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Evil

I don't believe in absolute good or evil as givens in the universe. However, my first wife many years ago was extremely shaken by an experience in a pub in Bala when she came across a 'presence' on the way up the stairs from the bar late at night. She described it as a formless glow in front of her, which was cold and she felt radiated "intense Evil"! No amount of rationalisation, explanation etc could convince her that the feeling of evil was simply caused by fear or shock, and it convinced her of its actuality.
 
Desperado said:
I had to have used my brain to imagine the sensation of evil, and that means that there must be a part of my brain that can recognise evil. Which, to my mind, proves that evil must be a genuine, independent entity.
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I see what you're getting at, but I don't really think it does prove it. That would be like saying that a hallucination proves the thing you see. Or that schizaphrenics "really" hear voices, and aren't just mistaking the internal workings of their brain for external entities (yes I know it's possible, but it's very far from proven). The point I'm clumsily trying to make is, just because you feel you have a mechanism for detecting Evil, doesn't mean that's what you detected, or that's what the mechanism is for, and I can't think of any way that could be proven.
 
A bit like someone giving you a machine they say is an Invisible Pink Unicorn Detector...just 'cos it's making a funny noise, doesn't mean there are Invisible Pink Unicorns in your house.
 
Inverurie Jones said:
A bit like someone giving you a machine they say is an Invisible Pink Unicorn Detector...just 'cos it's making a funny noise, doesn't mean there are Invisible Pink Unicorns in your house.
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Wha..!?

Firkin'! Dang! Blastit!

You mean I wasted money on this thing!? I even bought the dangnabit warrenty!
 
beekboo - Yes, I see your point, but it may be because I didn't explain myself well (it's a difficult one, this).

To try and illustrate it with your analogy about schizophrenia: It's not the same thing as what I mean, because we know voices to exist, and the experience of "voices" - regardless of how it occurs - is familiar to us. The fact that schizophrenic voices are caused by illness is irrelevant, because it's just the experience of hearing voices that matters, not how it comes about. To take my point further with regard to this (in a bit of a stupid way), if a tribe of deaf schizophrenics started to hear voices, then they could resonably deduce that even though they've never heard a real voice, the phenomenon of voices must itself be real.

The same with hallucinations - we know that our brain can "display" shapes and colours, so we can deduce that even if these shapes and colours occur as a result of hallucinations, they must represent things "out there" in the real world.

And with that, I've probably confused my point even more. But I think brian ellwood's story about his first wife is interesting, because it shows how people who say they've experienced evil insist that it's a real, external entity and not their imagination. This actually doesn't happen much with schizophrenic voices or hallucinations, where most sufferers are acutely aware that they are not real (especially with hallucinations).

A bit like someone giving you a machine they say is an Invisible Pink Unicorn Detector...just 'cos it's making a funny noise, doesn't mean there are Invisible Pink Unicorns in your house.
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Yessss... no amount of explaining's going to cut through this, is it... :rolleyes:
 
Our imagination is our strongest tool and most potent weapon. Just think of all the sensory input our brains have to deal with every econd of every minute of every day. It's more than the most powerful computer on earth, and that's just the stuff we know about, i.e. the five main senses. What if there are many more subtle senses that we have yet to discover. But it is our imagination that enables us to take control of this stream of data and produce something coherent and understandable. In a dream state we probably explore less real world data, that we do not have time, state or context to appreciate in the waking day and so in a way it is alien to us. Now our imagination, in trying to make this alien data understandable for us uses symbolism present within our own knowledge base that represents the strength of the data signal, in this case the representation of Evil, a strong and foreboding force...


... WTF am I on about ... shit, I've been possessed, again. :eek!!!!: :gaga:
 
Ah right, I have a question, slightly OT but same theme:

If you have no sensory input at all can you still 'feel' fear?
 
To have no sensory input, one would have to be deprived of it by some process - most likely a traumatic one. I'd say that would leave one pretty much enveloped in fear thereafter. Kind of like being buried alive or the in a situation similar to that of the guy in Metallica's classic tune "One". (If you ain't heard it I recommend a Google lyrics search!)
To have never had sensory input... and intelligence with no sensory input... does not compute!
 
Complete lack of sensory input would quickly render anyone totally mad, at a guess within a day or so. Even a few minutes in a sensory depravation tank can produce all sorts of psychotic episodes and hallucinations. I don't think a person would necessarily feal fear during this process, although they might, but they'd be more likely to construct an insane world around them based on their memories and missfiring neurons, all screwed up but unbearably vivid, similar to the place I used to work.

