Good and Bad In The World

Jon · October 17, 2011 02:47 AM

Again, sorry for getting all philisophical but this has also been on my mind. this might come out stupid and badly worded but here we go

do you think there is more good than bad in the world? there is a lot of horrible things going on in the world, with sick people who will brutally murder defenceless people for kicks (Dneprpetrovsk maniacs/3GUYS1HAMMER) and wars that are being fought for rediculous reasons. the world is filled with horrifying people. can you still/do you still see/find beauty and good in the world? would it be rediculous to even claim that there is good in the world? i want to hear your thoughts.

[spoiler]sorry if my bad writing diseased you[/spoiler]

Crabarms · October 17, 2011 03:02 AM

I think there is more good then bad. Through out all this violence and destruction there are still people out there giving their all to help even if it is small amount of help. I think its easier to spot the bad through the tremendous impact it has and how it puts people down.

BluPhoenix · October 17, 2011 03:07 AM

Lol Simpsons best comeback ever

ZennyPLUS · October 17, 2011 03:25 AM

No such thing as a stupid question, just throwing that out there. Just ignorant ones.

There is most definitely still good in the world. You can see small acts of kindness and good each day. It's just unfortunate that the terrible things that do happen take so much of our society's attention. It's strange how people are attracted to bad news. As they say, misery loves company.

If you want to take morals into question, then look at it like this. Human beings have to have an innate set of morals to function in a society. Hell, not even a society, even small groups. Since the early days of homo sapians (maybe even farther back), we've had a set of innate morals to keep our social groups alive. Example, out of a group of 100 people, if 40 started killing the others, reproduced there wouldn't be much left in terms of population. Then the second generation did the same, except the population would get even smaller. And so on and so forth. Simply put, it is universally agreed upon that brutally killing each other for selfish reasons isn't good for the species as a whole. So what happens to the loonys that do go on killing sprees? They're either killed by the more sane members, or exiled from the in group. Keep in mind that unlike our primate cousins, we lack a lot of natural defenses. So the sickly crazy ones would probably be killed by predators. Fast forward a quarter of a million years later, we still do the same thing. Cops shoot the madman, or if he concedes, is captured and locked away inside a cold, dark cell for the rest of his life, exiled from society.

Back then, they had leaders of their groups as do we. We're pretty much the same people, the only difference is that we a basic grasp of technology and how it changed us. So, there will always been good in the world, it's just now we have technology to highlight the lives of idiots who make life harder for good mannered folk.

Now religion is different can of turds I ain't gonna touch.

Jon · October 17, 2011 03:31 AM

i know i'm being cynical for the most part but in a world where people are videotaping kids getting murdered, people killing people for literally their own sick pleasure, it's hard to recognize the brighter side of life (the site rotten comes to my mind)

Sinitron · October 17, 2011 03:48 AM

im one of the good guys and i endorse genocide of the bad guys

ZennyPLUS · October 17, 2011 03:49 AM

Quote from: Sinitron on October 17, 2011 03:48 AM
im one of the good guys and i endorse genocide of the bad guys

Sin's got the right idea.

trent bortknob · October 17, 2011 05:45 AM

i don't find it a stupid question, but i think the answer is simple. yes.

it's simple because i'm pretty sure most of you guys are good people. i'm sure that you yourself think you're a pretty good person. if good did not exist in the world then you could not be a good person.

i think what you might have really been asking with your question was whether or not the ratio of good to bad is good or not. since we're all making the assumption that good and bad exists and can be judged (i think that's a fair assumption to make), we could look into this question, but honestly i think the world is too vast for any conclusive answer to come of it. so this is mainly speculation.

what is the ratio of good and bad in the world? is it even? does it lean really far to one side? i think it's hard to say, to be honest. this could evolve into a very, very long discussion, so i'll try to keep it short without too many tangents.

1. obviously, like i said, the world is too vast for any conclusive knowledge on the subject. we'd have to somehow visit every place in the world and see every single community to see how many individual people were doing good things (helping others, donating to charity, leading good and virtuous lives, being open minded and tolerant to other lifestyles, etc.) and how many people were doing bad things (stealing, lying, killing, raping, fighting, etc etc). it'd probably be fairly simple to accumulate a good amount of information about the bad stuff that happens in the world, because a lot of it is measured by the legal system. there are records of crimes that have happened and you could compile a large list of the global crime rates. this wouldn't include every bad thing ever, but it would give us an idea. however, it would be incredibly tough to compile a good amount of information on how much good stuff happens in the world. a lot of that goes by unrecorded, and thus is only really seen upon personal experiences with other humans and the occasional news story about a philanthropist or some volunteer workers. so trying to find out the answer to this question is very hard from using compiled information.

2. are we defining "good and bad" in vague and obvious terms? where only things like killing and theft are judged? i think this might make the whole question more complicated. if you include the opinions of bible thumpers, homosexuality would be considered "bad". if you include the opinions of muslims extremists, all other religions are bad. now, obviously both of those groups of people are incorrect (they're usually wrong about stuff), but if we're going to try to define the good/bad ratio we might need to take into account many "controversial" matters of morality (they're only controversial to be people who base value judgments on ancient texts instead of their minds).

