Is 'evil' an invention of man??

Monsieur

Hello all,

Recently I read some essays on animal behavorial patterns and I must say I'm shocked at how little difference (when you HONESTLY consider it) there is between said animals and us, human beings.

This is a VERY new concept for me personally but here is my take on it (I'm sure its not so new, ex. evolution) - What if humans in fact are MIMICKING animals, and not the other way around as we'd like to think.

displays of love and affection, clinginess, mourning etc, they all exist in the animal kingdom, but how are we so different? and why would we think so?

a pack of wolves attack and kill a caribou for dinner and its considered nature, the same wolves hunt down a lost man in the woods and now its considered 'evil', and if there are any forest rangers around its guaranteed that they will shoot these wolves.

man's heartless treatment of man is considered 'evil', but if evolution is of any indication (in terms of survival of the fittest) is the 'term' evil just a word to appease our so called conscious?

Monsieur

here is an better example,

on those essays the subject of a male lion came up. this lion had cubs and he proceeded to kill every single one of them supposedly in order to diminsh the chances that any of the cubs would grow and usurp the grown lion's position of dominance within the pride.

this is apparently very common in the animal kingdom (ex. gorillas etc.)

yet it's 'evil' for such things to happen among humans, why?

would humans not merely be reflecting the same 'nature' as its 'ecosystem' in which it simply lives in?? We ARE part of this EArth, after all, interacting and reacting with it and all. why does man want to differentiate itself from 'nature' when it's ovbious that it IS nature?

Dismissing servant

OK! You are right in a strictly biological sence. When we don't repress some instincts we could act in an "evil" way, but this evil could often be beneficial to the individual. That's why we still have those instincts.

But now most of us lives in civilized communities. In those we cannot act by instinct.....we have to repress some impulses. As I see it it's about having the prefronal cortex that humans have. We can reason about our actions and inhibit behaviour thats not adaptive in civilized societies.

jgnat

How about reframing "evil" from an evolutionary standpoint.

Pinker looks for explanations for these advances within the individual. Human nature, he says, consists of a constant pull of good and evil. He identifies five “inner demons”—sadism, revenge, dominance, violence in pursuit of a practical benefit, violence in pursuit of an ideology—that struggle with four “better angels”: self-control, empathy, morality, and reason. Over the years, Pinker says, the forces of civilization have increasingly given the good in us the upper hand. Strong centralized governments, international trade, the empowerment of women (“cultures that empower women ... are less likely to breed dangerous subcultures of rootless young men”) all help make us kinder, gentler beings. Also important is what Pinker calls “the escalator of reason,” in which people reframe conflict as a problem to be solved through brain instead of brawn. - Better Angels of Our Nature review

A tribe member protects his mates and this is seen as "good". Killing an intruder, also, "good", because they are seen as "others" (Consider Isreal's tendency to wipe out its neighbours). But nowadays we have the great tribe of the human race, and it is no longer acceptable to kill anyone...or even to be mean.

No longer are we worried about our territory, but the territory has expanded to the earth itself, and we are becoming ever more protective now that we are aware she has limited ability to heal.

jgnat

I'd also like to point out that "survival of the fittest" is not the same as "survival of the meanest". It means rather that the genetics most suited to survival will pass on.

It turns out that kindness and altruism is an evolutionary "winner".

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=forget-survival-of-the-fittest

Monsieur

good points servant and jgnat,

and again, the animal kingdom is replete of examples where 'good' actions take place - animals can show affection, 'love', care and compassion, mourning. animals will defend their own with tooth and claw (literally), even sacrifice themselves for their young ones or the weak.

animals are also capable of feats of engineering, teamwork, productivity, communication and even language comprehension (talking to each even, ex. whales)

BUT, they also display the aforementioned 'acts of evil' because they ARE animals after all.

yet, the very same actions among humans are not 'nature', they are evil.

and so i beg the question, why is this? and are we honestly different?

Dismissing servant

Yes, that's true. Animals have social instincts and innate inhibition of aggression. You seldom see wolves killing each others. A population in which everyone is fighing and trying to kill everyone is not a stable and functional population. Such a population will be extinct in a short time.

But social instincts are different from species to species.

Monsieur

to me, the similarity that is becoming the most telling, is the occurrence of death in both animal and human.

Animals die simply because its 'the circle of life'

man dies because of his 'evil' actions

jgnat

In my lifetime I've seen the assumed qualities of superiority knocked down one by one (compassion, language, problem solving). We aren't superior, we just happen to be screamingly successful from an evolutionary point of view. If in the next forty years (population peak) we can keep from killing ourselves or our planet, then we can say we have succeeded.

Fernando

The six most evil people I have ever come across, in more than 4 decades, are all in the Watchtower.

Progressive Psychiatrist Morgan Scott Peck put into words what I instinctively sensed deep within.

He defined evil as "militant ignorance" and characterised it as "malignant self-righteousness".

(Why does the "true religion" secretly blind its followers to the "Good News" according to Paul, Moses, Isaiah and Psalms?)

Is 'evil' an invention of man??

Share this