"All light will cast a shadow and the brighter the light the darker the shadow cast."

We've all seen or heard examples of men and women living their lives in villainy or saintdom, but can a human truly live existing solely basking in their light or dark?
And is the goal of existing in equilibrium between the two an attainable one?

Ramble-on.

Considering that good and evil are concepts that help us categorize behavior and motivation rather than real phenomena, I'd say that while people can think of themselves or others as reveling in darkness or light, that's as far as it goes.

Yeah agreed. There are some extremely selfish/ selfless people out there but nothing is black and white.

While concepts only applicable within societies of humans, they are nevertheless tangible concepts for real behaviours that impact said societies and thusly Good and Evil become real.
The question of whether we consider ourselves to be good or evil is bound to produce an erroneous response as those qualities can only be objectively judged by society itself.
Though I agree that no one is truly capable of being an absolute of either at any point in their lives.
Still the question stands, can any one truly attain an equilibrium between the things we internally attribute to one or the other?

Quote from: BoomStick Clock;1856794The question of whether we consider ourselves to be good or evil is bound to produce an erroneous response as those qualities can only be objectively judged by society itself.

How's that, then? It's a subjective concept, not something tangible. There's nothing objective about good or evil.

QuoteStill the question stands, can any one truly attain an equilibrium between the things we internally attribute to one or the other?

It's a meaningless question. If I decide that some people are more zesty and some people are more creamy that doesn't have any bearing on anything outside my own mind. If the whole city agrees that some people are creamy and some are zesty, that only impacts the minds of those in my city, and if they have different ideas about what is creamy and what is zesty things will get really complicated but that won't imbue it with objective meaning.

If we get more specific, though, and talk about things that actually happen in the world, we can get somewhere. Some people will hurt you, steal from you, or kill you in some situations. Some people are more social or anti-social than others, more caring or callous. But see, now we're talking about actual traits, not made up fairy-tale garbage.

Quote from: CadillacClock;1856842from an evolutionary perspective, altruistic behaviour -- amongst normal and healthy human beings, is based on the return-benefit it gives to those committing it. it is an innately selfish action to be selfless. we, like all beings, are simply striving to exist and to continue our exist either through ourselves or others.

I disagree. Here's an often cited example, a story. Abraham Lincoln is riding along in a carriage with someone, it's storming heavily, and Lincoln is arguing with the man about ethics. Lincoln claims that all human altruism is self-motivated, as you're arguing. The other man disagrees and insists that people can do good things for the sake of the deed without any mind payed to rewards.

As they're talking, Lincoln hears the sound of screaming outside the cart and he checks outside. He sees a few piglets who are drowning in a deep mud pool, separated from their mother who is on the other side of a fence she can't get around to help her babies. Lincoln pulls the piglets out one by one and, having saved them, returns to the carriage covered in mud and sopping wet.

The man he's with insists "doesn't that prove it! How could you inconvenience yourself so if there wasn't any tangible gain?"
To which Lincoln replies, "don't you see? If I would have let them die, I would have felt terrible for the rest of the day."

Now you might think at first this corresponds with what you're arguing, but it doesn't. First we'd ask, why did Lincoln save the pigs? His own reasoning for saving them is that he would have felt bad about it if he'd ignored them. This seems simple enough, obviously he saved them to preserve his own peace of mind. Selfish. But let's look at the implications behind this: Lincoln associates the death of the pigs with unhappy feelings. Why? If he doesn't care about anybody but himself, we've got to look at what he could have stood to lose if he let the pig die. Peace of mind, that's pretty much it? He's not entitled by any law to help them, nothing that would change his motivations to ignoring the pigs instead of saving. So we're left with this: he saves them because he'd feel bad if he didn't. Unless Lincoln is a "good" person, why does he give a fuck about the piglets? No guilty conscience = no reason to get himself dirty and wet saving them. If he had zero sympathy for them and they died, it wouldn't affect him at all and he'd ride on unhindered. Only if we add in a conscience, a desire to help others out of kindness, do we get the moral dilemma where Lincoln feels compelled to help.

We are programmed to be both selfish and individualist, and altruistic and giving. Its in our DNA. If we were one or the other we wouldnt be a successful species. There is no way to be perfect. You can act perfectly, but you cannot completely erase all selfish or negative thoughts. Its simply how humans are built. Even the most evil people in history had a dash of good in them.

