Malevolence and Benevolence... We are the tool makers... (echo echo echo)
We make/discover tools. That is our greatest thing. Even language, speech, etc are nothing more than tools. There are animals that use tools as well, but nothing comes close to what we have done in this regard.
If you consider what a human is without clothes, without language, without anything other than your bare skin and body we are rather unimpressive. It is the tools that make us impressive.
Virtually every tool I can think of can be used for a Malevolent/Evil/Destructive purpose, or a Benevolent/Good/Constructive purpose. The tools themselves do not make that determination. We do.
Therefore any malevolence or benevolence happens first in our minds. The problem was not initiated by the tool, it was initiated by the human using the tool.
Tools tend to extend our malevolent and benevolent capabilities.
So when a new tool is created or on the cusp of creation people will tend to fixate on either its malevolent or its benevolent purposes. These days if it has a malevolent use and is advanced enough that seems to be where our governments will focus development, but that does not mean there is not a benevolent side as well.
Likewise when a great new invention comes out and people are talking about these great benevolent uses, there is usually a potential malevolent side as well.
One mistake we often make is to act as though the tool was the source of the malevolence and call for banning such a thing. Yet malevolence occurs with in the minds of the humans using the tool. A tool may act as a force multiplier and will likely make certain tasks easier, but the actual malevolence occurred within the mind of the human using the tool. You do not stop that malevolence by banning the tool. That capability of thought is still there. That impulse to malevolence is still there. You may have made getting a tool more difficult to acquire, yet if malevolence is our goal there are always other ways. If the person is a type that recognizes what they are doing as against the law, etc in the first place then banning access to a tool as a law will not stop them from getting it. They were already okay with breaking the law with their initial malevolent intent. So why would a law that it is illegal to have a certain type of tool even phase them? The answer is that it likely wouldn't.
As tools can have malevolent and benevolent uses when a tool is banned due to fear of malevolence that also shuts the door for the people who only had benevolent uses for it.
If you wish to actually deal with malevolence and benevolence then that fight/education is in the human mind, not in the tool. Aiming at the tool does nothing to actually treat/solve the actual source of the problem.
Let's put away our ban hammer. This includes the ban hammer that would ban certain types of speech. Speech and language are perhaps our most important tool.
Steem On!
The logic goes like this:
We cannot judge people or we are bad. (can't be bad)
I am good, so people are inherently good.
So, if someone shoots someone, it was not the person.
By process of elimination, that leaves the gun.
And guns don't have feelings, so villainizing the gun is ok.
Don't judge, but do be discerning should be the programming.
But it is not.
What we have is a set of catch 22s that make good people into sheep easy to fleece.
No what you just described is called denial. The gun did not jump into someone's hand and instill rage and murderous intent. Weapons don't have intentions and are indiscriminate in their impact. You need to realize that people are not all the same. Good and bad are perspectives. Morality is subjective. Priests can murdrer and rape while drug dealers can save and empower. Black and white thinking is a self limiting action. I disagree that it is truly up to anyone to judge another individual and discernment is judgment. Every life is the potential for positive and negative change. People are all different and all capable of good and bad.
Yes, you and I would call it denial.
I agree with you, however, the masses have been indoctrinated.
Even you (and me). I bet if I talked to you for a while I would find a logic loop that is similar to what I outlined.
When you are told that things are a certain way all of your life, you tend to believe them.
Especially if no on comes along to challenge that belief.
In MSM news, its always the guns (because they want to ban guns) everything is about the gun, even if there was no gun involved.
So, if you believe the programming from kindergarten that people are inherently good, then it is only a small step to guns are bad, and the cause of the problem.
And most people I talk to who do not believe the lie that "people are inherently good" usually have not taken it to its true conclusion that there are evil people out there plotting evil and destroying people's lives. (including the lives of their own children)
And those that believe in evil people usually haven't gone far enough and seen that it is the collective responses that actually shape our govern-cement and our lives.
You should read my last few posts. :) I am awake as well.
I think you hit the nail on the head with this post, in any number of situations their belief will be challenged when the evil tools are necessary and the only option for stopping evil and therefore good.
It's not a true conclusion because there is another option, that there are people out there capable of evil and good, and not necessarily purely evil. Their conclusion could very well be that there aren't purely evil people like there aren't purely good people, but degrees.
Also, the people that are plotting evil and destroying people's lives might be doing that completely indirectly, which is not the same as actively seeking evil and actively destroying people's lives simply to destroy people's lives, but merely the consequences of their indifference.
And this is what I mean. You do not believe in evil, and are prevaricating around the bush as much as possible to avoid the subject.
Pizzagate is nothing.
What narcissist do, and have done, is destroy life. Some have actually made zombies. Yes, the person lives, but they are incapable of action on their own. EVIL.
A person who has a conscience can't do this. They have to be heavily propagandised (those evil nazis) and still they can't go as far.
