Making Sense of Evil (Virginia Tech Massacre)

evil is a word we created to define the most repugnant things we confront. it doesn't actually mean anything. but it is defined by choice, whether that choice is well informed or not.

It is simply another appeal to the idea that diseases are caused by demons. They think they can make the claim for mental illness because they don't know what is understood about it. Only a few are stupid enough to continue to make such claims about germ caused diseases.If a possession of Satan can be impacted by taking pills one wonders just how powerful this enemy of God actually is.

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Let me be clear at the start - I strongly disagree with the actions of the people you mentioned - McVeigh, Choo, KKK members, they are all repugnant to me.

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However, are they "evil"?

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These people are making decisions to do their actions based on their worldviews. Their rationale may be incorrect, their logic may be faulty, but their actions come from these things.

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This is what I was getting when I asked if they are evil or are their actions evil.I'd say I mostly agree with you about this. It's hard for me to imagine someone knowingly doing something as extreme as causing harm to so many innocent people that, within their worldview, is wrong. The perpetuators of these acts are who we would traditionally call evil; it is the extremeness of their act of wrongful doing.Where I disagree with you is in the fact that it seems you are equating any act of willful wrong doing (wrong within your worldview) with evil. Being selfish is wrong in a lot of situations, e.g., greed, infidelity, etc., but to call these acts evil seems too deviate a little too far from its original connotation.I'm not sure if that was clear, so to reiterate my point: 1.) I think to call someone evil to to believe that they lucidly chose to do an extreme act of violence that they believe is wrong within their worldview. It seems like a stretch to believe this happens often,; these people believe they are doing the right thing. 2.) On the other hand, calling mild acts of willful wrong doing evil seems off the mark.Of course, we'll probably disagree on what "mild" means.

But clearly there are faces of mental illness that we have no "cure" or "treatment" for. Sociopaths are often incarcerated forever and ever because they simply can't tell the difference between right and wrong, and no amount of drugs will be able to treat this condition. They do have a point, though. Take selfishness for example. I have been trying for years and I still can't figure out how to convince one to stop being so selfish. In fact, the basis of our entire society is built upon the fact that people ought to be allowed to be selfish. Certainly, it demonstrates that there are certain inherent borderline evil tendencies that we as a society and individuals have accepted as an unchangable part of life. And selfishness is only a step away from what caused the holocaust to happen in the first place.

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Disclaimer:

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Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.

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He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!

I would argue that the two you described are inherently the same.Here, let me make it more obvious. I'm not gay, I just do gay stuff. I'm not straight, I just do straight stuff. I'm not American, I'm just a natural born American citizen and have been living in America all my life. I'm not black, my skin is just black and my parents are both Africans that's all. I'm not evil, I just do evil stuff. I'm not a fish, I just live in water and have gills to breathe in water that's all. I'm not a bird, I just have a beak, feathers, couple of wings, and couple of legs that's all. Our society have decided that people ought to have the right to being selfish. However, selfishness is only a step away from pure evil.

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Disclaimer:

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Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.

​

He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!

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I would argue that the two you described are inherently the same.

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I was trying to make the distinction between intentions and consequences.If you're intentions are good within your framework but are considered evil within the rest of societies or by an objective standard (don't want this to get dragged into a relativism debate, though may be inevitable) then I'd say you committed an evil act but you are not an evil person.I know this sounds like splitting hairs, but I do think that if according to you're conscience you are doing the right thing it is hard to call you evil; insane maybe, but I don't think evil captures the situation.

In your opinion is there a difference between the crusader for whom no sacrifice is too great and wears it like a badge of honor (i.e. jihadists who make it clear what their goals are and what they will sacrifice to accomplish them) and the person who would consciously lie and mislead about his/her intentions to achieve their goals?Greg P.

You don't think it's possible for someone to consciously decide that lying and misleading serves the greater good?

There's another possibility.Cho may have been driven over the edge by bullies. If so, they are the evil ones eh?

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Not to make this thread about politics, but it's the best example I can come up with.There is a world of difference between -
FDR lies about fore-knowledge of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, knowing that that will draw America into WWII. (supposition - just go with it)Bush lies about Iraq to draw America into war in the Middle East.Firstly, FDR lie is one of omission. He had the info and he didn't act, the result would be the same if he had not had the info in the first place. Where as in Bush's case, it was a lie of his own creation. If he had not created the lie, things would have turned out very differently.Second, FDR wasn't an employee of the Industrial War Complex at the time. In fact it didn't exist. The current administration is up to their eyeballs in contracts with the very people they work for.While we shouldn't be debating politics on this thread, I just wanted to point out that while anyone can claim to be lying "for the greater good" it's in our best interest to dig a little deeper and see who's good is getting greater.

Making sense of a senseless act is futile. It's like trying to make sense of the garbage your printer spits out when your computer has the wrong driver. You can go over the characters time and again trying to figure out what this phenomenon means. You might even think you've discerned bits of a pattern here and there. But you're getting nowhere. You can't make sense of nonsense. The only thing to do is fix the driver.This guy had a head full of loose wiring. No act emerging from a head like that makes sense. The head itself needed repairs.It didn't get the needed repairs. In the event, the only thing to do was to remove the threat, one way or another, to protect everyone else. That didn't happen, either.Getting either of these things done in time was a tall order for the people involved.'Monster' and 'devil' are words that emerge from anger. Anger is a normal response when something we love is threatened. The words do not represent objective analysis. They represent the depth of threat the speaker feels. This often correlates to the depth of love the speaker feels for what is threatened. A threat looks diabolical when the thing being threatened is sacred.If religious people want to help right now, let them ask what they can do to be of service to people in pain.________Edited by Archer Opterix, : punctuation.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

That is the thought that occurs to me whenever we encounter the Colombine phenomenon.Yes, we are responsible for our own actions, a principle necessary to a coherent moral universe...but personal responsibility does not eliminate cause and effect. And, yes, the gun culture in the U.S., especially the South, contributed to a laxity in law enforcement that enabled Cho to obtain weapons despite his history.But as WH Auden wrote in his poem, 'September 1st 1939':I and the public know,
what every school child learns.
Those to whom evil is done,
do evil in return.Auden referred to the ruinous conditions imposed upon Germany after WWI. The last two lines are quoted often; the first two, less so. But it is, indeed, in the schoolyard that most of us learn that ugly lesson of complicity.A society that permits bully-torment of the misfits and outsiders shouldn't be too surprised when an outsider turns.

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I'm sorry, but this is a rediculous statement. The nazis thought they were doing right in the great scheme of things by getting rid of all those they thought were inferior. I would argue that the nazis did evil things as well as being evil themselves. I honestly don't think any of the great evils of the 20th century ever considered themselves evil. Mao certainly didn't think of himself as evil and he ended up starving a tens of millions of his own people. I would argue that while he did not have evil intentions according to his own conscience, he was inherently evil for by simply not empathising with his people when they were starving.According to the way you define evil people (people who sit around consciously making plans and doing things they know to be evil), it is impossible to pin down anyone who's actually evil.

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Disclaimer:

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Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.

​

He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!

People seem quick to claim to want to change things, but I’ll bet they’ll be next to nothing done to help the mentally ill. After the dust settles they’ll be some attempts to introduce legislation to control guns better and to curtail the rights of the mentally impaired. What I don’t believe will happen is that after decades of neglect that the government will make a serious attempt at improving mental health care.

We can tell them they were wrong quite simply because they caused the deaths of others...which goes against the ten Commandments. Of course, we ourselves can also be judged by this criteria.This idea of letting everyone believe whatever they want without challenging them is not only post-modern pablum...its namby-pamby!