And I think siriuss has helped clarify my point. Photons impacting the retina produces electric impulses which our brains convert to complex images, involving things like colour and perspective which simply don't exist in the real world. The same with sound and voices, which are just air of varying density, heat and cold - the effect of movement of molecules, etc. etc. And this relates to what I was saying because the feeling of Evil might well simply be the detection of an unknown external stimulus, in which case... in which case.... no, I've lost myself again.

Bollocks :blah:
 
One has to ask if an experience of Evil is really a distorted experience of danger - perhaps the so-called 'fight or flight' mechanism is being tweaked in an odd way?
 
JerryB said:
One has to ask if an experience of Evil is really a distorted experience of danger - perhaps the so-called 'fight or flight' mechanism is being tweaked in an odd way?
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Maybe not 'odd', merely more extreme....

There's a local ned, a complete and utter twat, who's been responsible for several unreported assaults on 'innocent' victims - one of whom, a friend of mine, was unwarrentedly accused of the heinous crime of consenting homosexuality (and ended up requiring facial plastic surgery), while his (male) housemate is apparently innocent - who, on sight, makes my hackles rise: I'm a peacable guy*, but, given the right circumstances (i.e. no witnesses), I'll kick his brains/balls into next month.

But whenever I see him, my blood runs cold..... and my temper runs hot...

*I actually have an extremely violent temper, which costs me a great deal of self-discipline to keep under control... I hate 'losing it'. Virtually all of my family, friends and acquaintances think I'm a pussy-cat, and I hope never to disabuse them of this notion.... So no telling...:D
 
Got the whole David Banner thing going on, eh? I've got that. Lots of teeth gritting required just about all day, every day.
 
I've learned, over the years, to walk away. So some numpty thinks yer chicken - who cares? I'd rather that than kill the bugger....

I put a fist through a door, once. (Solid wood.) A carpet that I was laying almost got kicked out of a window (15' square - the carpet, that is - , it left the ground and was stopped by the wall.)

I don't know where the strength comes from, but seriously, it scares me, so control required.

Don't think I turn green, though..:rolleyes: :D

(Maybe 'Evil' is taking over :eek!!!!: ...)
 
My ex described the 'presence' as different to any other strange or ghostly like experience. She said it did not scare or threaten her in the sense of making her want to run with the hair on her neck rising, but produced a feeling of revulsion and the feeling of the power to "do Evil" when it so chose to. She described it as 'elemental'.

where can I find a sensory depravity tank, my senses need a bit of a stimulation these days?!!!:D ( I know it's a typo but couldn't resist as it tickled my fancy...
 
brian ellwood said:
where can I find a sensory depravity tank, my senses need a bit of a stimulation these days?!!!:D ( I know it's a typo but couldn't resist as it tickled my fancy...
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:yeay:
 
My ex described the 'presence' as different to any other strange or ghostly like experience. She said it did not scare or threaten her in the sense of making her want to run with the hair on her neck rising, but produced a feeling of revulsion and the feeling of the power to "do Evil" when it so chose to. She described it as 'elemental'.
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That's what it was like in my dream. It was a completely alien feeling that you can't describe in words, but it wasn't anything like fear or fright. It was like the feeling was coming in from outside rather than being generated internally in response to something.
 
And if you want a "sensory depravity" tank, just get a big oil drum, fill it with warm water and 10 litres of salt, then don a snorkle and get in there.

I won't go into the social implications of this...
 
I'm pretty sure I know what Evil is, I'm not sure how I know this, however.

Evil is emotionless. It isn't about pleasure, or regret, it is not about feelings at all. It's just something that causes people to hurt other people.
That's why it's so terrifying, because it's not human. You can't relate to it. You can't begin to understand it or explain it. It just IS.

Someone correct me if this is something other than Evil that I'm confusing for Evil.

I think that there are levels of affliction from Evil. People aren't evil, they are afflicted with evil by Evil.
Evil is evil just by making people do evil. That's why it's Evil.

Proof of Evil... it's not really proof, but if you look at psychopaths - they're missing something in their brains, and that space gets filled by Evil. God I sound like a hippy. Sorry.
But that's why listening to a psychopath talk is so terrifying. You're listening partly to Evil.
I don't think there is any kind of being or purpose behind Evil, which is also why it's so evil.

And Evil isn't a question of right or wrong, it just Is. That's why it's Evil.

pinkle
*the fact that I've not been to bed yet has had no effect on this post whatsoever. really.
 
