It was me. I did it.

[LMNO]

My point was that there is no singular source for evil in the world (whether or not "evil" exists as an absolute is immaterial; bad things are bad things regardless for my purposes).

It was me. I did it.

All of humanity's problems, it's crimes, its sins, its stupidity, all of the evil and ugly things produced by human action: it's all my fault.

I don't exist.

In that case, you're in serious need of a rewrite.

[hooplala]

The role of the narrator was the fictional "singular problem", which does not exist, as stated in the end of the story.

I think it still makes sense, as is.

[Cain]

The role of the narrator was the fictional "singular problem", which does not exist, as stated in the end of the story.

I think it still makes sense, as is.

Agreed/

[Cainad (dec.)]

Congrats. I believe you just made the same mistake as my Xtian friend.

dude. don't use "you came to the same conclusion as a christian" as an argument to point out that somebody is wrong. that's just weak.

You are absolutely right. But I am not in the mood to care.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

So basically what you are trying to convey is that there's no particular source of badness that makes badness happen, but that bad stuff happens because people do shitty things?

Because it's internal, not external. The enemy is all of us. As is the savior. And etc.

[hooplala]

Hail Eris.

[Epimetheus]

Well, fuck, after that post I'm inclined to call you hubris too.

[Cainad (dec.)]

I know, "I" am taking credit for an awful lot aren't I?

[Jack of Turnips]

A starving tiger on the island of Gangasagar attacked and ate a young boy. Good for the tiger-organism, because it lived; evil for the boy-organism because it died. The Universe at large did not care. A community of malaria organisms found their way into a vertebrate host and flourished. Good for them, evil for the guy who got malaria. Again, the Universe did not care. A star exploded in the Andromeda Galaxy; a snowflake crystallized in the air 1000 meters above Chos Malal, Argentina; and sharks tore apart a fur seal off the coast of South Africa.

The Universe did not care.

Cainad-the-universal-bringer-of-evil does not exist because evil is not an objective, experimentally verifiable thing which exists in the Universe. Evil has no energy spectrum, field equation, or mass.

Cainad-the-writer-of-moral-fables can exist, though, because good and evil are human constructs. They exist in just the same way as the concepts of beauty, existential angst, and Emma Bovary's ivory-white breasts. (WAIT! Substitute something sensible for that last item.)

To avoid the Wrath of Chaos every human has to take his gorm firmly into his own hands and declare, "While the Universe knows nothing of good and evil, I am a human and I say that I DO know good and evil. And I will not feed children to starving tigers, because that would be evil...evil because I say so."

Or so I would posit. I am probably veering wildly away from Cainad's vision here, but never mind, my blood's up and there are wasps buzzing in my fingertips.

Doesn't this mean that everyone has their own definition of good and evil? Yes, of course. Isn't that a recipe for madness, anarchy, and vile deeds? No, not at all. With the exception of genuine psychopaths, everyone goes to the same wells when drawing moral truths. You draw your morality from those you admire, from friends, great books, stories, poetry, teachers, even paintings and music.

If you are deeply religious, you follow your holy book. What it says is, by definition, true -- even if it says that a man wounded in the stones can never enter the congregation of God. (Stupid, but there it is.)

If you are an atheist, a humanist, or a discordian, you probably have to consciously evaluate what you learn. To my mind, that's a solid and useful way to arrive at a strong moral structure. Question everyone and everything that tries to tell you what to think! Check their logic, their honesty, their credentials, and the clarity of their eyes.

But unless you are capable of utterly ignoring every cue about good and bad, and capable as well of ignoring what seems to be a built-in mammalian empathy for other beings -- in other words, unless you really are a psychopath -- then you will assuredly attain a working definition of good and evil in human terms. The idea that no one has a moral framework unless god or gods give them one is just a load of old ox bollocks.

The Universe would explode the Sun in a heartbeat and wipe out Earth and all life on it, no regrets and no second chances...if the laws of physics demanded that event. The Universe is not able to tell us about morality.

We have to work that out ourselves, because we are human. May Eris help us.

(preachy, preachy, preachy. I should have gotten drunk before I wrote this.)

~~ Jack of Turnips

[Lies]

A starving tiger on the island of Gangasagar attacked and ate a young boy. Good for the tiger-organism, because it lived; evil for the boy-organism because it died. The Universe at large did not care. A community of malaria organisms found their way into a vertebrate host and flourished. Good for them, evil for the guy who got malaria. Again, the Universe did not care. A star exploded in the Andromeda Galaxy; a snowflake crystallized in the air 1000 meters above Chos Malal, Argentina; and sharks tore apart a fur seal off the coast of South Africa.

The Universe did not care.

Cainad-the-universal-bringer-of-evil does not exist because evil is not an objective, experimentally verifiable thing which exists in the Universe. Evil has no energy spectrum, field equation, or mass.

