Good people versus Evil people

Maybe some people get a rush or high out of doing stuff that they know others think is evil. Would that qualify as evil? Like killing other humans for sport, for example.

Laugh hard it's a long way to the bank.

LMD: You're right, by the definition you wrote it's pretty impossible to believe that evil people exist. Which is, TBH, why I think it's an inadequate definition... why define an impossibility and then try to find another word to describe the horrible people who do actually exist?
If I may offer my own definition:
Bad = hurting others.
I don't define Good, because that can be just about anything, but the most important part of it is that it doesn't involve hurting others (until you bring "the greater good" into the equation, that is).
I've thought about it a lot myself, and I honestly think that this is the one objective definition everyone should be able to agree about. And in that sense, sadly, there exist plenty of evil people, who hurt others either because they don't care, or because they actually enjoy it.
Of course, it's possible that by this definition, thanks to the allowance for "the greater good", you could claim that Hitler was still not evil; the number of people he might have believed to be saving was much greater than the number of those he killed. Which disturbs me, because it clearly means my definition is a bit off... I don't want genocide to be justifiable

Killgore: I'm curious, what exactly do you mean by "inherently good"?

People who are born good, who are, at their core nature, 'good' in a sense beyond subjectivity. Like someone from a DnD game who had some kind of affinity for holy magic or something. Someone who only ever did good, despite whatever trials they might have been challenged with or could have been challenged with.
I don't believe in them, because imo man is born neutral, and its our actions and choices that determine whether or not we are positive or negative contributions to the human race. That's the only way that a good act has any meaning ---- if an inherently good man does something good, its only out of their nature; nothing special. When a neutral person does something good, then the universe has enjoyed gain and avoided loss of goodness.

Its kinda the same thing that I'm saying.

And if you consider that the state of being neutral is, in a way, a good thing, then its exactly what I'm saying.

Well like I said, I am thinking of good people in a general sense of people who more often than not try to do what they think is the moral, right, or good thing to do.  People with certain psychological disorders wouldn't qualify because they don't really make rational decisions in the first place.  So my point was that there aren't "evil" people in the same sense as there are "good" people to be their counterparts...aka there arent people who do things solely because it would be evil, wrong, or immoral.

The point you (and maybe some others I would have to look again) kinda made though that I do like is that the ideas I put forward ARE somewhat relativist, which generally means it is not a good account of morality.  But then again, I guess I am not advancing any stance that any particular actions are immoral for any specific reason...I guess you could have a "good" person that is mislead because while trying to do the action that would do the most good, they are actually not doing good...but I guess my point is that they have good intentions and therefore I would still call that person a good person.  So I dunno.  Maybe on some level I have to make some kind of moral claim to be able to define what good or evil people are though, even if that isn't my original intention.  Fuck.

I didn't say anything about "inherently" good people though, don't know what I would say about that. 

As far as the Vulcan logic thing...to the philosopher Immanuel Kant, rationality literally IS morality.  To be rational IS to be moral.  I bet thats where the Star Trek people got that idea. 

LC: I don't think you can say that selfishness is necessarily evil. Every time you eat out at a fancy restaurant, you could have given that money to some charity instead. But then again, most people I know who do charitable stuff only do it because it makes them feel better about themselves. In fact, I'd say even a simple term like selfishness is hard to properly define.
So I agree that "the root of all evil is selfishness"... I can't imagine a person hurting another person without gaining money, power, or any kind of satisfaction out of it. But I don't think evil and selfishness are the same thing.
I also don't think your example of stealing goes against my definition, but I think it shows that your definition and mine should go hand in hand. If you steal some money from someone then you gain the exact amount that he lost, and the only logical reason to consider it evil is because you were selfish and considered your welfare more important than another's. I left this out of my definition because I think some people might not agree about it being objective. Hell, I'm a big believer in the concept of selfishness myself, but I still believe that I'm a good person, much more so than most people I know, because I do everything in my power to do good for the people I consider worthy. So I wouldn't give money to charity, ever, but I would go to the ends of the earth for my friends, or for people who aren't my friends but who I think are good people. That means you can say I act selfish towards most the world, but would you say I'm evil for it?
The ultimate selflessness would probably be communism, and that won't fit well with my lifestyle

Ask yourself if you've ever been in such an emotional state that the illness of another was directly connected to your happiness. Temporary or not.

Then imagine that the emotional state is permanent.

There are such people who thrive only through ill intent and I classify those as "evil".

I get it... I disagree though, and here's why.

First of all, there's always the troubled kid/troubled person who just wants to make others hurt.  He enjoys being a bully.  Of course, if we get to his psychological underpinnings, there's probably a reason (abuse, rejection, etc), but we can't deny that he's intentionally causing hurt because he gets pleasure out of it.

Other than that, I would generally agree with the idea that people don't TRY to do bad things ("I just find it hard to believe that people do anything because they are motivated solely by the fact that it would cause the most harm"), but intentions are not the identifier of evil.  That idea (that villains are trying to destroy the world) was a concept taught to us by overly didactic plotlines that I think has hurt our idea of right and wrong.  Evil people can have good intentions and still be doing evil.

