In science, we often hear the phrase, To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This goes as far as up and down, left and right, yes and no, and good and evil. It is the same in our everyday lives. With everything we do there is some sort of outcome. In the TED video we watched Friday, the speaker said that "good and evil are the ying and yang of the universe.
I believe that people are a combination of both good and evil. With out one the other can not exist. In Hayao Miyazaki's philosophy of " The Flawed Concept of Good vs. Evil", he says, " see the good in which is evil, and the evil in that which is good". Since neither good or evil can exist with out one another , then every single individual has both within them.
With that being said, I don't think people can be labeled as "good" or "evil". In "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Fritz Haber?", Haber is a Jewish man who created a fertilizer that ultimately saved our world. But he also created a pesticide that was used to murder many other Jews and some of his own relatives. Haber can not be defined as either good or evil because even though he may have helped progress our world and then left his dead wife with his thirteen year old son, he's only human. He did help our dying world in a time of need. He also helped Germans in WWI to defeat the allied side using a deadly gas. But, naturally that's what humans do.
Not to say that we all get Nobel prizes and celebrate war defeats, but we do make choices. Our decisions can be good or bad, but that does not make us ultimately a good or bad people. Everyone has a good side and a dark side, but we can not be defined as just good or just evil. We're both. We're human.
I agree with you and understand what both readings where stating. Without evil would there really be a good. You can't have one without the other the world would be out of balance. Every person has good and evil within them maybe one will outshine the other at points throughout their life. This world is balance with good and evil, yin and yang, people aren't bad or good they make decisions that might not be good but that doesn't make them evil. I have made choices in my life that lead down a path that wasn't always considered good, but I didn't do it to hurt others and I made amends with those caught in the cross fire of my choices so i would like to think that people don't see me as either good or evil just a person who can make mistakes and fix them.
ReplyDeleteETHOS: I don’t believe that people are either good or evil; it is the experiences we go through in our lives that shape our personalities and moral code. There is a little bit of good in every seemingly evil person and a little bad in every good person. We all start out innocent as children but as we grow up we inevitably become slightly bitter which drives us to do “bad” things. It is the experiences that shape the person; no person is purely good or evil. A perfect example of this is Fitz Haber, the scientist who is responsible for finding a way to feed the world`s expanding population and the use of nitrogen gas as a weapon during the World War I. Haber was good in the sense that he had good intentions- he wanted to help his side win the war, but the evil lies in the action he took to try to make that happen. Using the gas as a weapon caused a substantial amount of men to lose their lives in the war and brought many families extreme pain and loss because of that. Though Haber`s actions were evil, his intentions were good and we can’t ignore the fact that he did help millions of people continue to survive with his scientific discoveries. He was both good and evil, and which side dominated depended on the environment he was in and the things he was experiencing at that point in time. Just as it was said by Hayao Miyazaki, we all have evil in us- its natural, the best thing to do is learn to control it. We need to see the good in the evil and the evil in the good- finding that balance is how we achieve true strength.
ReplyDeletePathos
ReplyDeleteI agree that people can't be good or evil and that they could be both. It all depends on the situation that we are in and how we choose to perceive the actions of others emotionally. In the comic he talks about how men and women aren't destined to be a certain role. Men don't have to be physically strong to be considered a hero and women don't have to be weak and defenseless, as they could be just as fierce as men. In this instance we can see that the physically characteristics don't have to determine someones capabilities. Additionally he states that we have to preserve a balance between good and evil, as well as see through the eyes that are unclouded by hate.
Haber discovered the use of nitrogen can create life because it helps plants grow, however he discovered another use for nitrogen as well. He discovered that the use of nitrogen could win them the war but at the cost of kill a lot of people. In this situation good and evil are acting simultaneously with each other because using the nitrogen would win the war but could kill a lot of people. It all just depends on how we choose to see the actions of others, it depends on the emotions involved and how we show, if we even choose to show, how we express such emotions. Good and evil are two sides of the same coin and there can not be one without the other.