I'm by no means a moral optimist? and I totally accept that most altruism has a degree of self-motivation. People definitely do charitable work for self-gratification among other things, but I think I disagree with Cad in that I believe people are presented with situations where the risks outweighs the benefits (this is taking positive or negative feelings for helping vs not into account)... yet they still choose to help. For example something as cliche as jumping in front of a bus to push a little girl out of the way. Split-second decision to mortally endanger yourself to protect the life of another, a stranger. Some might argue that people are still self-motivated in this type of situation. Let's say we have a hypothetical like this and they both come out alive, the rescuer would doubtlessly feel a huge amount of happiness at having done a very "good" thing. Did this affect his decision to help? No, but you can still conclude that had he the time to reason it out instead of decide instantly, his conscience would maybe tell him how terrible he'd feel if he let the girl die.

So what we have left is, on one side if he lets her die, he has to suffer the guilt of it knowing she might have lived. He might attempt to justify his inaction by telling himself that he couldn't have affected the situation or that they both might have died and the life lost would have been even more tragic and pointless. On the other side, assuming he saves her, he either lives or dies. If we look at the worst of the two, him dying, he took the highest risk (endangering personal well-being) for the chance to save her life. IF we assumed all people are fundamentally selfish, you could chalk his choice up to stupidity or the lack of time to make an informed decision. Does he have enough time to go through the mental process where he reasons out that if he doesn't help and lets the girl die, that he'll probably feel bad about it to some degree? I don't know. The split-second nature of this situation is that we perhaps would get to look at what a human would do when presented with the chance to act selflessly with NO time to factor in conscience.

I really don't know what he'd do realistically. Maybe he'd be too late and by the time he weighed shit out on the old guilt scale, she'd already be dead in the road. Maybe something instinctual faster than the conscious brain would take over, as I predict Cad might argue. Maybe he'd pussy out and watch her get hit. To argue for true altruism in this case, he'd need the time and the free will to make the decision before he acted. And then he'd knowingly die to save the girl. I don't know how many real-world cases there are that fit super specific criteria like this, but maybe looking at statistics would give better insight.

Quote from: Sombra;1856877...

You're going from saying that you don't know why Lincoln would save the pigs because it has no apparent benefit to saying that your ideas about good and evil are correct. You can't do that, it doesn't follow.

Also, wanting to take care of pigs is adaptive and possibly a result of domesticating other mammals.

One good reason for altruism is the tribal mineset; early man lived in small communities that could very well die out if just a few of the members croaked. Thus it was important for man to have an instinct not only to preserve his own life but the life of other human.


As for the original question posed by BoomStick, I think it is very possible for a man to live out his own personal ideal of being perfectly good or evil, but since the ideas are abstract and not real things (this isn't Star Wars) its really just semantics and completely up to interpretation if he's "good" or not.


Slightly off topic, but this topic is dumb so I dont care: I never like philosophies based on dualism. It just seems so arbitrary. What's so special about 2? Nothing. There are plenty of things that come in 3s or 4s but they conveniently ignore them so they can freak out over male/female body/soul good/evil butts/frostedbutts dichotomies.

This notion is more one of man's invention, and less of a practical purpose. No matter what you choose has a direction. That direction may not be exactly what you want every time, but usually it's close enough. Like the ox's foot following the draft wheel, action only moves in the direction you move it towards. Good and evil are too black and white. That's why anti-heroes like the incredible hulk were so big. People could relate to generally having a "good soul" but wanting to smash cars together like they were toys. To which I say thank goodness we have such limited physical capacity as human beings.

Quote from: Thor;1856964butts/frostedbutts

this is the most important dualistic philosophy. To frost or not to frost. This is a question that will keep up our philosophers at night for eras to come.

I think, in the Lincoln argument, you could still consider it selfish if you abstract it a little bit. Basically, we don't like to see things suffer, because we know what it's like to suffer and we don't like it. So we reflect that pain and suffering on ourselves, and in some weird way we might think of it as balancing out the Universe - If I stop all suffering that I see, then surely someone will stop my suffering.

The golden rule is do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Because the only way we can empathize with people is to imagine ourselves in a similar situation. I'm not necessarily agreeing that all altruism is selfish, but I think it's pretty ingrained in our nature to look out for yourself first and foremost, all the time.

EDIT: And I'm not sure I understand the main question of this topic. Are you asking if it's possible for an individual person to be a total balance of good and evil? I think that's kind of strange question, since the Universe seems to balance out everything. I would be much more surprised to see someone who was purely evil or purely good than someone who is a total blend of the two.