Cainad-the-writer-of-moral-fables can exist, though, because good and evil are human constructs. They exist in just the same way as the concepts of beauty, existential angst, and Emma Bovary's ivory-white breasts. (WAIT! Substitute something sensible for that last item.)

To avoid the Wrath of Chaos every human has to take his gorm firmly into his own hands and declare, "While the Universe knows nothing of good and evil, I am a human and I say that I DO know good and evil. And I will not feed children to starving tigers, because that would be evil...evil because I say so."

Or so I would posit. I am probably veering wildly away from Cainad's vision here, but never mind, my blood's up and there are wasps buzzing in my fingertips.

Doesn't this mean that everyone has their own definition of good and evil? Yes, of course. Isn't that a recipe for madness, anarchy, and vile deeds? No, not at all. With the exception of genuine psychopaths, everyone goes to the same wells when drawing moral truths. You draw your morality from those you admire, from friends, great books, stories, poetry, teachers, even paintings and music.

If you are deeply religious, you follow your holy book. What it says is, by definition, true -- even if it says that a man wounded in the stones can never enter the congregation of God. (Stupid, but there it is.)

If you are an atheist, a humanist, or a discordian, you probably have to consciously evaluate what you learn. To my mind, that's a solid and useful way to arrive at a strong moral structure. Question everyone and everything that tries to tell you what to think! Check their logic, their honesty, their credentials, and the clarity of their eyes.

But unless you are capable of utterly ignoring every cue about good and bad, and capable as well of ignoring what seems to be a built-in mammalian empathy for other beings -- in other words, unless you really are a psychopath -- then you will assuredly attain a working definition of good and evil in human terms. The idea that no one has a moral framework unless god or gods give them one is just a load of old ox bollocks.

The Universe would explode the Sun in a heartbeat and wipe out Earth and all life on it, no regrets and no second chances...if the laws of physics demanded that event. The Universe is not able to tell us about morality.

We have to work that out ourselves, because we are human. May Eris help us.

(preachy, preachy, preachy. I should have gotten drunk before I wrote this.)

~~ Jack of Turnips

tl/dr, got up to "the universe did not care" and got the point.

The Tao treats all as straw dogs.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

A starving tiger on the island of Gangasagar attacked and ate a young boy. Good for the tiger-organism, because it lived; evil for the boy-organism because it died. The Universe at large did not care. A community of malaria organisms found their way into a vertebrate host and flourished. Good for them, evil for the guy who got malaria. Again, the Universe did not care. A star exploded in the Andromeda Galaxy; a snowflake crystallized in the air 1000 meters above Chos Malal, Argentina; and sharks tore apart a fur seal off the coast of South Africa.

The Universe did not care.

Cainad-the-universal-bringer-of-evil does not exist because evil is not an objective, experimentally verifiable thing which exists in the Universe. Evil has no energy spectrum, field equation, or mass.

Cainad-the-writer-of-moral-fables can exist, though, because good and evil are human constructs. They exist in just the same way as the concepts of beauty, existential angst, and Emma Bovary's ivory-white breasts. (WAIT! Substitute something sensible for that last item.)

To avoid the Wrath of Chaos every human has to take his gorm firmly into his own hands and declare, "While the Universe knows nothing of good and evil, I am a human and I say that I DO know good and evil. And I will not feed children to starving tigers, because that would be evil...evil because I say so."

Or so I would posit. I am probably veering wildly away from Cainad's vision here, but never mind, my blood's up and there are wasps buzzing in my fingertips.

Doesn't this mean that everyone has their own definition of good and evil? Yes, of course. Isn't that a recipe for madness, anarchy, and vile deeds? No, not at all. With the exception of genuine psychopaths, everyone goes to the same wells when drawing moral truths. You draw your morality from those you admire, from friends, great books, stories, poetry, teachers, even paintings and music.

If you are deeply religious, you follow your holy book. What it says is, by definition, true -- even if it says that a man wounded in the stones can never enter the congregation of God. (Stupid, but there it is.)

If you are an atheist, a humanist, or a discordian, you probably have to consciously evaluate what you learn. To my mind, that's a solid and useful way to arrive at a strong moral structure. Question everyone and everything that tries to tell you what to think! Check their logic, their honesty, their credentials, and the clarity of their eyes.

But unless you are capable of utterly ignoring every cue about good and bad, and capable as well of ignoring what seems to be a built-in mammalian empathy for other beings -- in other words, unless you really are a psychopath -- then you will assuredly attain a working definition of good and evil in human terms. The idea that no one has a moral framework unless god or gods give them one is just a load of old ox bollocks.

The Universe would explode the Sun in a heartbeat and wipe out Earth and all life on it, no regrets and no second chances...if the laws of physics demanded that event. The Universe is not able to tell us about morality.

We have to work that out ourselves, because we are human. May Eris help us.

