But He clearly did. This is know as the Epicurean paradox.
"Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. ... If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. ... If, as they say, God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?" (Epicurus, as quoted in 2000 Years of Disbelief).
Looking at this problem from a mathematical perspective, this assumes that God is both benevolent and omnipotent. One formulation of the problem of evil may be schematized as follows:
Therefore, one can conclude that God either does not exist, or is indeed, evil, or partly thereof, which suggests to me that it's not God running the show at all, but rather, his once-close pal, and I suggest possibly the true King: Bill. Z. Bub.
The Devil? Hitler? Jeremy Beadle?
Now think of something 'good'. What do you see?
Family? A loved one? An animal? God?
The concept of good and evil is, of course, a difficult one to truly define. Indeed, some philosophers argue that both terms are essentially useless because they fall very much into the one man's meat/poison argument: terrorists are 'freedom fighters' in some parts of the Middle East, many religious groups think abortion is 'evil'. Hence, the process of motivation becomes somewhat important in regard to the categorisation.
Wikipedia suggests:
Many critics reject the current common usage of the term evil, suggesting that motivation must be taken into account. Thus, they feel it is inappropriate to apply the term to just anyone committing significant acts of violence such as terrorism and mass murder. Only those people motivated by sadism, lust for power or greed of wealth (in many forms) should qualify as evil. That does not mean they think violent acts like terrorism and murder are acceptable, just that perpetrators of those acts should not automatically be labeled evil. Under such applications of the term evil, malicious juveniles and sadistic minors are classified as evil despite their misguided purposes.Which is probably fair enough. I wrote before about whether Hitler consider himself an 'evil man', and inevitably he did not. Whilst most of us probably do, his oft-mentioned redeeming qualities of being a vegetarian and an animal lover probably don't go far enough to save him... but they do perhaps prevent him from being 100 per cent categorically evil in any absolute definition of the term.
There is a school of thought that holds that no person is evil, that only acts may be properly considered evil.
More Wiki on this:
Psychologist and mediator Marshall Rosenberg claims that the root of violence is the very concept of "evil" or "badness." When we label someone as bad or evil Rosenberg claims, it invokes the desire to punish or inflict pain. It also makes it easy for us to turn off our feelings towards the person we are harming. He cites the use of language in Nazi Germany as being a key to how the German people were able to do things to other human beings that they normally wouldn't do. He links the concept of evil to our judicial system, which seeks to create justice via punishment ("punitive justice")- punishing acts that are seen as bad or wrong. He contrasts this approach with what he found in cultures where the idea of evil was non-existant. In such cultures, when someone harms another person, they are believed to be out of harmony with themselves and their community, they are seen as sick or ill and measures are taken to restore them to a sense of harmonious relations with themselves and others, as opposed to punishing them.Perhaps one way to look at true evil is whether the actions are entirely self-serving; most 'evil' beings in history seemed to have some ultimate purpose that benefitted themselves or their race, but this theory excludes those who have no choice but to commit acts that others find verge on the threshhold of evil (i.e., they certainly are not 'good' acts) - stealing food to live, for example, or those people who kill doctors and nurses involved in abortions, or animal experimentation. Essentially these are 'evil acts'. To the perpetrators, they are probably closer to the opposite. In these examples, as detailed above, those involved excuse their actions because they feel they are doing what is essentially right, what is needed, and required. Two wrongs don't make a right, as well all know - or at least are told - but for many, they definitely do.
Psychologist Albert Ellis makes a similar claim, in his school of psychology called Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy. He says the root of anger, and the desire to harm someone is always one of the thought: 1) That they should/shouldn't have done certain things 2) That someone is awful/bad/horrible person for doing what they did 3) That they deserve to be punished for what they did.
He claims that without one of the following thoughts, violence is next to impossible.
In religious philosophy, the 'problem of evil' concerns itself with the suggestion that a truly good God would not have created a world/universe that contained even the slightest whiff of a hint of a flutter of a glimmer of a shadow of evil. But He clearly did. This is know as the Epicurean paradox.
"Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. ... If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. ... If, as they say, God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?" (Epicurus, as quoted in 2000 Years of Disbelief).
Looking at this problem from a mathematical perspective, this assumes that God is both benevolent and omnipotent. One formulation of the problem of evil may be schematized as follows:
- If God exists, then there would be no evil in the world.
