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Re: So, we need a topic...Lets try this?

Posted By: Superfoborg (term2-20.vta.west.net)
Date: 5/27/2003 at 12:24 a.m.

In Response To: Re: So, we need a topic...Lets try this? (Seraph)

: As someone with an unforunate tendancy to moral absolutes
: (not a "Us versus them" so much as believing
: there -is- absolute evil, and that sometimes it exists
: on earth to a certain degree.) I personally think that
: a "nessacery evil" is a contradiction in
: terms. That seems to be what you are saying the
: Leveller is, as I read it.

Like Seraph, I'm sure that anyone who has been reading here long enough has heard my views on good and evil a jazillion times, but I'll sum my viewpoint up shortly now for the viewing audience out there in Internet-land: I do not belive in any absolute moral scale, or even the concepts of good and evil except as synonyms for acts which are socially (or systemically, in a more general sense) functional and dysfunctional. (Interesting tangential thought: the geek slang "evil" to mean a bad design also fits perfectly by this definition - a bad design is bad because it's dysfunctional).

I agree that killing people is, generally speaking, usually a bad (societally dysfunctional) thing to do, granted that the function of society is to be generally happy/contented/whatever, but if there is some serial killer or terrorist out there committing repeated crimes (dysfunctional acts), and the best-weighed option is simply to kill him (say he's about to set off a bomb and kill a bunch of innocent people, but the SWAT teams could snipe him first), then that killing of the terrorist/whatever is not evil, because it is societally more functional than letting him kill a bunch of innocents. Granted, it would be even LESS "evil" (more functional) if there were a nonlethal solution that could also save all those people, but such options may not always be available.

Basically... I look at the universe as a system, a big program more or less, whose function is to have as many beings happy as possible, in all places, at all times. ("Happiness" which I define as "known contentment" - having what you want in close, observable contrast to the possibility of not having what you want, so that you appreciate it most). The time part is important, because if everybody in the universe wants to do something, and it will make them all happy now, but will make most of them miserable for all eternity later, then it's still a "bad", dysfunctional thing to do.

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