PDF Evil Perceptions

How belief in pure evil relates to perceptions and punishments of gun violence perpetrators

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Pure evil and people's perceptions is the subject of research

For a list of all authors on NoteStream, click here. How can you create a working definition of evil that accounts for 1 mass genocides, atrocities like the Holocaust, or a gunman walking into an elementary school and opening fire, and 2 natural occurrences that cause mass destruction like floods, tidal waves, hurricanes and the like? What about diseases, AIDS epidemics, and cancer? Within the framework of any compelling story, you will find the epic struggle of good versus evil — the good guys versus the villains.

How do I conduct myself in a moral fashion and distinguish good or at least morally neutral actions from evil ones? If I have the freedom to choose which actions I will take, how should I act? A parent brutally abuses their child. A serial killer chooses a victim for his next kill. The Nazis slaughter countless Jews in concentration camps.

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We are all one body with many cells. He was originally charged with assault and battery against his spouse, aggravated assault against his stepson "Kelley admitted to hitting his stepson on the head A reliable system of identifying, diagnosing, and restricting people like him would have averted that tragedy as well as the las vegas massacre and the Manhattan truck attack. Sri guru-granth sahib [english version]. Good also results in more beauty while evil diminishes beauty. An entirely different form of perfectionism has arisen in response to rapid technological change.

Across all Culture One of the five paintings of Extermination of Evil portrays Sendan Kendatsuba, one of the eight guardians of Buddhist law, banishing evil. Take these two examples:. Example 1 — Seung-Hui Cho shot two people in a co-ed dormitory before walking across campus, chaining the doors shut, and opening fire on the students and faculty of Virginia Tech. In total, Cho killed 32 people and wounded 17 others before committing suicide. Example 2 — A few years ago in New Jersey, a pack of wild coyotes in Middleton began attacking kids.

The news reported a handful of victims under the age of six. But with Cho, we pick apart his mindset looking for possible influences and motivations. Why did he snap? What caused him to kill all those people? He is also an introspective essayist who acknowledges his own continuing struggle to understand the nature and source of evil.

The result is scholarly, readable, and comprehensive Russell's notations are copious and impressive, attesting to the vast amount of research that has gone into this study. The text is richly illustrated with some fifty well-chosen plates An exceptionally lucid study and a major contribution to the field.

Author Jeffrey Burton Russell. Publisher Cornell University Press. Title First Published 02 September Product Detail Trade paperback US. People tend to believe evil is something external to them, because they project their shadow onto others. Jung interpreted the story of Jesus as an account of God facing his own shadow. In , Philip Zimbardo suggested that people may act in evil ways as a result of a collective identity.

This hypothesis, based on his previous experience from the Stanford prison experiment , was published in the book The Lucifer Effect: All of these are states of lacking and have no real existence. Thus, evil does not exist, and is relative to man. Are they good or evil, for they are existing beings?

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Yes, a scorpion is evil in relation to man; a serpent is evil in relation to man; but in relation to themselves they are not evil, for their poison is their weapon, and by their sting they defend themselves. Thus, evil is more of an intellectual concept than a true reality. Since God is good, and upon creating creation he confirmed it by saying it is Good Genesis 1: The primal duality in Buddhism is between suffering and enlightenment, so the good vs. One may infer however from the general teachings of the Buddha that the catalogued causes of suffering are what correspond in this belief system to 'evil'.

Practically this can refer to 1 the three selfish emotions—desire, hate and delusion; and 2 to their expression in physical and verbal actions. See ten unvirtuous actions in Buddhism. Specifically, evil means whatever harms or obstructs the causes for happiness in this life, a better rebirth, liberation from samsara, and the true and complete enlightenment of a buddha samyaksambodhi. Killing is evil, lying is evil, slandering is evil, abuse is evil, gossip is evil: And what is the root of evil?

Desire is the root of evil, illusion is the root of evil. In Hinduism the concept of Dharma or righteousness clearly divides the world into good and evil, and clearly explains that wars have to be waged sometimes to establish and protect Dharma, this war is called Dharmayuddha. This division of good and evil is of major importance in both the Hindu epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata. However, the main emphasis in Hinduism is on bad action, rather than bad people.

The Hindu holy text, the Bhagavad Gita , speaks of the balance of good and evil. When this balance goes off, divine incarnations come to help to restore this balance. In adherence to the core principle of spiritual evolution, the Sikh idea of evil changes depending on one's position on the path to liberation. At the beginning stages of spiritual growth, good and evil may seem neatly separated. However, once one's spirit evolves to the point where it sees most clearly, the idea of evil vanishes and the truth is revealed.