- There is evil in the world.
- Therefore, God does not exist.
- If P is true, then Q is true
- Q is false
- Therefore, P is false
Therefore, one can conclude that God either does not exist, or is indeed, evil, or partly thereof, which suggests to me that it's not God running the show at all, but rather, his once-close pal, and I suggest possibly the true King: Bill. Z. Bub.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Have A Few Quid To Spare? Fancy A Swimming Pool Full Of Liquid Gold?
Quick - what's the most expensive substance on the planet? Gold, silver, platinum, diamonds...?
Actually, it's something else entirely - Californium. Yeah, Californium. I mean, who comes up with these names? Some bloke in California, I guess. Indeed, Californium was first synthesized by University of California researchers Stanley G. Thompson, Kenneth Street, Jr., Albert Ghiorso and Glenn T. Seaborg in 1950. It was the sixth transuranium element to be discovered - that being, a chemical element with an atomic number greater than that possessed by uranium, which is 92 - and the team announced their discovery on March 17, 1950. Obviously pressed for time, they named it after both the State and the University. It doesn't even occur naturally on Earth, but is, apparently, all over the universe. Just not here. And therefore hence the price tag - at $3.8 billion per troy pound, you won't get much change from a fiver. Bill Gates is supposed to have a personal fortune of some $50 billion, but I'd wager even he would be unlikely to ask for "a couple of pounds of Californium, a dozen eggs and some apples, mate," at his local grocers.
Troy pound? That's 12 troy ounces, each of which is 480 grains. A grain? That's exactly 64 milligrams. Alright, dunderhead?
But the problem here is that even assuming you had access to the sort of money that makes men and women go weak at the knees (but for vastly different reasons), there simply isn't enough Californium around to do anything good with it. So how exactly is a multi-billionaire supposed to impress? Silver's no good - it's far too tacky and the only attention you're likely to attract is from goths. Platinum is kind of the Jerusalem of precious metals - caught in a no-man's land between the other two and nobody really knows what to do with it. So that leaves gold. At the very least, it's nice and shiny.
So, say we could get our hands on a lot, what's the best thing we could do with it? A swimming pool full of liquid gold? Sounds great, doesn't it? Unfortunately, it's out of the reach of everybody on the planet. Apart from maybe the Catholic Church, and I'm not sure that would send out the right message. Let me explain.
A US Olympic pool contains 660,253.09 gallons of water.
There are 128 fluid ounces in a gallon.
So 128 x 660,253.09 = 83,232,395.52 ounces in a pool.
Spot Gold, as of 9.22am, March 6, 2007, just traded $643.50 per ounce.
So, an Olympic-sized pool filled with liquid spot gold would cost: $53,560,046,517.12. Or, more precisely, almost $54 billion, or £28 billion in British money.
So, it's not really going to happen, I don't think, but at the very least we can console ourselves by noting that not even Gates himself could swing it; that is, not without a lengthy phone call to Picture ("Yes, I do have a mortgage.")
Actually, it's something else entirely - Californium. Yeah, Californium. I mean, who comes up with these names? Some bloke in California, I guess. Indeed, Californium was first synthesized by University of California researchers Stanley G. Thompson, Kenneth Street, Jr., Albert Ghiorso and Glenn T. Seaborg in 1950. It was the sixth transuranium element to be discovered - that being, a chemical element with an atomic number greater than that possessed by uranium, which is 92 - and the team announced their discovery on March 17, 1950. Obviously pressed for time, they named it after both the State and the University. It doesn't even occur naturally on Earth, but is, apparently, all over the universe. Just not here. And therefore hence the price tag - at $3.8 billion per troy pound, you won't get much change from a fiver. Bill Gates is supposed to have a personal fortune of some $50 billion, but I'd wager even he would be unlikely to ask for "a couple of pounds of Californium, a dozen eggs and some apples, mate," at his local grocers.
Troy pound? That's 12 troy ounces, each of which is 480 grains. A grain? That's exactly 64 milligrams. Alright, dunderhead?
