The Human Animal (Animals)

by dhw, Thursday, June 17, 2010, 19:55 (5271 days ago) @ xeno6696

Matt, you are our flashing firefly, and I strive in vain to hold you still in my AgnosticWeb. But I shall keep trying.-Compare these statements:
1) The source or cause of evil is man's social instincts / the group.
2) "If there was no other people, there is no one to do evil to."
3) "My overriding point is that only in context of the group you live in are any of your actions painted according to whatever that society's moral valuations are."
4) "Man himself is neither good nor evil; man simply acts and the group decides what's right."-As I have repeated at the beginning of every post, 1) is the statement with which I disagree. It has nothing to do with the facts that evil cannot exist independently of other people, or that there are no objective norms for good and evil (which you say are interchangeable). I'm aware that one group's patriot is another group's terrorist, or insurgent, or traitor. These are different topics. You have also stated that distinctions are the source of evil, but distinctions are neither good nor evil. I suggested that the cause of evil is "those parts of our nature that drive us to use the distinctions for harmful purposes." You have not responded to this, although it is based on one of your own statements. -The fact that the group decides what is right does not mean that the group causes the individual or the group as a whole to do what is wrong. This is where your social-context argument clashes with your personal judgement, and the Yanomomo example is an excellent one with which to illustrate the point. Since slavery is good in the eyes of the Yanomomo, you are imposing your subjective values if you claim that their society is the source of evil, just because you condemn the system of slavery. If you don't condemn it, then you can't argue that Yanomomo society is the cause of people doing evil. My group, however, does condemn slavery, and so if I became a slave-owner (there are such people in our society), would you say the group was the source of my wrong-doing, i.e. that the group caused me to become a slave-owner? Of course you wouldn't. This is not, in my view, "lawyerlike sophistry" but plain common sense. -Perhaps we can agree that man is neither good nor evil, man's social instincts are neither good nor evil, grouping is neither good nor evil, and distinctions are neither good nor evil. Good and evil are not absolutes, and norms may vary in different groups, but the source of both is the different "parts of our nature", some of which you rightly say we must guard against. However, let me make a small concession to you, although you "consider ALL evil being social in cause": in certain circumstances, such as under a brutal dictatorship, membership of a group may cause individuals to do things they themselves consider to be evil. -Following on from what I see as a fair comment that "man can never escape society", you finish with yet another of your magnificently provocative statements (I should add that I really appreciate the way you stoke our fires!): "I actually deny that men are "individuals" by nature. I think that we are social by nature." Why must it be an either/or? I am acutely conscious of myself as an individual AND as a social being. My individual identity arises out my interaction with myself and with others, and although at a pinch I suppose I might survive (unhappily) without others, I certainly couldn't survive without myself!--
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