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happydolphin on 09 August 2012
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Jay520 said:
happydolphin said:

It would be the bottom line, that in the end, over the long-term, such a person would be impossible to trust, since at any moment they could live according to their true inclinations. As such, the heart trumps actions as it can be temporarily bipassed but it is the true source of actions and positions over the long haul.


Well, if actions do not necessarilly trump the heart...then is the heart even something that you control? You say it's something deep down inside a person. It sounds to me like the goodness of a person's heart is dependent upon fortune rather than how a person acts. It sounds to me like the heart is intrinsically attached to a person. If so, should a person be judged for it if they cannot control it?

That's not really what I was trying to say though. A person could behave contrarily to his heart for a time so as to appear different than his nature, but that would be temporary cloaking. A person could also behave contrarily to his heart and have that mold him via side-effects (like is the case for undercover cops).

Yes, you actions can mold your heart, but in the end the deepest core of your heart will always stay the same. Think Darth Vader. So in essence, no, the heart is not something you can control. Rather it's your identity, your deepest inclinations and desires.

 

I don't think a person should be judged by inclinations. I think everyone has different gradient of evil vs good in their heart. It's not black & white - there isn't a group of evil people and a group of good people. We are spread across a spectrum of good vs evil. Some people are at the extremes of the spectrum, but most of us lie somewhere in the middle. We all have a bit of evil in us imo. 

Nothing here I disagree with.

 

What's important is how they control [evil] imo. And the only way to control it, is by overcoming it with actions.

Yeah, you could say that. In which case evil would be external to the person, not inherent, basically something they can shake off. Not so in all cases imho.