It seems to me this article would gain a lot of quality by refocusing around bullying. Bullying’s definition is more clear-cut and uninamously accepted than evil and good definitions are. I find the title especially misleading, since nothing in the article applies more to anyone’s enemies rather than their allies, or themselves.
When talking about school bullying, my pet theory is that it has the same psychological causes as prison bullying. There’s a form of violence that arises from being constrained for too long, like when battery chickens end up pecking each other to the death.
I think that theory is false. In an unconstrained wild west environment, an asshole with a gun will happily bully those who he knows don’t have guns. And conversely, people have found ways to be good even in very constrained environments. Good and evil are the responsibility of the person doing it, not the environment.
“good”, “evil” and “responsibility” are terms that are hard to agree on a definition.
A fact that everyone should agree on is that each event has multiple causes, defined as previous events that are necessary for the event to happen. In the case of a person’s behaviour, some causes are internal and others are external. What is relevant depends on what you can leverage. I don’t see how saying “some people are good, some are just evil” can be leveraged to reduce bullying. But I believe making school less prison-like would.
Also, an “unconstrained wild west environment” is neither a common nor natural environment. Humans have evolved to live in a network of constraining but flexible relationships, personal debts and cultural items.
So you think that between two theories—“evil comes from people’s choices” and “evil comes from circumstances”—the former can’t be “leveraged” and we should adopt the latter apriori, regardless of which one is closer to truth? I think that’s jumping the gun a bit. Let’s figure out what’s true first, then make decisions based on that.
It seems to me this article would gain a lot of quality by refocusing around bullying. Bullying’s definition is more clear-cut and uninamously accepted than evil and good definitions are. I find the title especially misleading, since nothing in the article applies more to anyone’s enemies rather than their allies, or themselves.
When talking about school bullying, my pet theory is that it has the same psychological causes as prison bullying. There’s a form of violence that arises from being constrained for too long, like when battery chickens end up pecking each other to the death.
I think that theory is false. In an unconstrained wild west environment, an asshole with a gun will happily bully those who he knows don’t have guns. And conversely, people have found ways to be good even in very constrained environments. Good and evil are the responsibility of the person doing it, not the environment.
“good”, “evil” and “responsibility” are terms that are hard to agree on a definition.
A fact that everyone should agree on is that each event has multiple causes, defined as previous events that are necessary for the event to happen. In the case of a person’s behaviour, some causes are internal and others are external. What is relevant depends on what you can leverage. I don’t see how saying “some people are good, some are just evil” can be leveraged to reduce bullying. But I believe making school less prison-like would.
Also, an “unconstrained wild west environment” is neither a common nor natural environment. Humans have evolved to live in a network of constraining but flexible relationships, personal debts and cultural items.
So you think that between two theories—“evil comes from people’s choices” and “evil comes from circumstances”—the former can’t be “leveraged” and we should adopt the latter apriori, regardless of which one is closer to truth? I think that’s jumping the gun a bit. Let’s figure out what’s true first, then make decisions based on that.