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KVIS Philosophy club
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12 มี.ค. 2022 เวลา 13:58 • ปรัชญา
Good & Evil are true or illusions
By: Siravit Sriboonjareanchai
It is extremely easy for every single one of us to agree that a serial murderer is undeniably evil while a selfless person who puts others before themselves and considers the benefit of others more than the happiness of oneself is truly a good person. However, if you ask yourself what is good, what is bad? How do we know?
The odd thing is that you might find out you were just being thought that way or it just feels that way. If you were being told whether something is good or not, then how do you know that that person is correct? The person who told you may get the very concept of good and evil the same way you did. If that is the case, then how do you know that the first person who decided it was correct in the first place?
Now if you are religious, you might say that God is the one who determines what is good and what is not. If you were right and “God actually exist” how do you know that the thing we human decided as good is the same thing God decided? If you believe in a religion with many gods, which god are you talking about? How would you know whether God love something because it is good, or something is good because God love it? And why should God even have the right to decide what is good and bad in the first place?
Now you may think that we do not need anyone to determine the righteousness of anything to us, we can let our feelings decide what should be done and what should not. However, the problem is that the human mind and feelings are highly unstable, a single event can change or even break one’s mind. Moreover, the way you view the world, the mindset you have, and the meaning of “good” vary significantly according to the person's mind, environment, culture, norm, beliefs, history, religion, law, mindset, gene, age, and a lot more.
If there is a world where killing other people is acceptable would a serial killer be considered bad in any way? Another example is the witch hunt in middle age. We all know that the witch hunt is one of the evilest things in human history and it is much more than unacceptable.
Nonetheless, if you were born in middle age, you might end up doing the same thing that you would consider cruel and inhuman today, so the question is what is evil about it? It is not the person who because you are not evil, but you might still do it. Maybe it is the action that is evil, but how on earth does a non-evil person do a very evil thing. That is very weird since we would normally think that the person who does evil things on purpose is evil. If “evil action” is defined as an action that shouldn’t be done, how do you know that your thoughts of what should be and shouldn’t be done are more correct than that of a serial murderer?
After all, your thoughts might not be yours at all. If everyone on Earth was taught to be a serial killer, murder wouldn’t be a bad thing in any way imaginable. Then maybe evil might not even exist.
A lot of you might think that this article you have read is total nonsense. Of course, evil exists, from plague to genocide, to stealing, to lying, to cheating an exam or your sprout. Let's take a step back and ask yourself are those things really evil. Some plague may have killed tens of thousands or even millions, but they don’t even have minds, emotions, or feelings. How can mindless things even be evil? On the other hand, if some plague wipes out our ancestor’s predators and gives opportunities for us to thrive on this planet, would it still be evil?
All the examples I have given are bad for some but good for others. Who has the right to decide what is good and what is not? From all the examples above, it seems like there is no absolute good or absolute evil. In a sense, both of them are relative quantities. Maybe this is not all about finding what is good and what is bad at all.
Whether something is good or bad cannot be determined by a single human or a group of people because there is no good and evil in this world, to begin with.
To sum up, good and evil are some of the biggest illusions humankind experiences. The sensation is very true or at least feel like it is the true nature of life. However, nothing in life or nature says that good exists. Now, this may answer the question about good and bad, but it may also give you even more questions than you started with. Since good and bad do not exist, and since God needs to be all good, does he exist? How can the law imprison an evil criminal, if there is no evil in the first place? What are we living for? Why do we help others if there is no good?
There is something I really need to tell you.
Even if good and bad are illusions, they are illusions you want to keep up with. Even though they are not real, they exist for an exceptionally good reason
Siravit Sriboonjareanchai
Some behaviors are just unacceptable by human instinct and do not need anyone to tell you the behavior is wrong. This means that the concept of good and bad must be greatly beneficial to human ancestors that surpassed the process of natural selection and became part of our species. Hence, you should still consider that they are real. They are not point believing in the real thing if that means losing your reason to live. So, if you want to be good, just pretend that good exist and pretend to be good in your own way.
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