What is the nature of evil?
Us. vs. Them
(I mean)
Teachers vs. Administrators
(I mean)
Teachers vs. Students
(in other words)
Good vs. Evil
The nature of good and evil has been a hot topic for as long as schools have had deans and SAVE rooms. Maybe longer. I've got all sorts of discussions about it on my googlereader right now. For example, if you're wondering if it is human nature to request the bathroom pass every 12 and a half minutes, you might turn to:
johnkunnathu.blogspot.com/2009/07/what-is-basic-human-nature.html
Or if you are considering the tendency to form cliques to better annoy the teacher, take a look at:
parentsawake.com/causepeace/an-analysis-of-the-nature-of-evil-2/
And speaking of good and evil and how it impacts everyday life today, if you're wondering about where Michael Jackson ended up, take a look at:
allmichaeljacksoninfo.blogspot.com/2009/06/michael-jackson-and-god-feeling.html
You can also find very interesting and timely comments on Twitter twitter.com/
like this one by wdhaverstock posted 4 minutes ago: Wow! I just noticed! Evil spells "live" backwards. God dog!
Of course, the villain has been the object of fascination from Milton's Satan to James Dean to the kid who won't stop throwing paperballs in your room ....
...which is why it is important for teachers to understand the nature of evil. As I tell my students doing research, use primary sources wherever possible. So I figured I would model that for them. As luck would have it, the two main players agreed to sit down with me and chat in room 161, the site of much "evil" during this past school year. I'd tell you the date the interview took place but since time means nothing to either of my two guests, that would be pointless.
Dave: So, how are you today, God? You don't look so happy.
God: Fine, thank you - I was just dealing with a little problem.
Dave: Anything to do with us?
God: No, different universe. You think you're sinful. How are you, Dave?
Dave: I'm good. Satan, how are you? You don't look too happy either.
unsportsmanlikecomment.wordpress.com/2007/12/12/breakdown-scott-boras-vs-satan/
Satan: Not bad. Just yawning, actually.
Dave: Well, it's good to have the two of you here together.
God: We go back a long way.
Satan: We agreed to disagree.
Dave: As I said on the phone the other day, the reason we're here is to clarify a couple of things, free will, good and evil, sin and so forth. Maybe you're aware that there has been some confusion about some of these things down here.
Satan: Up there, ha ha ha.
Dave: Sorry. Over here.
God: Always the comedian.
Satan: You gotta laugh ....
God: Yes, laughter is one of my finest creations.
Satan: Yours?
God: He likes to take credit for the good stuff.
Dave: Is it safe to say, God, that everything out of Satan's mouth is a lie?
God: Why don't you ask him?
Dave: Satan?
Satan: Yes.
Dave: Now, if that is a lie, then everything out of his mouth isn't a lie.
Satan: But if it's the truth?
Dave: Well, it can't be the truth logically.
Satan: Logically it can't be a lie.
Dave: So let's start with this. This is for you, God. We humans get ourselves tied into knots all the time over logical inconsistencies. I mean, try getting through the first paragraph of this: rykunderground.blogspot.com/2009/06/absolute-moralityand-other-fairy-tales.html I hear they're considering this for the critical lens next year.
God: That would be his doing.
Satan: Te-he.
Dave: So let me ask you this. Why did you make us logical beings if logic leads us into such conundrums?
God: That's an easy one. I didn't.
Dave: You didn't what?
God: I didn't make you logical beings. In fact, you aren't logical beings.
Satan: That's right. I'm the one that made you think that you're logical beings. Worked pretty good, didn't it?
Dave: Yeah. We've wasted millenia trying to figure out things that can't logically be figured out.
Satan: Yuk yuk yuk.
Dave: My wife adds 2 plus 2 and gets 7 all the time and she's usually right.
God: Intuition - my gift to woman.
Dave: So what you're saying, God, is that the heart is more important than the mind.
God: Yes.
Satan: No.
Dave: Which would mean that emotions are more important than logic.
God: Yes.
Satan: No.
Dave: Which means that for purpuses of contructing a system of ethics or morality, we ought to rely more on feeling than on thought.
God: Well, that's an oversimplification but generally, yes.
Satan: If it feels good, do it!
Dave: By the way, Satan. God wrote the best selling book of all time. Have you ever written anything?
God: Well, that would require work.
Dave: Don't you just snap your fingers?
God: Well, yeah, but, you know, turning thought into material instantaeously is something.
Dave: I'll say. Can you do that, Satan?
Satan: If I say yes, would you believe me?
Dave: No.
Satan: No?
Dave: Yes!
