DEFINING EVIL in a meaningful way

by Terry 13 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  Terry

  
  
  Evil proceeds from a blindness, of sorts.
  

  Turning a blind eye, you might say.

  The Allies turned a blind eye to the holocaust and it proceeded.

  Moralists on President Trumans staff of civilian and military advisors turned a blind eye to the loss of innocent life and the generational mutations which would ensue from dropping two atomic bombs on Japan.

  Administrators in the Catholic Church (and in Kingdom Halls) turned a blind eye to the far reaching damage of pedophilia.

  Fellow students (and some teachers) turn a blind eye to bullying and hazing in schools.

  Parents of the violent kids at Columbine turned a blind eye to the bomb making and weapon accumulation of their kids and a massacre soon followed.

  Judges on the bench everyday let off career criminals who go on to murder, rape and molest by turning a blind eye to the danger they pose to society.

  Everyday people turn a blind eye to the impact of taking recreational drugs on their body, their family and society. Smokers, drinkers, tokers all evade, distract and defuse their rational mind.

  The GOOD people FAIL TO DEFINE the evil of abandoning a BLACK or WHITE position on behavior and the slippery slope leads to the moral vacuum filled by the evil that follows.

  HOW MANY TIMES do I have to repeat this? There IS Evil. It comes from GOOD people. It comes from you and me when we relax our hold on reality and choose to opt out. Each of us is responsible for the juggling act that keeps our world sane and safe. When just one of us is distracted or unfocused we drop the ball and the chain reaction begins. In Great Britain, Muslims who actively advocate terrorism are allowed to gather and give speeches and form terror cells. The recent bombings there might shake authorities out of their blind eye policy of tolerance. Here in the U.S.A. airport screening turns a blind eye to the ethnicity of passengers so that old ladies and babies with the accidental same name as a terrorist are excluded from flying while the Arabs and Iraquis and Iranians go through checkpoints without being stopped simply BECAUSE they are of ethnic origin!!

  Children drown in swimming pools from just a minute's inattention. Other kids shoot themselves accidentally because somebody failed to think about safety. One tiny lapse allows evil inside.

  PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY is the opposite of EVIL.

  Show me an evil and you'll show me a failure of personal responsibility in action.

  My whole point in starting this thread was to call attention to the fact that EVIL is not____OUT THERE___ somewhere. It is we, ourselves that open the door for it through inattention, laziness, non-focus or distraction.

  The main distraction is false belief and an appetite for fuzzy thinking. It is a default mode of the mind that allows us to claim you CANNOT DEFINE an evil. It is like a child pulling covers over their head to escape the boogey man. It doesn't work.

  Reality cannot be escaped. We must face what is real about life and deal with it. Evasion leads to evil.

  That's the whole point in a nutshell. It is IMMORAL to refuse to face reality.

  T.
• 

  Shining One

  >>>HOW MANY TIMES do I have to repeat this? There IS Evil. It comes from GOOD people. It comes from you and me when we relax our hold on reality and choose to opt out. Each of us is responsible for the juggling act that keeps our world sane and safe. When just one of us is distracted or unfocused we drop the ball and the chain reaction begins.
  
  By jove, Terry, you've got it! THAT is our sin nature: the deranged state we all have within us that is only held in check by.........What one of us have never had murder in our hearts? Oswald Chambers said this, "...there is something dark in each one of us that laughs at every noble thought and idea..."
  
  Rex
• 

  Scully

  
  M. Scott Peck addresses the definition and diagnosis of evil in his book People of the Lie (1983, Touchstone, NY). He draws from Erich Fromm in distinguishing evil as having to do with murder, "unnecessary killing that is not required for biological survival." Then he goes on to write:

  When I say that evil has to do with killing, I do not mean to restrict myself to corporeal murder. Evil is also that which kills spirit. There are various essential attributes of life - particularly human life - such as sentience, mobility, awareness, growth, autonomy, will. It is possible to kill or attempt to kill one of these attributes without actually destroying the body. Thus we may "break" a horse or even a child without harming a hair on its head. Erich Fromm was acutely sensitive to this fact when the broadened the definition of necrophilia to include the desire of certain people to control others - to make them controllable, to foster dependency, to discourage the capacity to think for themselves, to diminish their unpredictability and originality, to keep them in line. Distinguishing it from a "biophilic" person, one who appreciates and fosters the variety of life forms and the uniqueness of the individual, he demonstrated a "necrophilic character type," whose aim it is to avoid the inconvenience of life by transforming others into obedient automatons, robbing them of their humanity.

  Evil, then, for the moment, is that force, residing either inside or outside of human beings, that seeks to kill life or liveliness. And goodness is its opposite. Goodness is that which promotes life and liveliness.

  This description is how I support my belief that the people who form the WTS have created an evil entity.

  Cheers, Scully
• 

  Terry

  Oswald Chambers said this, "...there is something dark in each one of us that laughs at every noble thought and idea..."

  Well, no.

  There IS NOTHING DARK IN each one of us.

  I didn't realize how subtle this point is that everybody keeps overlooking it.

  If you have cancer cells in you they multiply and as the proliferation takes place there is less and less of you that is well. This is a physical and actual fact.

  But, this is NOT HOW it works with what is EVIL. Not at all. Not a bit of it.

  Think of it this way instead.

  Imagine a large dam holding back tons of water.

  The water isn't evil. The dam isn't evil. Down below in the valley there are cities, buildings and everyday life goes on apace. None of this is evil.

  Remove the dam suddenly and the water does what water does. Gravity isn't evil and neither is the flow of water. The city below is now flooded and death and destruction ensues as a mater of natural consequence.

  When we remove the dam the water floods the city and destruction results. This is the consequence and we call it EVIL.

  ?

  EACH ELEMENT is morally neutral. It is the removal of restraint that allows one thing to harm the other.

  Our use of reason permits each of us to learn (often the hard way) what is destructive in life. We BETTER learn fast or we suffer consequences that ends our life.

  terry