| >> | I'm going to sperg about Nietzsche a bit. In On The Genealogy of Morality, he talks about where our ideas of "good" and "evil" come from, how they evolved. In that work (which is a great read by the way) he compares two fundamentally different ways to think about morality.
There's "master morality", which is where you start by thinking "I am good" and by contrast, "those people who aren't like me are bad." Greece and Rome are two great examples of cultures built around master morality: how do you know somebody is a great hero, say, in the Trojan War? Because they're proud; they had the ability to kill a lot of people and used it. Master morality thinks about morality in terms of loving one's own life and self, and disliking non-self. Master morality doesn't see good vs evil, but good vs bad.
Slave morality is instead birthed by miserable people who get hurt by others, and takes the other rather than the self as the starting point. Slave moralists think, "those others are evil", and by contrast "I am good". Nietzsche has a fun section where he thinks about sheep and birds of prey, and imagines what sort of morality each of the two would evolve. The birds wouldn't hate the sheep - they'd even like them, and think they're delicious. The sheep, on the other hand, would see the birds as the very incarnation of evil. They'd even develop a moral code among themselves, that whoever is the least like a bird is the most good. Judea and Christianity are good example of slave moralist societies/movements. Slave moralists don't think in terms of good vs bad, but in terms of good vs evil. But slave morality is ultimately a cope - it's not like a slave moralist wouldn't do the things they denounce in the other - lust, gluttony, wrath, etc - they just that they're in a weak position where they can't, and convince themselves that makes them better. Just take a look at Christian concepts of hell - Christians say they're all about love and justice, but get off on imagining worse torments for those they call evil than master moralists ever inflict.
>>209912
I once heard someone say that we shouldn't call terrorists evil - from the terrorist's perspective, if you've already dehumanized your enemy and now you see them calling you evil, it doesn't make you think, "Huh, maybe I am evil" but rather, "Great, I've really gotten to them." We should instead call terrorists stupid - they're not working for their own interests, but just pawns of a greater worldly power that's happy to sacrifice them, etc.
>>209951
What does it mean for something to be bad? Once in a while the universe will destroy an entire solar system or galaxy (that may be inhabited for all we know) with the same innocence as a kid kicking down a sand castle - would you call that evil, or bad? |