Satan: Anyway, I've got more devious means.
Dave: Of course. For instance?
Satan: Well, there was the late, great Marquis but lately I've been leaving it up to J.K.
Dave: I see. Get 'em young, huh.
Satan: Do you know how many little anti-Chrits are running around out there now thanks to Harry and his friends?
Dave: Fiendish.
Satan: Thank you.
God: Well, don't worry. It's all part of the plan.
Dave: That's a nice segue ....
God: Not coincidentally, of course.
Dave: I suppose there's no such thing as coincidence for you.
God: Right. But for you?
Dave: That's exactly what I wanted to ask you. You know everything that's going to happen, right?
God: Well, considering that I'm making it happen ....
Dave: Yeah. Is that omnipotence or omniscience we're talking about?
God: I'd guess omniscience.
Dave: And are you omniscient, Satan?
Satan: Well, practically. I'd call it quasi-scient.
Dave: And quasi-potent?
Satan: I like that.
Dave: But God, even though you know what's going to happen, we don't. We like to think that we have choices and that the choices we make affect how things are going to turn out. Can you shed some light on that.
www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/gilchrist200... Remove fram"> www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/gilchrist200
God: Ha ha - nice one.
Dave: I'm sorry, no pun intended.
God: Well, I'm sure you're familiar with the free will argument for the existence of evil in your world.
Dave: Is that the argument that says that we have to be able to choose to do good things otherwise it doesn't mean anything?
God: Right. If I created you so that you could only choose to do the right thing, then you wouldn't have any free choice.
Dave: So you wouldn't be able to tell if we were good or not.
God: Well, I would.
Dave: Yeah, you could, but I mean, my wife couldn't.
God: Sure you want to use that example?
Dave: Right, she knows everything. I mean the girlfriend you met in a bar last night wouldn't be able to tell if you were good or not if you didn't have that temptation in front of you to turn away from.
Satan: Unless she herself is the temptation.
God: Let's not get into that again. They're in the 21st century.
Satan: I know, I know. I've got to come up with some more devious material.
Dave: So you could get rid of evil, God, but if you did, we wouldn't be able to prove that we're really good.
God: In a nutshell.
Satan: You mean you can't create a world where there is only good and people can choose to be good?
God: I could but then you'd be out of a job.
Dave: So then if I say that people are free to comment on this discussion, I can feel confident that I'm not lying to them?
God: They're free.
Satan: Even though you know what they're going to do.
Dave: So if you feel compelled - how's that?
God: Nice.
Satan: Good.
Dave: If you feel that you have no choice but to choose to comment on free will or temptation or coincidence or any of these other subjects, please do so in this discussion. I want to thank you guys for coming. Would it be too much to ask you to shake hands?
TEMPTATION
www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/07/05/the_nature_of_temptation/
bcatok.wordpress.com/2009/07/05/temptation-morality-and-hypocrisy/
bcatok.wordpress.com/2009/07/05/temptation-morality-and-hypocrisy/
TEMPTATIONS
REDEMPTION
www.elook.org/dictionary/redemption.html
SIN
www.allaboutgod.com/what-is-sin.htm
EVIL
www.andrewbernstein.net/articles/34_villainy.htm
www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/evil/evilP7.html
Comments
No wonder my prayers go
No wonder my prayers go unanswered. God's busy giving you an interview!
Interview over - but He's
Interview over - but He's got a busy schedule.
Oh man, this is going to be
Oh man, this is going to be good. So good there will be explosions of all sorts.
Why is Evil live backwards?
Why is Evil live backwards? I might be overanalyzing this but I feel like it should mean something.
In the movie Spaceballs, Lord Helmet played by good ol' Rick Moranis said that "Evil will always win because good is dumb." Applying this statement to society leads me to believe that it is true in a way. Why can't Batman and Spider-Man ever find some sort of peace in their lives? Why are soldiers who go off and follow orders always haunted in their later years by that experience? Why do I see so many good teachers stressed out and just on the verge of burning out?
Maybe we can't live without
Maybe we can't live without evil. We can't have life without death. There is no death without life. Is there good without bad? We seem to live in a universe that defines things by their opposites.
So, are you a philosophy
So, are you a philosophy teacher?
And, what happens if there are studnets who practice one of the many fundamentalists religions and take exception to the conversation with God and Satan (even the mention of those two outside of a religious context)?
Feliciag
Very good question.
Very good question. Religion is a very touchy subject with many of my students, especially living in Queens with such a variety of different beliefs.
Is good and evil culture
Is good and evil culture specific? What group of students do you teac?
