How James Woods Helped Me Collect My Thoughts on Morality.

[andyfox]

In Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America, Woods plays a small-time hood. He reinvents himself in a grand scheme that screws Robert De Niro's character.

At the end of the movie, he feels the need to confess to De Niro. He tells him what he did and asks De Niro, who is a hit man, to kill him (since he feels his life is ruined and he might be hit by others anyway). He feels this will be justice for De Niro and a fate that he himself (Woods) deserves.

DeNiro refuses. He refuses to hold the evil part of Woods against him, preferring instead to see the good part of him as the important part. One senses that De Niro understands that he, De Niro, is no better than Woods and thus he cannot accept that Woods is deserving of the fate Woods himself feels that he is.

[A great movie, BTW. Not the shortened American release version which, because of the studio cuts, is virtually incomprehensible. I'm pretty sure the original "director's cut" is now available on DVD. One of Woods' finest performances.]

This theme of good and evil as a part of everyone is manifest in most of Sergio Leone's movies (most pointedly in The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly). Certainly most gangster movies try to make this point too. When Clemenza, after murdering somebody in the Godfather, says "leave the gun, take the cannoli," he is showing us that he's just a person. Yes, he brutally killed somebody, but he's still thinking about his wife who had asked him to bring home the cannoli.

We're all part good, part evil. That we take pains to explain what we are doing "right" does not make it right or lessen the evil if evil results from what we do.

[ QUOTE ]
"As for Hitler I only said he MIGHT not be evil. I would have to know his real motives to be sure."

I think this is where your argument falls apart. Let's suppose Hitler had, in his own mind, a good reason for doing what he did. Let's say he honestly felt that Jews were reponsible for most of the world's problems and he felt he was making the world a better place by trying to exterminate them.

Feeling you're doing the right thing is not enough. The fact of the matter is that he was wrong. And six million people, many of them children who could not possibly, by any stretch of the imagination, be considered responsible for the world's problems. He should have been sure of his facts before embarking on a course of action that resulted in millions of deaths. He was wrong about the influence of the Jews and wrong about how to solve the alledged problem.

My sense is that there's good and bad in everyone. I know when I'm doing something bad and while I might occasionally rationalize it with the cloak of goodness, I know the real truth. I've known a few Mafia types myself and my sense is the opposite of yours: they knew when they were being bad.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have read a biography of Hitler and he never killed anybody. So I don't think you can call him evil so much as you can the idiots who carry out evil acts espoused by someone else. It isn't Hitler who was evil it was commanders and generals who wouldn't "Just Say No", Hitler it ain't happening. Blind obedience is evil.

Many

[Jordan Olsommer]

[ QUOTE ]

I'm curious to hear what you think makes an evil person.

[/ QUOTE ]

I suppose a rough sketch would be simply someone who willfully causes a greater-than-average amount of harm. But if we want to be honest, I think almost all of us define evil in the same way that the Supreme Court justice (I think it might have been Scalia*, but don't quote me on that) defined pornography: "I don't know what it is exactly, but I know it when I see it."

Discussion of the fact that there is no such thing as pure, unadulterated, twitching-your-mustache-in-your-secret-lair evil does not in any way absolve Hitler or slaveowners or Idi Amin or what have you (off-topic slightly, for an excellent view of the life of a malicious dictator - a "behind-the-psychopathy" if you will - check out Barbet Schroeder's movie "General Idi Amin Dada". The scenes showing him doing mundane, completely innocuous things are incredibly frightening simply because of who he is.)

I don't want to overuse Steven Pinker as a source, but he also said something pithy apropos your comment - basically, he said it really doesn't matter whether we do everything for good reasons or we do everything because we are at heart nothing more than selfish sex-gremlins - Mother Theresa is good and Gordon Gekko is bad, and that's all there is to it.

The main problem in this thread that many people can easily get hung up on is differentiating between "evil" and the concept of "Pure Evil", or "Evil with a capital 'E'", the latter meaning the mustache-twitching insanity bit. The former (people who do significantly more harm than can be expected from an average human) is certainly present on this planet, and anyone who tries to argue otherwise would do best to prove his position by bunking with a convicted felon, because otherwise I don't believe him for a second.

*edit: I was way off - it was Potter Stewart. Oh well - Scalia seemed like the kind of guy who knows his way around pornography [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[Peter666]

"I already agreed that some people can be characterized as evil and that you have a good definition of it."

Great, now both of you are causing confusion. The fact is, no human being is capable of doing a subjectively evil action. Any wilful action done by a human being is always subjectively good in that person's eyes. Even if the person intentionally wants to commit "evil" to himself or others, he is still seeking "happiness" or self satisfaction thru his excercise of free will, no matter how deluded.

When we want to call someone or something "evil" it is always in relation to that person's existence in a society (ethics) or before his ultimate Maker (morality). Because we are not self sufficient of self sustaining creatures, all the rightness or wrongness of our actions are determined by our ultimate end (death in a society [ethics] or the beatific vision [morality]).

In a society, we can do anything we like so long as it does not attack what is the common good of society. As a creature sustained by God, we can do anything we like so long as it does not go against His will. So when we judge the actions of people, it is always in relation to their capacity of knowledge of the common good (natural law)[Ethics] or supernatural good [Morality]. Murderers, rapists, and Hitler are evil not because they are cyborgs from Hell, but because they did things that were not for the common good, and they should have known better.

Also remember that there is no created thing named evil. Evil is merely the absence of good where the good ought to be.

[David Sklansky]

As for Hitler I only said he MIGHT not be evil. I would have to know his real motives to be sure."

I think this is where your argument falls apart. Let's suppose Hitler had, in his own mind, a good reason for doing what he did. Let's say he honestly felt that Jews were reponsible for most of the world's problems and he felt he was making the world a better place by trying to exterminate them.

Feeling you're doing the right thing is not enough.

It is just enough not to be called EVIL. I may be defining that word different than a lot of you. I take it to mean a lot worse than merely bad. Put another way a person who does evil acts is not necessarily evil by the definition I am using.

[hmkpoker]

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

[andyfox]

My understanding is that Charles Manson was not involved in the Tate-LaBianca murders in that he didn't go to the houses, he just ordered the murders. Should he not be in jail for the crimes?

Blind obedeience is not evil unless the act being committed is evil. The person who ordered the act is responsible.

[andyfox]

Gordon Gecko was the Michael Douglas character in the movie Wall Street. He was an immoral investment banker (or Wall Street analyst or something like that) and his most famous line was "Greed is Good."

[ QUOTE ]
My understanding is that Charles Manson was not involved in the Tate-LaBianca murders in that he didn't go to the houses, he just ordered the murders. Should he not be in jail for the crimes?

Blind obedeience is not evil unless the act being committed is evil. " The person who ordered the act is responsible."

[/ QUOTE ]

" The person who ordered the act is responsible."

Why? And no, Manson should not be in prison

Many

[hmkpoker]

Thanks ^_^

I was sure he was a serial killer or terrorist or something like that.