But the problem here is that even assuming you had access to the sort of money that makes men and women go weak at the knees (but for vastly different reasons), there simply isn't enough Californium around to do anything good with it. So how exactly is a multi-billionaire supposed to impress? Silver's no good - it's far too tacky and the only attention you're likely to attract is from goths. Platinum is kind of the Jerusalem of precious metals - caught in a no-man's land between the other two and nobody really knows what to do with it. So that leaves gold. At the very least, it's nice and shiny.
So, say we could get our hands on a lot, what's the best thing we could do with it? A swimming pool full of liquid gold? Sounds great, doesn't it? Unfortunately, it's out of the reach of everybody on the planet. Apart from maybe the Catholic Church, and I'm not sure that would send out the right message. Let me explain.
A US Olympic pool contains 660,253.09 gallons of water.
There are 128 fluid ounces in a gallon.
So 128 x 660,253.09 = 83,232,395.52 ounces in a pool.
Spot Gold, as of 9.22am, March 6, 2007, just traded $643.50 per ounce.
So, an Olympic-sized pool filled with liquid spot gold would cost: $53,560,046,517.12. Or, more precisely, almost $54 billion, or £28 billion in British money.
So, it's not really going to happen, I don't think, but at the very least we can console ourselves by noting that not even Gates himself could swing it; that is, not without a lengthy phone call to Picture ("Yes, I do have a mortgage.")
Friday, March 02, 2007
The Perception Of Good And Evil. Or, Did Hitler Think Of Himself As A Monster?
In his autobiography, Carl Panzram, a serial killer in America at the end of 1920s, wrote of himself as 'rage personified'. A prolific thief as well as a murderer, Panzram would often rape the men he robbed not, he claimed, because he was a homosexual, but because it was a way to dominate and humiliate them.
"In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings, I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenies, arsons and last but not least I have committed sodomy on more than 1,000 male human beings. For all these things I am not in the least bit sorry." —Carl Panzram
Panzram is somewhat unusual in his stance of his position in society. He considered and thought of himself as a bad man; as an evil man. He didn't try and justify his actions and he didn't try and redeem himself in any way. He accepted who he was.
I've often wondered if others in the history of inhumane activity shared this self-analysis; Hitler, for example.
Did Hitler consider himself a bad person? Did he think of himself as a fascist? As a monster? Or did he consider himself a good man. A humanitarian, even. A righter-of-wrongs.
Consider also the animal abuser; does he (or she) consider himself above the actions, the damage being caused? Does he think of himself as an abuser of animals? Or does the kind of mentality that allows and encourages abuse separate one's self from the cause and effect, and from the analysis and conclusion?
I fully realise there is no universal answer and that, for example, one kind of, say, rapist, who could be completely insane, would not have the same thought process as another. One also accepts that the activities above inevitably lead to a conclusion of madness. I am pretty sure that Hitler, however, was considered a sane individual, even if to all intents and purposes, and to the majority, his actions were anything but.
Is it fair to say that any kind of serial-offender shares similar qualities with another? And that on some level they should be able to self-analyse their actions and respond in some way to the question: are you a bad person?
Are you?
"In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings, I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenies, arsons and last but not least I have committed sodomy on more than 1,000 male human beings. For all these things I am not in the least bit sorry." —Carl Panzram
Panzram is somewhat unusual in his stance of his position in society. He considered and thought of himself as a bad man; as an evil man. He didn't try and justify his actions and he didn't try and redeem himself in any way. He accepted who he was.
I've often wondered if others in the history of inhumane activity shared this self-analysis; Hitler, for example.
Did Hitler consider himself a bad person? Did he think of himself as a fascist? As a monster? Or did he consider himself a good man. A humanitarian, even. A righter-of-wrongs.
Consider also the animal abuser; does he (or she) consider himself above the actions, the damage being caused? Does he think of himself as an abuser of animals? Or does the kind of mentality that allows and encourages abuse separate one's self from the cause and effect, and from the analysis and conclusion?
I fully realise there is no universal answer and that, for example, one kind of, say, rapist, who could be completely insane, would not have the same thought process as another. One also accepts that the activities above inevitably lead to a conclusion of madness. I am pretty sure that Hitler, however, was considered a sane individual, even if to all intents and purposes, and to the majority, his actions were anything but.
Is it fair to say that any kind of serial-offender shares similar qualities with another? And that on some level they should be able to self-analyse their actions and respond in some way to the question: are you a bad person?
Are you?
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