[QUOTE="theone86"][QUOTE="Ace6301"]Actions that violate cultural norms in a profound way. More broadly an extreme inbalance in an individual is evil for almost all cultures. It's a completely subjective term for the most part but I don't see why that should stop us from using it as humans are very subjective creatures and as a word it's very important in fiction. Human wide the most common factors in evil would be extreme selfishness, hatred, and a desire to dominate. Looking at history and how these have been the primary cause of a lot of suffering it isn't hard to see why they're so widespread.Ace6301
I do agree that humans naturally judge, I just don't think evil is a very useful term. Â What situation can you use it in where other words can't suffice? Â Selfish, hateful, domineering, despotic? Â Those are all sufficient for their respective situations, and better yet they're more accurate and specific than evil. Â A combination of them perhaps? Â That seems to basically fit the description of sociopathic, the only differences being in individuals displaying sociopathic tendencies who are able to receive help and those that aren't, and in their differing ability to impact others negatively (a Manson versus a Hitler for instance). Â I think that labelling them all as evil tends to whitewash things and hinder our understanding. Â If we call Manson and Hitler evil and just say that's the end of it then we glaze over important differences in their respective psyches. Â Calling their behavior sociopathic explains their psyches sufficiently while still leaving room to differentiate between their specific differences. Â In short, I don't believe the term evil serves any real purpose than to incite an emotional reaction, and with the prevalence of the term in our modern parlance I think that serves to hinder understanding. My cat is selfish. People on the internet are hateful. A nagging wife is domineering. Evil is an extreme or a perceived extreme. You capture people and keep them as rape slaves? You're evil. It's just a word as I said and it is subjective in what society it is used in, but it is a useful word and the fact it is everywhere and used so often shows that it has its use. For whatever reason you are bringing up sociopaths. Evil does not mean you are a sociopath and being a sociopath doesn't mean you're evil. All you're advocating is the replacement of the word evil with sociopathic in the mistaken belief that a word is anything other than what we have it be. You start calling what Hitler did sociopathic in the same way you'd say what he did was evil and all you're doing is making it take longer to say or write a word we already use as well as removing a term that has it's own meaning by making it something else. You say the term evil serves no purpose other than to incite an emotion reaction. Good. That means its a good word, that means it carries weight and understanding of what it means. Understanding in a raw logical sense is not the only reason language exists, communicating emotion is equally important as we're emotional beings and we often use emotion to learn. Hitler didn't view other humans on the same level as himself and effectively had no conscience, he was sociopathic. Hitler broke international law raised a powerful army, invading his neighbouring countries after declaring he wouldn't, ignited a war that cost tens of millions of lives, and exterminated various groups because he saw them as no better than insects. Hitler was evil. There is a difference between a personality disorder and evil, it's about 60 million people.The labelling of your cat and a human who is extremely selfish (to a point you might call evil) as selfish can facilitate greater understanding as a differentiation must be made. Â I think the word evil tends to whitewash things, and it tends to push people away from understanding why these people do these things. Â Someone's evil, let's dust off our hands and close the book because that's all that needs to be said. Â Let's not ask why they did it, let's not try to recognize patterns that can be put towards a greater understanding that could possibly help us to prevent something like that in the future, let's just call it evil and walk away. Â I don't think that's constructive.
Evil does seem to mean sociopathic in the sense you're using it in. Â Breaking social norms, little remorse for victims, over-inflated sense of self, that all says sociopathic behavior to me. Â The difference really only seems to be the degree to which certain people act out their sociopathic behavior. Â It's also not a matter of sociopathic being longer to say, it's more specific and capable of examination. Â Evil, on the other hand, is highly subjective and variable in definition.
Let's say, for the moment, that something like what Hitler did was actually evil, then what else is evil? Â Is Manson evil? Â If we start breaking them down and comparing the two then we see similar behavioral patterns, but as you said evil isn't a personality disorder. Â I don't think you can rightly call Manson evil then, as you said the difference is about sixty million people and Manson doesn't even come close to that. Â But Manson was a sick individual, he didn't care about his victims, well that just goes back to sociopathic tendencies. Â As I said, the difference is in degree. Â Evil is too variable and subjective for me to see any use in it. Â Someone who really considers its usage might actually come up with a nuanced definition, but most people are just going to throw the word around at whatever gets them personally worked up, which can lead to a lack of comprehension and understanding, which is not constructive.
As for emotions, I'm not for being coldly illogical, but I think there are better ways to express emotions that don't preclude logic. Â I have no problem with describing what Hitler did as detestable, that's a strong emotional word. Â One of the benefits, though, is that it is more specific and, if applied to someone who is not as objectively detestable as Hitler is capable of being debated. Â One of my problems with evil is that people just throw it around too often, and it's so subjective that there's no way to really debate it. Â With detestable you have specific feelings that you are associating with the person in question, and if someone is using the word you can investigate why those feelings are being evoked, not to mention seperate it from other words like sociopathic. Â We can call Hitler sociopathic and detestable, we can call someone with sociopathic tendencies who seeks help simply sociopathic. Â With evil there is no such seperation, and someone who doesn't take the time to consider the nuances of these words (which means a lot of people in society) could label both as such. Â Evil just doesn't seem to serve much use to me.
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