Sunday, October 19, 2014
Neither Good Nor Evil(Pathos)
People are neither good nor evil. We, as described in an old Cherokee story about two wolfs, a good and an evil one, which fight within ourselves’ to show through in our character, have good and evil within us. Its the actions we choose to take that “feeds” the good or evil inside ourselves’ that shows through in our character. In “How do you solve a problem like Fritz Haber?” audio, they talk about Fritz Haber and his accomplishments. They did not once called the man neither good nor evil but referred to his actions in that way. When they perceived something he did to be evil, in their opinion, they explained how it was this way because it is resentful to their moral standards. This is why it is unreasonable to say someone is either good or evil because what one person may think is good or evil may be different for another person depending upon their culture or what they’ve been taught. People go through a constant battle within ones’ self between our good wolf and our bad wolf. Feeding either one can upset the other and cause it to fight stronger or we can choose to starve one and do only good or bad. In “The flawed concept of "Good VS Evil"”, the author’s explanation of evil and good follows this concept of no one is just good or evil. The author goes to explain how they do not think there should be just one concept of good by saying how they do not like to make their characters the cliché hero because they believe anyone can be a hero no matter who, how or what they are. This demonstrates how they’re can be good in any and all people. We shouldn’t expect good or evil from anyone because people should be able to choose how they react toward others and their actions. Being able to balance which side of us to “feed” is what allows the world to perceive good and evil and strive to do what they believe is best just as Haber did in his situations.
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I completely disagree with you when you say, "This is why it is unreasonable to say someone is either good or evil because what one person may think is good or evil may be different for another person depending upon their culture or what they’ve been taught.”
ReplyDeleteI’m assuming that the terrorist group ISIS believes it is ok to kill innocent people. Because of how they’ve been bought up, being in the country they are in, they have been taught that it is ok to murder these people. Now when someone kills one of them, they want to get even and kill them because they thought that person was bad/evil for killing one of its members. But they don’t stop to think that that man/woman was doing just the same as they are doing; killing someone. They might not know that what they are doing is evil, but it’s also the fact that they think what they are doing is good, makes them evil.
I don’t know if you know who Ted Bundy is, but his is a very famous American serial killer. After he was caught he confessed to killing more than 30 people. He was asked why he killed these people, and he responded saying he likes to see his victims suffering and struggling to death while he hit them. You can’t tell me that it is unreasonable to say he is evil. There’s a high chance he wasn’t taught it was okay to murder innocent people. Now do you think it is unreasonable to consider him evil?
I don't think people have differing views on what we consider to be good or evil, I believe its all pretty standard. The men in the podcast, "How do you solve a problem like Fritz Haber?", had a difficult time deciding how they felt about where Haber stood on the scale of good v evil. He was a great man who did what some thought to be impossible: creating food for a population that was considered to be overgrown. He saved many lives in the earlier years of his career, but he managed to combat this with the amount of lives he took during the first World War, ironically using similar sciences he used to save lives. I believe as a collective grouping, people think taking away lives is one of, if not, the most horrible thing any person can do. In the same sense creating and saving lives is something highly praised in just about every society. When considering whether or not Haber was evil or good, I would have to say he was neither. He was just a man who experienced both ends of the spectrum. This is the same for all people, his balances just happened to be on the extreme ends of both scales. No person is solely good, or solely evil, and I would have to say that's what Hayao Miyazaki was trying to bring to light in "The flawed concept of 'Good VS Evil'". Our viewpoints on what is good and what is evil are based on a common sense of what is ethical in our society. I can say this confidently for the American culture and any other cultures with similar opinions.
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