(preachy, preachy, preachy. I should have gotten drunk before I wrote this.)

~~ Jack of Turnips

tl/dr, got up to "the universe did not care" and got the point.

The Tao treats all as straw dogs.

Too bad.  It's pretty damn good stuff.

"tl/dr" ---->  The reason they fuck you in the ear and get away with it.

[Lies]

A starving tiger on the island of Gangasagar attacked and ate a young boy. Good for the tiger-organism, because it lived; evil for the boy-organism because it died. The Universe at large did not care. A community of malaria organisms found their way into a vertebrate host and flourished. Good for them, evil for the guy who got malaria. Again, the Universe did not care. A star exploded in the Andromeda Galaxy; a snowflake crystallized in the air 1000 meters above Chos Malal, Argentina; and sharks tore apart a fur seal off the coast of South Africa.

The Universe did not care.

Cainad-the-universal-bringer-of-evil does not exist because evil is not an objective, experimentally verifiable thing which exists in the Universe. Evil has no energy spectrum, field equation, or mass.

Cainad-the-writer-of-moral-fables can exist, though, because good and evil are human constructs. They exist in just the same way as the concepts of beauty, existential angst, and Emma Bovary's ivory-white breasts. (WAIT! Substitute something sensible for that last item.)

To avoid the Wrath of Chaos every human has to take his gorm firmly into his own hands and declare, "While the Universe knows nothing of good and evil, I am a human and I say that I DO know good and evil. And I will not feed children to starving tigers, because that would be evil...evil because I say so."

Or so I would posit. I am probably veering wildly away from Cainad's vision here, but never mind, my blood's up and there are wasps buzzing in my fingertips.

Doesn't this mean that everyone has their own definition of good and evil? Yes, of course. Isn't that a recipe for madness, anarchy, and vile deeds? No, not at all. With the exception of genuine psychopaths, everyone goes to the same wells when drawing moral truths. You draw your morality from those you admire, from friends, great books, stories, poetry, teachers, even paintings and music.

If you are deeply religious, you follow your holy book. What it says is, by definition, true -- even if it says that a man wounded in the stones can never enter the congregation of God. (Stupid, but there it is.)

If you are an atheist, a humanist, or a discordian, you probably have to consciously evaluate what you learn. To my mind, that's a solid and useful way to arrive at a strong moral structure. Question everyone and everything that tries to tell you what to think! Check their logic, their honesty, their credentials, and the clarity of their eyes.

But unless you are capable of utterly ignoring every cue about good and bad, and capable as well of ignoring what seems to be a built-in mammalian empathy for other beings -- in other words, unless you really are a psychopath -- then you will assuredly attain a working definition of good and evil in human terms. The idea that no one has a moral framework unless god or gods give them one is just a load of old ox bollocks.

The Universe would explode the Sun in a heartbeat and wipe out Earth and all life on it, no regrets and no second chances...if the laws of physics demanded that event. The Universe is not able to tell us about morality.

We have to work that out ourselves, because we are human. May Eris help us.

(preachy, preachy, preachy. I should have gotten drunk before I wrote this.)

~~ Jack of Turnips

tl/dr, got up to "the universe did not care" and got the point.

The Tao treats all as straw dogs.

Too bad.  It's pretty damn good stuff.

"tl/dr" ---->  The reason they fuck you in the ear and get away with it.

Ok, fine, I went and read it.
And it was nothing I didn't already know, all good, all correct, all that I agree with, but I was right when I said "got up to "the universe did not care" and got the point."

Just Sayin.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

"tl/dr" ---->  The reason they fuck you in the ear and get away with it.

Bullshit.

Not THINKING is the reason for that. Not READING someone else's long-winded twaddle has nothing to do with it, if you're already thinking. Even if it's YOUR twaddle, Roger.

The point of the twaddle is to get people who aren't already thinking to start, isn't it?

Go read my goddamn stories in Bring & Brag if you think they're fucking you in the ear for tl;dr. AHA! GOT YOU THERE, DIDN'T I BROTHER?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

"tl/dr" ---->  The reason they fuck you in the ear and get away with it.

Bullshit.

Not THINKING is the reason for that. Not READING someone else's long-winded twaddle has nothing to do with it, if you're already thinking. Even if it's YOUR twaddle, Roger.

What's reading got to do with it?  I was referring to the ATTENTION SPAN deficiency.

The point of the twaddle is to get people who aren't already thinking to start, isn't it?

Go read my goddamn stories in Bring & Brag if you think they're fucking you in the ear for tl;dr. AHA! GOT YOU THERE, DIDN'T I BROTHER?

They're fucking ME in the ear because I write blatantly threatening things about the prez.

[A.N. Other]

So, to sum up this thread:

Good and evil is only in the mind of the beholder.

See, didn't need a long ass story to explain that.