In his writings Guru Arjan explains that, because God is the source of all things, what we believe to be evil must too come from God. And because God is ultimately a source of absolute good, nothing truly evil can originate from God. Nevertheless, Sikhism, like many other religions, does incorporate a list of "vices" from which suffering, corruption, and abject negativity arise. These are known as the Five Thieves , called such due to their propensity to cloud the mind and lead one astray from the prosecution of righteous action. One who gives in to the temptations of the Five Thieves is known as " Manmukh ", or someone who lives selfishly and without virtue.

Inversely, the " Gurmukh , who thrive in their reverence toward divine knowledge, rise above vice via the practice of the high virtues of Sikhism. There is no concept of absolute evil in Islam , as a fundamental universal principle that is independent from and equal with good in a dualistic sense. Within Islam, it is considered essential to believe that all comes from Allah , whether it is perceived as good or bad by individuals; and things that are perceived as evil or bad are either natural events natural disasters or illnesses or caused by humanity's free will to disobey Allah's orders.

According to the Ahmadiyya understanding of Islam, evil does not have a positive existence in itself and is merely the lack of good, just as darkness is the result of lack of light. In Judaism , no individual can be defined as categorically, absolutely "good" or "evil. God gave the Children of Israel the Torah as a guide to overcome evil.

A common theme of medieval Jewish philosophy is that people who do good deeds will be rewarded in olam haba. Judaism has two conflicting attitudes toward the existence of evil. In one interpretation, evil is not real, it is per se not part of God's creation, but comes into existence through man's bad actions. In the other interpretation, evil was created by God since God created everything and to suggest otherwise would be to engage in dualism , and is therefore antithetical to the core Jewish belief in monotheism.

Evil according to a Christian worldview is any action, thought or attitude that is contrary to the character or will of God. This is shown through the law given in both the Old and New Testament. Therefore, evil in a Christian world view is contrasted by and in conflict with God's character or God's will. This evil shows itself through deviation from the character or will of God. Similarly, good according to a Christian worldview is any action, thought or attitude that is consistent with the character or the will of God, for God is good, the ultimate goodness.

Christian theology draws its concept of evil from the Old and New Testaments. In common parlance, evil is 'something' that occurs in experience that ought not to be. In Mormonism , mortal life is viewed as a test of faith, where one's choices are central to the Plan of Salvation. Evil is that which keeps one from discovering the nature of God. It is believed that one must choose not to be evil to return to God. Christian Science believes that evil arises from a misunderstanding of the goodness of nature, which is understood as being inherently perfect if viewed from the correct spiritual perspective.

Misunderstanding God's reality leads to incorrect choices, which are termed evil. This has led to the rejection of any separate power being the source of evil, or of God as being the source of evil; instead, the appearance of evil is the result of a mistaken concept of good. Christian Scientists argue that even the most evil person does not pursue evil for its own sake, but from the mistaken viewpoint that he or she will achieve some kind of good thereby. In the originally Persian religion of Zoroastrianism , the world is a battle ground between the god Ahura Mazda also called Ormazd and the malignant spirit Angra Mainyu also called Ahriman.

The final resolution of the struggle between good and evil was supposed to occur on a day of Judgement , in which all beings that have lived will be led across a bridge of fire, and those who are evil will be cast down forever. In Afghan belief, angels and saints are beings sent to help us achieve the path towards goodness. It is possible to treat the essential theories of value by the use of a philosophical and academic approach. In properly analyzing theories of value, everyday beliefs are not only carefully catalogued and described , but also rigorously analyzed and judged.

There are at least two basic ways of presenting a theory of value, based on two different kinds of questions:. The two questions are subtly different. One may answer the first question by researching the world by use of social science, and examining the preferences that people assert. However, one may answer the second question by use of reasoning, introspection, prescription, and generalization.

The former kind of method of analysis is called " descriptive ", because it attempts to describe what people actually view as good or evil; while the latter is called " normative ", because it tries to actively prohibit evils and cherish goods. These descriptive and normative approaches can be complementary.

For example, tracking the decline of the popularity of slavery across cultures is the work of descriptive ethics , while advising that slavery be avoided is normative. Meta-ethics is the study of the fundamental questions concerning the nature and origins of the good and the evil, including inquiry into the nature of good and evil, as well as the meaning of evaluative language.

In this respect, meta-ethics is not necessarily tied to investigations into how others see the good, or of asserting what is good. A satisfying formulation of goodness is valuable because it might allow one to construct a good life or society by reliable processes of deduction, elaboration, or prioritization. One could answer the ancient question, "How should we then live? It has long been thought that this question can best be answered by examining what it is that necessarily makes a thing valuable, or in what the source of value consists.