I love how you pose the
I love how you pose the impossible to the kids that you teach and get them to see how they can overcome their barriers. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THE WAY YOUR DISCUSSION IS A DIALOGUE AND THAT YOU USE THEM TO TEACH WITH IN CLASS!!! Great all the way around! :)
-- Amanda Kay
Genius Dave. As usual
Genius Dave. As usual students would be all over this.The links were great.
I think your thread ties to
I think your thread ties to one Julio started on whether ethics and morality are taught through English Lit.
I like the idea of "creating conversations" to demonstrate understanding. Example Ryan could have R and S and D talk to each other.
Nothing is impossible.
Nothing is impossible. Asking questions. Creating Dialogues that are fun, creative and thought provoking.
I really enjoyed what you did with your discussion. It was fun and good modeling for how they can learn and have fun while doing that.
Karen Levy, Library Media Specialist Columbus Campus H.S. 925 Astor Avenue Bronx, N.Y. 10469
I think this is a wonderful
I think this is a wonderful topic for getting people talking. Fantastic discussion, Dave!
Wonderful way to motivate a
Wonderful way to motivate a unit, or to introduce a discussion before you introduce a unit of literature! I especially like the use of the Dialogue apporach.
There's a philosophical
There's a philosophical belief in many religions that evil is instituted as a challenge to become better and that our natural inclination is towards evil but that through many different rituals we can train our internal inclination to do evil to become a source of energy to do good.
In that sense, the nature of evil is to reduce us to less than our full potential unless we find ways to help command the power evil has over us to do good in which case, education combats evil. Food for thought.
Dear haverstock I loved the
Dear haverstock
I loved the little conversation between these forms. Yeah i call them forms. No human is god and no god is human but anyways,there is A lot that i took in from this post. First and foremost to give you my opinion on the logical issue. I agree that it is not created by god. Instead, I render logic as a creation,sort of a paragon of cerebral love which can only come from the most formidable periods of time. When we have nothing,we find something;when we have questions,we find answers. logic is just one of the basic ingredients to a sound and just brain. Think of the bubonic plague or the dark ages,people needed something to hold on to,something to believe in. People always feel the need to become coherent with everything,its like there is imaginary tape all over the world or in time or in any kind of form. We cant just exist,we have to belong to something so creation is like an immense strip of tape in which everybody can stick themselves on. So all i am saying is that we created logic.
Also when brung up the topic of logic and emotion and which one is more significant. I tried to come up with my own opinion. First,it depends on if your talking literally or figuratively. I mean like if your talking about the actual heart and brain then to me,thats not really a question that can be answered. Both of them serve the most quintessential functions so they are pretty much equal in significance. If you are referring to more of a philosophic way,then the answer for that requires logic in itself. Emotion is definitely more significant when talking about ethics and morality due to the fact that first we feel something,and then we think about it. Thoughts i think stem from emotion,they are a physical manifestation of feeling. Say what you feel right? When you feel a certain way about something,you want to express it. There are only two ways to do that,doing something or saying. If thoughts were just...thoughts without any feeling or emotion,then the world would be A lot more bleak then it is. Morals and ethics would hardly exist,everything would just be up in the air and raw as a cucumber. We believe in democracy, what the people want. What people want can also be called desires,when i think of desires..it makes me think the heart. Its not something you just want,its something thats almost necessitated which means it has to be something from the heart.
Lastly, To comment on the freewill topic;i think that with or without a "god" being prescient and clairvoyant and knowing all that we are going to do,There are certain things that humans require to just be. When i say just be, i mean eat,live,everything. There are certain resources we require obviously or else we cannot function so whether or not he exists,when it comes to getting what we really need,we do not have freewill then. We all need money right? So you have to work. Its as simple as that. I think of it this way,lets say your in a box and its so small that you cant even move within it. Now there is something you have to do in that box and after you do that thing,the box gets a bit bigger and theres a little more space for you. Then there is something else you have to do and you do that and it gets even bigger and so on. The more you do,the more freespace or in other words,the more freewill you have. We all have this box around us believe it or not. To comment on evil,all that does is keep us in an equilibrium and gives people jobs(satan) HA!. Sort of like in any living environment. Im sure you know the deal with the animal kingdom and the foodchain and such so I'm not going to get into that but yeah,evil is sort of the mediator of human existence.
Anyways,thinks for putting this up,its quiet interesting how you worded it and everything. I hope to see more of this up here. You should check out my blog,i have A lot of essays up on nature vs nurture. Are we born with our personalities or do they come from the environment and things like that so yeah thanks again for this post.
