(2) Evil?
So you know how people wonder if people are born good or born evil? I wonder how it really is? I don't want to beleive that people are born evil. So i don't. :P
But it's an interesting thing to think about. Is evil present in our genes? I would think that IF something like "evil" was genetic, it would be more of a predisposition towards evil thinking rather than actually being "born evil". And even then, i don't even know what is supposed to be meant by "evil". Does it mean being predisposed to theft? Cruelty to other people? Murder? But even in those cases, there can be exceptions. I don't think that if someone was stealing bread to feel their family anyone would call them "evil". Cruelty is pretty much not a good thing in general... but i suppose people can have excuses for it, right? Even if it doesn't seem to make it right, it's just something that happened to them that they can't control. I beleive there can be circumstances like that. And murder could be accidental. You never know.
I know that those are just my examples, but it seems like there can be excuses for all acts of "evil" that could justify them on an individual basis. Funny how people can point out evil when they see it, but not really define it really well. :P
Besides, as i said, i don't beleive people are born evil. But at the same time, you're not really born good either. o-o
If you think about it and you were just... BORN. And you were put out there in the world with no one to teach you things, then you would learn what is necessary to survive. Goodness or badness wouldn't mean anything to you. And some people say that they beleive people are born bad based on the actions of certain little kids, but is it really their fault? You can't TEACH your children to be good. You can teach them "don't do this" because it's "bad". But can a child really understand "bad"? Even if they are punished, do they really understand it's because what they did was wrong?
Say you have a kid and you are tying to teach them right and wrong and whatever, so you tell them that hitting people is wrong. But the next day, the kid's friend pisses them off and so they hit them. You may put them in a time out to try to teach the kid that this is wrong, but in the end that's not what they learn. Putting them in time out just teaches them not to do something for the sake of saving themselves a time out. They don't understand the "badness" of their actions. You know? The kid is thinking that he hit the kid because he was bugging him, so why not do it? So the kid cried, didn't he deserve it? You can't convince kids that hitting isn't right, because they don't understand what right IS. Do we even?
So how DO kids learn right from wrong, or on deeper terms "good" and "evil"? Do we not kill out of fear of going to jail, or because we're "good people"? Not that NOT killing makes you GOOD. o-o How about... do we help others for the sake of knowing it's "the right thing"? Or do we get some satisfaction for ourSELF for having acted "right"? And if it's a combination of the two, does getting some kind of satisfaction out of helping people make it any LESS "good"?
What life experiences do we need to have before we can fully appreciate the difference between good and evil? Can we ever understand? And isn't it different from person to person? And if it is different from person to person, does that mean finding out is meaningless? Or can having our OWN perception of good and evil still be valuable?
Or is good and evil meaningless? Is it just a luxury born out of our not really needing to work to survive too much? (or at least not always in the same way)
In NATURE, in pure survival, IS there good and evil? Seems like there shouldn't be. We don't call polar bears evil for needing to kill a baby penguin to survive. If we were still in animal-ish states of mind, then would evil matter? And if it wouldn't matter then, does it matter now?
Aside: If originally in the garden of eden people were ignorant of right and wrong, living sorta above the animals, but really more like one of them, then how could god have called eating the fruit a sin? It's like the little kid hitting his friend. Adam and Eve didn't know "good and evil" because they hadn't eaten from the tree of knowledge. So it's like god throwing them out of the garden was like an eternal time out. Does that mean they understand what they did was wrong? Did the fruit magically make them understand afterwards? But should they have been held responsible for something they did while still in ignorance?