One attempt to define goodness describes it as a property of the world with Platonic idealism. According to this claim, to talk about the good is to talk about something real that exists in the object itself, independent of the perception of it. Plato advocated this view, in his expression that there is such a thing as an eternal realm of forms or ideas, and that the greatest of the ideas and the essence of being was goodness, or The good.

The good was defined by many ancient Greeks and other ancient philosophers as a perfect and eternal idea, or blueprint. The good is the right relation between all that exists, and this exists in the mind of the Divine, or some heavenly realm. The good is the harmony of a just political community, love, friendship, the ordered human soul of virtues , and the right relation to the Divine and to Nature.

The characters in Plato's dialogues mention the many virtues of a philosopher, or a lover of wisdom. A theist is a person who believes that the Supreme Being exists or gods exist monotheism or polytheism. A theist may, therefore, claim that the universe has a purpose and value according to the will of such creator s that lies partially beyond human understanding. For instance, Thomas Aquinas —a proponent of this view—believed he had proven the existence of God , and the right relations that humans ought to have to the divine first cause. Monotheists might also hope for infinite universal love.

Such hope is often translated as " faith ", and wisdom itself is largely defined within some religious doctrines as a knowledge and understanding of innate goodness. The concepts of innocence , spiritual purity , and salvation are likewise related to a concept of being in, or returning to, a state of goodness —one that, according to various teachings of " enlightenment ", approaches a state of holiness or Godliness. Aristotle believed that virtues consisted of realization of potentials unique to humanity, such as the use of reason.

This type of view, called perfectionism , has been recently defended in modern form by Thomas Hurka. An entirely different form of perfectionism has arisen in response to rapid technological change. Some techno-optimists , especially transhumanists , avow a form of perfectionism in which the capacity to determine good and trade off fundamental values, is expressed not by humans but by software, genetic engineering of humans, artificial intelligence. Skeptics assert that rather than perfect goodness, it would be only the appearance of perfect goodness, reinforced by persuasion technology and probably brute force of violent technological escalation , which would cause people to accept such rulers or rules authored by them.

Welfarist theories of value say things that are good are such because of their positive effects on human well-being. It is difficult to figure out where an immaterial trait such as "goodness" could reside in the world. A counterproposal is to locate values inside people. Some philosophers go so far as to say that if some state of affairs does not tend to arouse a desirable subjective state in self-aware beings, then it cannot be good.

Most philosophers that think goods have to create desirable mental states also say that goods are experiences of self-aware beings. These philosophers often distinguish the experience, which they call an intrinsic good, from the things that seem to cause the experience, which they call "inherent" goods.

Pure evil and people's perceptions is the subject of research

Failing to distinguish the two leads to a subject—object problem in which it is not clear who is evaluating what object. Some theories describe no higher collective value than that of maximizing pleasure for individual s. Some even define goodness and intrinsic value as the experience of pleasure, and bad as the experience of pain. This view is called hedonism , a monistic theory of value.

It has two main varieties: Simple hedonism is the view that physical pleasure is the ultimate good. However, the ancient philosopher Epicurus used the word 'pleasure' in a more general sense that encompassed a range of states from bliss to contentment to relief. Contrary to popular caricature, he valued pleasures of the mind to bodily pleasures, and advocated moderation as the surest path to happiness.

Jeremy Bentham's book The Principles of Morals and Legislation prioritized goods by considering pleasure, pain and consequences. This theory had a wide effect on public affairs, up to and including the present day.

Good and evil

A similar system was later named Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill. More broadly, utilitarian theories are examples of Consequentialism. All utilitarian theories are based upon the maxim of utility , which states that good is whatever provides the greatest happiness for the greatest number.

It follows from this principle that what brings happiness to the greatest number of people, is good. A benefit of tracing good to pleasure and pain is that both are easily understandable, both in oneself and to an extent in others. For the hedonist, the explanation for helping behaviour may come in the form of empathy —the ability of a being to "feel" another's pain. People tend to value the lives of gorillas more than those of mosquitoes because the gorilla lives and feels, making it easier to empathize with them. This idea is carried forward in the ethical relationship view and has given rise to the animal rights movement and parts of the peace movement.

The impact of sympathy on human behaviour is compatible with Enlightenment views, including David Hume 's stances that the idea of a self with unique identity is illusory, and that morality ultimately comes down to sympathy and fellow feeling for others, or the exercise of approval underlying moral judgments.

A view adopted by James Griffin attempts to find a subjective alternative to hedonism as an intrinsic value. He argues that the satisfaction of one's informed desires constitutes well-being, whether or not these desires actually bring the agent happiness.