And this is nothing, read some books on what narcissists have done to their children. Emotional abuse that almost everyone I talk to about it does their best to change the subject and continue to ignore the possibility that it exists.
I don't believe in evil? So exactly where did I say what I believe or which statement that I made expresses or implies that notion?
A person with conscience can still do evil, as you argued, albeit unintended or even tricked or coerced or threatened into it, a person can be compromised in numerous ways, and a person without conscience is a fiction, every person has varying degrees of evil and indifference and varying degrees of altruism, empathy and compassion, and their inner self can be both evil and good and their actions being justified by their inner self is inconsequential either way.
Here is the definition of conscience, it has nothing to do with altruism, empathy or compassion, but all with the inner guide or feeling which I don't see how you can exclude that from what constitutes being a person.
You just argued that they cannot do that and turned around and declared that they simply can't go as far.
What's your argument here? That people are capable of some evil acts?
We can agree on that, but I said that, and I repeat:
Why are they ignoring the possibility that it exist simply because they don't engage the discussion in that direction, have they expressed that outright to you, because I doubt that very much otherwise you would have not implied it and instead said, simply, that they don't believe that it's possible, that it doesn't exist.
So clearly there is nothing expressively evil about that but you went from acts to stereotypes. The stereotype fallacy because narcissists can do evil, but clearly even people with good intentions and who are altruistic and motivated by compassion and empathy are susceptible to being indifferent, which in certain situations is evil.
The collective response shaping our govern-cement and our lives is another fallacy because you argue that the mass is responsible for the actions of the few elected, and the actions of the individual when it's the individuals themselves that are responsible for their own actions while the mass is to blame, it shifts the blame from the individual to the collective which is unaccountable, faceless and unchangeable.
I am not going to respond to @baah.
He is convinced that people cannot be evil.
Or he is a paid shill. Either way, any discussion is futile.
Maybe I will write a 10 post article going into this, but the information is already out there. (ask if you really want it)
The definitions that Baah quoted in his replies, I do not agree with.
They are definitions written by narcissists / psychopaths.
They even got psychopath removed from the DSM.
To get a definition of psychopath, that I would use, watch Thomas Sheridan videos. He goes into great depth about them.
There are literally people out there that can rape and kill a child, and then go home and sleep like a baby. They have no empathy for others.
And then there is the narcissists who destroy their children and all around them. Instead of the mother being the one to give emotions, she demands her children to emotionally satisfy her. Imagine living your life knowing that you were not good enough for your mother, and therefor not good enough for the world. (father narcissist dynamic is different, not going to give example) The narcissist mother will work children off against each other. Called the black sheep and the golden child. The golden child can do no wrong, and the black sheep can do no right. Imagine what that does to ones psyche? And the mother does this knowingly, spending a great deal of time planning how to control the people in her environment to get her narcissistic supply.
I'll just put some quotes to help the philosophical debate
Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact, language remains the master of man.
Language is the house of the truth of Being. - Martin Heidegger
This one is very funny
"Language is a virus from Outerspace" - Laurie Anderson
Very well said and appropo! I'm working on a blog about Hannah Arendt and Totalitarianism.
Thank you for the nuggets o' wisdom! The way I see it the tools themselves are not the issue, and limiting the tools available only limits our potential as humans overall.
It may, however, be very much the intent that most of humanity is afraid of technology they do not personally understand. @builderofcastles certainly put it best: "What we have is a set of catch 22s that make good people into sheep easy to fleece."
Saying that they make good people easy to fleece is itself a fallacy. First it starts by impressing onto oneself that they are only good and inherently not bad which leaves them deluded into thinking that they can only do good, think good and be good. A deluded individual is not a good individual, good people are easy or easier to fleece than an individual that realizes their capacity to be indifferent as much as their capacity for altruism, it's deluded people that are easy to fleece because their behavior and the thinking which drives their actions is one dimensional and easy to predict. After you have deluded individuals into this "one dimensional cannot err belief" then you only need to con-vince them that what they need to do is good.
"Let's put away our ban hammer. This includes the ban hammer that would ban certain types of speech. Speech and language are perhaps our most important tool."
Wow, I wonder what the actual percentage in America is protecting Guns/Tools vs Speech and Language/Tools?
I have no clue. It seems to fluctuate like the weather. Pick a day of the week, or a week of the year, etc and I am fairly certain those percentages fluctuate a lot.
It also will likely be heavily influenced by what the "news" decides to report and how they decide to report it.
I will go first on record to say that I am fairing on the side of Speech and Language.
Frank
You are likely correct. It plays so much into the Triggering and Safe Space rhetoric that is all over the place these days.
EDIT: Also was busy doing some server/router building today, thus the delay in response.
Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to respectfully conclude my third response to actually deal with malevolence and benevolence to fight/educate with my human mind. (nice visuals on top BTW, left side or right side)
Raises whiskey glass, cheers Sir.
Yeah I usually try to make my intro image relevant. I don't think it always comes across to people as it did in my mind. It is good to see that someone got what I was trying to do.
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