The question of how we define evil is crucial to this discussion.  If morals are relative, than it takes a pure villain (go go Shredder) to represent evil, as intentions are key.  Even a suicidal fundemantalist Jihadist could be considered basically good, as he is trying to better the world.

However, if morals are absolute (even some of them), then it changes everything-  you can produce evil by trying to do good;  thus your scenario would become flawed, as you assume that anyone trying to better the world is at their heart not evil.  Thus stories like TMNT become oversimplified- TRUE evil doesn't exist as some 2 dimensional force of destruction, but rather, probably exists in all of us to some degree.  True evil could completely misunderstand itself.

EDIT::

for further information regarding people being evil for the sake of being evil:

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,22848376-952,00.html?from=mostpop

Although it isn't a bad idea logic-wise, I have just never liked the idea that intentions and motives don't matter when deciding what moral value a given action has.  I think motives and intentions should be a big part of that.

The main reason I don't like that idea is this....so OK, if you had a time machine, it would be morally good to go back in time and kill Hitler before he had a chance to kill millions of people, right?  You would be saving millions of lives.  So if the results of your action are all that matters, this should be a good thing to do, and at the very least millions of jews would thank you.

BUT, lets say you were in Germany in 1900 walking down a road when you look over and see a small boy drowning in a pond....completely still water, and the water level is 2 feet less than you are tall, so there is no possible way you could drown saving the boy, and the only cost to you for saving him is some wet clothes.  Common sense tells you that yes in this situation you should save the child from drowning.

But as you may have guessed, this child is Hitler.  If the results of your actions are all that matters in determining the moral worth of your action, then in saving Hitler you just indirectly enabled him to go on and kill the millions of people.  Your INTENTION was good, but your action was bad and there was no way you could have feasibly known so.  So I personally prefer an approach to morality where intentions and motives matter, but that is just me, I don't know any way to logically show considering intentions is better.

Anyway though I didn't mean to be talking about Dr. Evil type villains...though I get your point.  I guess just overall my idea is that although evil does exist in the world....if you were rating people's moral character on a numberline where from 10 to -10 where 0 was being a morally neutral type....and 10 was doing actions just for the sake of helping others or being altruistic in general (like your mother teresas and whatnot) and -10 was Dr. Evil...nobody that actually exists is as evil as some other people are good.  In other words, there have been people that exist that are 10s, nobody that I can think of has ever been a -10.

And it also seems that most evil that we see isn't really the rational intention of people who do it, where rational intention = rationally choosing to do something with moral intent.  Like I said earlier, Hitler probably even thought he was doing good in his warped sense of it. 

The schoolyard bully is a really interesting type of person you brought up though, probably the hardest for my concept to explain.  Hmm.  You would have to interpret the bully's actions as psychological calls for help....like he is feeling insecure about himself and if somebody sat down with him and "gave him a hug" ( lol ), with the right approach I think it is most likely you would find out that that kind of person probably would change if he knew how to. 

...Hopefully you know the kind of thing I am talking about, though I am not sure if that kind of explanation would hold up under fire, or if I am even confident or believe it myself yet.  Just throwing it out there to see what happens, since this is a conversation in the name of progress after all. 

Magis do you consider the fact that maybe you are just better educated/brought up than the bully you describe?  Some bullies just weren't taught to behave good, while you were.  Its a matter of being simple minded, which bullies generally are.

I think I see what you are saying too, and I am also not saying you are wrong.    This is just me bullshitting about things I haven't decided a stance on yet, playing devil's advocate, etc.

I don't believe in relative morality too, at least if I understand your definition of it correctly.  Hopefully I am not advocating that kind of stance without meaning to.

I think there is evil in the world, I am just not convinced that there is evil in the world in the same way there is good in the world....IE people DO do things because they think it would be a good thing to do, but I am not sure that similarily people do evil things because it would be the evil thing to do.  And I think if this is really the case, then there is probably a stronger presense of good than evil in the nature of people...and if I could confidently talk about the world with the idea that people are more good than evil in general, then I think that is a pretty significant kind of revelation.  Just to make my bullshitting more clear.

Really though, I want to know more about what you call relative morality.  But I will try and go after the questions you listed...

I think there are degrees of evil and degrees of good...IE dying to save somebody else has more "good" moral worth than saving the random boy drowning in the pond.  Both are good actions, just that I think some good actions are more praiseworthy than others, agreed?

Evil doesn't seem to be quite the same way.  Ya there are evil actions people do, aka Hitler, but when you look at the intentions of evil people they don't seem to really be similar to the intentions of people who do good things.  So yes there is evil in the world, but there doesn't seem to be evil in the world that is the polar opposite of the highest degree of good in the world.  There is evil in me too at the least to the degree that everybody has evil in them, however, I don't feel compelled to do any of the evil things I think of in the same way I feel compelled to do some of the good things I think of. 

"Pure evil" would be doing something evil because it is evil...IE Dr. Evil wanting to destroy the world because it would be evil.  The kinds of evil we commonly see in reality though are things like selfishness, negligence.  IE Killing somebody else for money.