Originally posted by wuliheron
Sorry, but you're wrong. I don't believe in anything like "evil". For me, evil refers to something absolute, innate or irredemable. I do believe there are serial killers and whatnot and to some extent they may even be predisposed to such behavior, but that doesn't make what they do "evil", just extremely bad. No doubt with the right environment and perhaps even medical attention such people could be helped.
Actually, I'm an amoral Philosophical Taoist. To a great extent concepts like good and bad are relativistic for me as Iaccus points out. However, I must point out they are relative to how we each see them as individuals, not in some abstract theoretical way. For the vast majority of humanity the idea of someone blowing up the entire world is bad, so sometimes I'll refer to such things in straightforward ways. Most people with moralities and ideas about normalcy don't understand such a viewpoint, so I don't go into the details much and just put it out that its merely my opinion.
This same relativism applies to everything for me. Free will vs determinism, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, and even the irrational and rational. That's just the way paradoxes are, they lend themselves to whatever interpretation we care to make.
Additionally, there really are no societies that don't know right from wrong. Many like the !Kung have no words for certain concepts like guilt, but they understand the concepts nonetheless. They just don't need the word and may even find its use counterproductive. Sometimes implicite rules are better than explicite ones for achieving goals.