Dear Jonathan, I found your
Dear Jonathan,
I found your response to be very interesting pertaining to the insight in the connections made and the "logic" behind the argument on logic. What is logic? I definitely agree with you that "that we created logic." Logic is only meaningful to humans, for it is a social construct. Logic has no more meaning than to serve as a quantifier or for discriminatory purpose. Indeed you could argue that "logic" cannot be quantified, but my point is that it serves to give meaning and value to something abstract, not as the magnitude or degree of the latter. Humans call themselves "logical creatures," and everyone is in some degree astonished with this phrase for it gives us, humans, a unique charactereristic to cherish. But does logic means anything for a non-human perspective or universe? I doubt this, for logic is only in our conciusness and is not tangible. Logic would not exist if humans don't exist. However, I must agree that in the societal-philosophical world that we(humans) have created, logic would be essential to our perceptions and rationale(thoughts). Without such the world as we know it could not possibly exist. Thus, logic is intrinsically related to humanity. Using logic in this manner as a basis to analyze freewill would produce non-satisfactory results. Problems that relates to free will has been the most controversial as well the most insightful arguments in phylosophy as well as in psychology, but the implications of free will goes beyond the range of this two areas to include virtually every type of human interaction. Free will and logic surrounds the basics to the question of humanity's existence. Thus, no answer for the questions regarding logic or free will can be absolute, for such two topics can never be absolute.
I greatly like the point you made on the box analogy. It is very tentative to attempt to speculate on such a controversial topic as free will, but often these assertions are subject to great contradiction and prejudices. However, the analogy on the box, though another subjective idea, could be described as insightful. The connection is well supported with regard to the rationale for such an analogy. Free will, nevertheless, is such a deep topic that categorizing it as a box that expands would be oversimplistic. Free will, I believe, is something beyond rationale and that both free will and determinism interact together to shape human responses. We are deetermined to do things unconsciously based on our genes, based on our biological capabilities, and based on the laws of nature. But we have the potential to stop or modify an unconscious act when it becomes conscious. Take the example of someone hitting you; in a fraction of second your body responds unconsciously to make a response, to back up or to get angry after the action, but a fraction of second later you experience the "conscious" part of the situation and before you take the impulse of responding back you can choose how you are going to respond. Under this idea, evil can be a "choice," whether knowingly or unknowingly we apply this choice with respect to the consequence is another part of the problem. Nevertheless, I have to say that evil can also be psychologically part of humanity, the existence of which serves to distuinguish it from "good." So no absolute answer can be applied to this argument, or at least I found it to be so.
Responding to the post "What is the nature of evil?" I would say that the post itself is prejudiced, for it assumes that creationism is a fact, which is highly controversial and cannot be proved, and further discusses themes with no attempt to provide a rational basis for such speculations. Although it may be an analogy, the points raised there, though interesting in a subjective basis, are unsubstantially supported and with no link to objectivity; A satire in its basical structure and perspective. Contrasting the nature of the topic with the post wold make the last insignificant. I would also have to agree that my opinion is biased, but isn't opinion the subject of personal emotions? The post "What is the Nature of Evil" deserves to be more thorough to do justice to such a great topic.
Dear lewis I am adulated
Dear lewis
I am adulated that you agreed with my opinions on such a topic and were able to respond intelligently. To further discuss my opinion on logic and why we have it,logic gives us that basic common sense alot of us need in our daily lives,you see we dont need logic just in harsh times as i have mentioned in the other response but there is also a little bit of difficulty in every easy period of time or thing that we come across or must do. Think about it like this,lets say you have a book with only 2 pages, now youll finish those pages in no time right? The amount of time and the amount of effort it took you to finish those 2 pages even if it was very small still counts as difficulty. Nothing can be completely easy, if everything was, we wouldnt have to relate time to our tasks because we would finish errands in one second or less. Things always take a certain amount of time to do. In that sense, logic is everywhere and being used all the time. I think I speak for both of us when I say that logic is the seed of thought; as a matter of fact, logic is thought. Physically,our lives depend on internal factors(body brain) and mentally our lives depend on external factors,things that people do to us,human interaction as you mentioned etc etc then we have a natural response to all of that, therefore logic is based on external factors because it is mental. This brings up something you said, if we depend on alot of external factors,we are definitely nothing without the earth. It makes sense because the earth is the only planet that requires so much logic to figure out.
Im sorry I ahve to go, i like your response, thank you.
When it comes to evil,
When it comes to evil, people think that its cool- that it would lead to violents, mysteries, usually the devil. Sometimes people think its real, and that its part of their religon or culture to band all evil.
Evil- can lead to many results when think deaply into them.