That makes it sound like some sort of exterior force. And sometimes the definition of what constitues being a psychopath or psychopathic behaviour is blurred. And does this also mean that some people who have something missing in their brains can have the space get taken up by 'Good' instead? If not, why not? Why does 'Evil' apparently only have this ability and not 'Good'?
 
I'm fairly sure that Evil can be external, but I'm not sure how far you can apply that to people. If it is apparent then it could be present in a psychopath, who is is perfectly able to distinguish between right and wrong yet chooses not to, yet because this is a life-long, incurable condition it does suggest that it's more likely a result of simple mental instability.

If human behaviour were to be influenced directly by evil then a better candidate would be schizophrenia, where effects occur spontaneously and "urge" the sufferer to commit outrageous, sometimes evil deeds. There is a body of evidence that the voices heard by schizophrenics are not always internally generated, leaving the question "where do they come from?". Another candidate would be the rarer phenomenon of night terrors, where people commit violence and murder whilst asleep.
 
I should say "where people can commit violence and murder whilst asleep". The vast majority of night terror sufferers don't :eek!!!!:
 
What I described was my impression of Evil, sort of like the instinctual idea of what it is.
The rest was supposition, which I'm not very good at.
I think my point about the psychopaths was because that's the impression you get from listening to some of them - that there is a big non-emotional void there, which is filled by something that causes them to do evil things.
I mean, surely just because certain emotions are missing doesn't mean that you're automatically going to be evil. I'm sure there are people in the world with no sense of right or wrong, but who don't go out and do massive wrongs, just the same as they don't just go out and do massive rights.

So what is that factor that pushes them from being emotionally deficient to being a killer?
I reckon it's Evil.

I imagine Good does do the same thing, but we don't hear about it so much as we do killers.

It's a lot easier to have these two external forces, Good and Evil, than to try to explain human Morality.
Which is why religion is so popular.

I don't believe in this idea, but I can say what my impression of the latter of the two forces is. Where I got this impression, I'm not sure!
It's the same as when you dream of flying - you've never flown but somehow you know how it feels. I've never experienced Evil personally, but somehow I know what it's like.

My brain hurts now.
pinkle
 
If Evil can be an external force, then surely Good must be too? But it seems that it isn't in equal measure? If this is the case, why is it so? And what decides the imbalance? Why don't you get people who are obsessively 'Good'? Describing some people as just psychopaths and therefore Evil brings us no closer to understanding what makes psychopaths tick - it's a kind of 'throw away the key' mentality that seems rather backward to me.

The contradictions that this throws up is what tends to make me think that Good and Evil are not external forces, but something completely relative to individual human psychology and perceptions. After all, what happens when some of us are thinking something is 'Evil' and others do not? Who's right? I think people like to believe in Good and Evil as it pretends to explain a few things that makes up what it is the human experience. If you agree with someone else that something is Good or Evil, are you right or are you just expressing your opinion? But at the same time saying something is Evil sidesteps things too much - you can explain it away as just 'Evil' and leave it at that. It's such a completely relative term based on social mores and other factors that it tends to crumble under any logical scrutiny.
 
JerryB said:
If Evil can be an external force, then surely Good must be too?
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...a bit like saying: "If heat can be an external force, then surely cold can too?":p
 
I think you do get people who are obsessively good, don't you?
Like Mother Theresa. These people are sometimes guided by religion, which is where the good vs. evil idea comes from.
I guess it's easier to believe in two external forces than to look inwards, or to try to frame a discussion of how the human sense of right and wrong developed.
Trust me, I've been trying for hours, it aint easy at all.

The thing with the psychopaths, I wasn't saying that they should all be just written off as Evil - my point was the exact opposite - that they are just people, and maybe something from outside has messed with them in such a way that they've become evil.
But having said that I do think it's more likely that the moral thing (the one I can't begin to compose an argument about), has some seat in the brain, and in psychopaths that bit is damaged.
I think I saw something on TV to this effect (on a science programme, not Buffy).

My whole point about the evil thing was that, despite the fact I don't buy the religious idea of Good and Evil, I still have this weird instinctual idea of what Evil is, so I have to wonder if there isn't something in it.

pinkle
 
As psychopathology refers to an absence of conscience, or guilt, if you will, how does that account for the clearly "evil" deeds performed by so-called diagnosed psychopaths like Bundy, Dahmer, ect? What I'm getting at is there is nothing that pathologically explains the desire to hurt, maim, and brutalize, only the lack of remorse experienced.

What is the difference between those psychopaths that maybe, say, cheat on their taxes or pick pockets and those who clearly operate to cause destruction and anguish?
 
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