I was high on fumes when I posted this thread.

In any case while I believe on the Duality of Good/Evil whilst inside a society environment (since neither really apply outside of one) the combination of the two creates more of a gradient of shades and colors than strictly black and white, however I don't think actual equilibrium of the two is possible, especially considering there's two distinct concepts of the two: society and personal. You'll unavoidably be more of one than the other, alternating due to age or outside influence doesn't mean that you're balanced between the two either.

Also, FU, the universe is not at all balanced, so much so that it's mostly comprised of a thing called Dark Energy (which currently accounts for 73% of the total mass-energy of the universe) which is accelerating the expansion rate of it and is most likely to cause an event called the Big Rip: in which the matter of the universe, from stars and galaxies to atoms and subatomic particles, is progressively torn apart by said expansion of the universe at a certain time in the future.

Quote from: BoomStick Clock;1857046I was high on fumes when I posted this thread.

In any case while I believe on the Duality of Good/Evil whilst inside a society environment (since neither really apply outside of one) the combination of the two creates more of a gradient of shades and colors than strictly black and white, however I don't think actual equilibrium of the two is possible, especially considering there's two distinct concepts of the two: society and personal. You'll unavoidably be more of one than the other, alternating due to age or outside influence doesn't mean that you're balanced between the two either.

Also, FU, the universe is not at all balanced, so much so that it's mostly comprised of a thing called Dark Energy (which currently accounts for 73% of the total mass-energy of the universe) which is accelerating the expansion rate of it and is most likely to cause an event called the Big Rip: in which the matter of the universe, from stars and galaxies to atoms and subatomic particles, is progressively torn apart by said expansion of the universe at a certain time in the future.

I guess I shouldn't have used capital U universe. I meant the way things are. Like, I never get too bent out of shape about things these days because I know things will balance out. When people ask what the best form of government is, or whether it's better to be idealist or pragmatic, or anything like that, I think the answer is usually somewhere in-between. All things in moderation.

Quote from: F U Clock;1857132I guess I shouldn't have used capital U universe. I meant the way things are. Like, I never get too bent out of shape about things these days because I know things will balance out. When people ask what the best form of government is, or whether it's better to be idealist or pragmatic, or anything like that, I think the answer is usually somewhere in-between. All things in moderation.

So when I'm deciding if I should murder nobody or lots of people I should go for the in between and just murder a few people? As arsenic okay in moderation? Is rape okay in moderation?

It sounds to me like you're just indecisive.

Quote from: Thor;1857177So when I'm deciding if I should murder nobody or lots of people I should go for the in between and just murder a few people? As arsenic okay in moderation? Is rape okay in moderation?

It sounds to me like you're just indecisive.

Hahaha, man you're good at making me angry.

Quote from: Thor;1856964One good reason for altruism is the tribal mineset; early man lived in small communities that could very well die out if just a few of the members croaked. Thus it was important for man to have an instinct not only to preserve his own life but the life of other human.

Much of human social behavior is based on expanding social networks, probably more than we'll ever know. The incest taboo (one of few cultural universals) is a good example, as it primarily encourages increased trade relations. This is also related to our tendency toward confirmation bias and ideological camp-making.

I've always felt the whole "good feelings" as selfishness for doing altruistic deeds being a cop out to explain it in a way that makes altruism seem selfish. I honestly think there's a point to what my Behavior professor said on the practice of blood donation as a form of true altruism. It goes to a completely anonymous source, requires a relatively hefty energetical requirement. I guess you could derivate me having good feelings from knowing I help from giving blood but honestly I usually just think of it as something I should do rather than think about how it makes me happy.

Quote from: AlbinoClock;1857739Much of human social behavior is based on expanding social networks, probably more than we'll ever know. The incest taboo (one of few cultural universals) is a good example, as it primarily encourages increased trade relations. This is also related to our tendency toward confirmation bias and ideological camp-making.

Well even most animals have incest prevention behaviors so Idno if we can really say that's a behavior based on social development.

Quote from: Marlin Clock;1857841Well even most animals have incest prevention behaviors so Idno if we can really say that's a behavior based on social development.

Incest-taboo may have some social relation but I think a lot of it's just natural selection. Much more beneficial to the species if we vary our gene pool as much as possible. I assume a lack of disgust-instinct towards incest died off from unfavorable genetic homogeny and hereditary disease.