Illusion said:
If good and evil is strictly a human invention I find it odd then that even a young child feels guilt after hurting his sister. Furthermore, if you look at history and even remote cultures that have been highly isolated from the rest of the world, these societies still almost always view as wrong common activities such as stealing, killing, rape, etc... Yes, each culture may enforce correct behavior differently, but there are certain behaviors that are prohibited or are at least viewed as a legitimate injustice in society and that should not be embraced. If there is no such thing as good or evil, then were the allied forces truly justified in opposing Hitler? If there is no right and wrong then under what basis should the death-camps be condemned by society? If good and evil is just an invented concept then why can't somebody else come in and change morality to make the death camps a morally virtuous activity? Even the Nazi's themselves knew that the death camps were wrong and for this reason they kept the vast majority of their heinous atrocities sheilded fromt the German public. All the propaganda in the world can't re-write good an evil because somethings are just wrong and every human being (no matter the age) has a tug in their conscience telling them thus. Our nature calls us to do what is easy and what furthers our own interests while morality invariably is difficult and requires our self-sacrifice for others. Morality runs contrary to our nature but when morality is disregarded all of nature (and society) invariably suffers. There is even a conflict inside our ourselves between our desire to do what is easy and profitable versus doing what we know to be right. This is a small microcosm of the spiritual battle that exists between good and evil. |
Yeah he contradicted himself by calling it both a human invention and a product of evolution.
I think he means (and correct me if I'm wrong Puppyroach) that good and evil are concepts that humans have come to understand - albeit in different ways - by the process of our evolution. This separates us from other species. The reptilian brain will have one of 3 reactions to a stimulus; say a hand entering the cage of a pet Iguana:
-Is it a threat? If so I will attack it.
-Is it food? If so I will eat it.
-Is it a mate? If so I will attempt to mate with it.
The reptilian brain has no concept of morality, as it is missing the outer layers of the brain that humans have. Meanwhile the human brain tries to anthropomorphize the Iguana by imposing human traits and emotion on the reptile based on how it responds. (Ex: "He bit me! He must really hate me."). The reason we have concept in morality while reptiles don't shows that good and evil, as moral concepts, did not exist on Earth until we evolved to the point where we could perceive them. At least this is my analysis of what Puppyroach said. Hope that helps!
Anyhow, the way you described our struggles between instinct and morality is very Freudian - the id vs the superego, as mediated by the ego. Is there a concept of overall evil that every single human alive can agree on? It's hard to say. I think we can both agree that a young boy raised in a labour camp in North Korea would have very different views of morality than that of a young boy raised in a nuclear family in suburban Denmark, for example. Could it be argued that both boys were born the same, but the boy in North Korea learned through his upbringing to block out his superego (in Freudian terms) to rely more on his instinctual urges (id) to survive? Could be. Now you see why it is so hard to measure a neutral human moral compass, because when in history have every human being been raised under the same circumstances?
Anyhow I digress. Bottom line, I think you misunderstood him when you assumed he said good and evil did not exist.
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