It made me wonder, hearing from certain people who faced discrimination and harassment. They were hurt every single day intentionally and some of them had PTSD caused by their harm and became incredibly jumpy and traumatized.
Would that make the person who caused the harm evil?
This “evil/not evil” metaphysical dichotomy is a moral framework. There are no intrinsically ”evil” people, and I would drop that moral framework.
Philosophy professor and YouTuber Hans-Georg Moeller:
I think good and evil both are things you do more than things that you are.
I was evil, it was from trauma. I left and I miss her.
Evil as a concept is an excuse not to see the interconnectedness of all things. Labeling with such terms shows a lack of effort to understand and a lack of compassion on the part of those who use such labels.
This is a great way to frame this. To put this thinking into an example, most people who are abusive toward others have themselves been victims of abuse earlier in their lives and are reenacting patterns they were taught. I think those people deserve compassion and understanding
I don’t necessarily think people can be evil.
I know of some of my abusers that they were abused themselves. They knew what they were doing to me wasn’t right but it gave them feelings of power in a world where they otherwise felt powerless.
For others, bullying me was a social sport, just something you did to “belong” to a certain group.
I think what they did was evil, but I don’t think they were evil people. They were normal people with inadequate upbringing put into painful situations that resulted in bullying/abusing me being the only perceived “good” outcome for them. For almost all people who do evil things, this is the case.
I think we all possess the ability to do evil acts in response to certain stimuli, many are just lucky enough never to receive the set of stimuli that causes them to be evil, so they can allow themselves to think they are different, i.e. “good”, and start labeling other people a certain way, i.e. “evil”.
Conversely, I also think all the people who do evil acts are also able to do good acts in certain situations.
What we then call a “good” or an “evil person” is just a person where we perceive a larger share of behaviors attributed to that adjective. But are they evil or good people, is that a quality inherent to them? Or is the environment they grew up in evil or good? Or are humans in general evil or good? Is our perception of the share of each set of behaviors even right?
I think no one deserves for their whole self to be called evil. I think you can call actions evil, and some people may have a lot of these actions, and they’re worthy of being avoided because of that, but I believe they’re the same kind of person than everyone else, just put into terrible situations. So no, I don’t think people can be evil.
In my opinion, in order for an action to be evil, the actor must know what is good or what is right behavior. While sometimes the actor acts with intent to cause harm, sometimes, the actor is ignorant of such things.
What if they acknowledge it’s wrong, but it’s not when they do it
I can’t think of a more reasonable definition of an evil person than a person who does a lot of evil.
Usually people have some kind of way of justifying an action to themselves, and there’s always a story that lead up to it. Everyone I’ve gotten to know well is part of one problem or another.
So, It’s not very interesting to ask where to draw the line, and even less useful. The important thing is what to do about it.
To me, evil is the absence of empathy. Or more broadly, the absence of a filter that would prevent someone from harming equals and the disadvantaged.
I realised recently that I seem to have a significant emotional response to someone stomping up stairs. It could’ve been as a result of a very mildly abusive parent during my childhood, stomping up stairs to confront me and/or physically punish me.
I don’t think of that person as evil, just… Damaging in some ways. Kind in others.
Some people are a detriment to society, enforcing destruction and devolution to slow the progression of humanity. Harmful to others. I believe those intentionally harming others are cruel and should be removed or banished, in order for the community in general to stay healthy. But for a being to be evil, as I would define it… They must be monstrous. They must create devastation, such as serial murdering of multiple beings for personal gratification; subjecting an immature mind to physically sexual environments; generating and leading an army of people into a witch hunt; directing a coalition towards maximum profit at the cost of the wellbeing and livelihood of thousands, even millions; or grooming, brainwashing people into oppressive, gated environments that breed fear and lies… If someone who causes PTSD does it repeatedly, they can also be classed as evil by my definition.
“evil” is usually reserved for people whose actions and/or beliefs reach such an extreme immoral high that they become impossible to defend. morality is a spectrum where objective and subjective lie on opposite ends and everything we do to ourselves, others, and the world can be place along the spectrum. for example, nobody reasonable would argue against rape being objectively evil.
it seems you are asking if abusers are evil because of the trauma they cause their victims. this doesn’t have a direct and clear answer, because it’s ultimately up to each person who suffered abuse to make that call. of course you are welcome to your own opinion on how you see the abuser, but if the victim thinks differently then perhaps their perspective should hold more weight than yours. or does that matter? victims may forgive their abusers - does that mean society should? it’s complicated.
personally, i think it depends on the abuse and trauma caused. some things feel worse than others. i’ll always feel the way i do regardless of how a victim interprets the event but i wouldn’t make them adopt my view of themselves or how i see their abuser. they have every right to enforce their morality within their own experiences.
