Re: What is evil?
With reference to "Mother Theresa is good and Gordon Gekko is bad, and that's all there is to it."...
Madagascar is located in the Indian ocean, and Brazil along the edge of the Atlantic. No debate there. But when we look at the tip of South Africa, it becomes a little harder to tell.
Despite not knowing either of them, I'd be willing to bet that Mother Teresa is a good person, by any definition, and Gordon Gekko, (not sure who he is, but I'll assume Charles Manson will work as well) is a bad person. We kind of use these people as archetypes though. They are epitomes, and pure, idealistic exemplaries of these concepts of good and evil, much like every Disney hero and villian.
While these archetypes do speak to us on a fundamental level, real people don't work that way. And often, when someone does something that most people would consider evil, when you get to know the reasoning behind the act and understand the context on an intimate level, you usually relate to it, and wouldn't consider it to be "evil."
For example, I know someone who is doing a very poor job of raising her kid. Her daughter is overly stressed, and when the mother found out she was cutting herself, she slapped her and threatened her. On the surface, this seems like black and white evil, but when I got to understand how the mother was raised and how resultantly the gears in her head work, I understand why she did what she did.
...this does NOT excuse such behavior, by any means, obviously, and she SHOULD take steps to rectify it. But I think her actions stem more from ignorance than "evil," and when you get down to it, most "evil" actions do too.
-hmk
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