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RE: Fooled by Positivity and the Image of "Good"
Good post. If I was a scammer, I would stop there, but I'm not so...
First, I agree evil(immoral) must be acknowledged.
My foundational belief is that good will win out over evil. Battles still rage in our every day lives. I do believe it is right for us to choose good, but how could we choose if evil or immoral weren't options?
I think this is one of the most important human traits that separates us from all other creation. Nothing else in creation is born into the conundrum humans get to struggle through.
I believe in the Socratic moral intellectualism that says that every evil action is a direct cause of ignorance. People who do evil don't do it because they are bad per se, they believe that they are good, and when they choose between good and evil, they believe they choose good while doing evil. This is because they don't really know the consequences of their decisions (ignorance), and they choose with little or no information.
Except some things can be done willfully knowing they are wrong. Some things can be done willfully being ignorant and not caring to know if they are wrong. And some things can be done being ignorant at the time of knowing the the difference between right and wrong.
Yes, I believe that an ignorant can do both good and evil, because he does not know and does not understand the meaning of those words. If someone knows what is correct, but still decides to act incorrectly, it is because he does not understand, he does not understand why the right thing is right and why the wrong thing is wrong. He only knows what is good and what is bad, but he does not know why.
All the concepts that we have about good and evil, that we drag from the beginnings of our civilization, have a meaning, they are not there randomly, and if people act immorally voluntarily, it is because he does not know that the actions he is doing, even though they can bring him an immediate benefit, will eventually cause greater damage to him, his descendants, and society as a whole.
The point is not only to know what is good and what is wrong, but to know why that is so, that is what really changes the attitude of people, and prevents someone from voluntarily acting immorally.
We only choose one over the other because we have the power of abstracting concepts such as good/evil, moral/immoral. If we had no concept of these things, we would just be going off of whatever suited us, and from more of an unconscious drives to motivate behavior, not conscious processing of conceptual principles to motivate us into certain ways of being and doing.
Don't you think many choices are made due to conscience?
If I do this thing, will I be able to sleep at night?
Will the rewards be great enough to put up with the negative judgement of others?
Will my choices gain me eternal life or eternal damnation?
How will my choices effect my kids future?
To me, these all seem to be based on... what am I going to get from this choice?.