3. how strong does the sense of good and bad have to be in order for it to actually be considered "good"? i mean, if you get a lot of people living comfortably, very few bad things are going to happen because there's no reason for them to break the law or do anything unethical really. are we going to count people with this weak "we're moral because we have very few conflicts in our life" stance as good people? i believe that in most parts of the US, people are comfortable enough to be able to live this way. but what does it matter if you're only good because it's easy to be good?

what do i think? i think there is much, much more bad in the world than there is good. but that is because i think being good is only actually valuable if being good and virtuous is deeply rooted in a person. i don't think we're at the point yet where the majority of people value virtue or morality over their own selfishness, it's just really easy to be moral in our society. if it wasn't so easy, not nearly as many people would act morally.

if our government collapsed and there were no longer any legal punishments for our actions, i think that theft would become a huge problem, and murder and violence would abound. you wouldn't be able to trust anyone. this is because people are selfish, irrational and violent by nature. it doesn't seem to me that a deep knowledge of morality or a deep respect for ethics or virtue is a part of very many people's lives, and i think that most people's moral precepts were passed down by their parents and are refined to be the de-facto moral code of your social group. this is not an understanding of morals, these are just assumptions people inherit. they wouldn't be followed if they weren't easy.

i got a lot of my ideas on this from confuscious and plato, as well as socrates, and i'm pretty sure they're right. the world is a pretty dismal place.

trent bortknob · October 17, 2011 05:49 AM

oh wait one quick thing.

when i first read your post, i thought you were asking if good exists in the world at all. now i realize you were asking if there is more good than bad in the world. so, to clear up my first line:

yes, there is good in the world. no, there is not more good than there is bad.

trent bortknob · October 17, 2011 05:50 AM

lmao my first 3 paragraphs are based on misreading your first post. sorry about that. disregard those

psi43 · October 17, 2011 06:06 AM

Quote from: trent bortknob on October 17, 2011 05:49 AMno, there is not more good than there is bad.

actually, i'm pretty sure there is. i just think that the bad outweighs the good, if you know what I mean. One bad action is way more notable than several good ones.

example: you don't introduce a guy saying "that's my friend paul, he never killed someone!" but if you are talking about someone who murdered someone else you'd be like "yeah that guy killed someone, he's a bad person".

unless you take neutral persons into your count, then yeah, bad would probably outweigh the good but not when speaking of individual humans but more if you're speaking of one or a small group of bad people, influencing neutral people to do bad stuff.

redmongoose · October 17, 2011 06:29 AM

good and bad are abstract concepts developed by human beings to further organize a complex system of favoritism over other abstract concepts such as honor, valor or justice. breaking it down even further none of these ideas have any tangible purpose towards an organisms ultimate goal being merely survival but are rather a measurement of our own interpretation. All situations we might refer to as 'good' will undoubtedly have elements I am sure a lot of us would consider 'bad' and, vice versa.

Pants, the terrible · October 17, 2011 06:41 AM

good is nothing more than the ability to dismiss confrontation and to not cause harm to anyone else in any way.

so in essence fighting bad is bad. how droll we fuck ups can be

trent bortknob · October 17, 2011 07:00 AM

Quote from: redmongoose on October 17, 2011 06:29 AM
good and bad are abstract concepts developed by human beings to further organize a complex system of favoritism over other abstract concepts such as honor, valor or justice. breaking it down even further none of these ideas have any tangible purpose towards an organisms ultimate goal being merely survival but are rather a measurement of our own interpretation.

this is true, in that you're correct that justice, virtue, etc, may not directly help us survive (sometimes it does). however, i think we;re at the point now where we don't constantly need to worry about survival. sure, it's good to not do things that kill us, but we're complex animals. a kangaroo might only care about survival, but humans desire and require fulfillment, A.K.A the good life. there are many things that are a part of the good life, things like love, happiness, justice, freedom, and most importantly, virtue.

trent bortknob · October 17, 2011 07:01 AM

those things are not really needed by other animals. for some reason, humans seem to need them.

Pants, the terrible · October 17, 2011 07:11 AM

so is raping babies and corpses worse than raping men?

redmongoose · October 17, 2011 07:46 AM

I would rape the shit out of a corpse

redmongoose · October 17, 2011 07:57 AM

if you run out of holes you can just get a knife and make more

trent bortknob · October 17, 2011 08:20 AM

Quote from: Pants, the terrible on October 17, 2011 07:11 AM
so is raping babies and corpses worse than raping men?

um what

if you want a serious answer, i think raping babies is worse than either of those because babies have no chance of self defense or even developed sexual organs. so uh obviously that's pretty bad

then it's worse to rape a guy because that's a conscious being.

and finally i guess it's probably wrong to have sex with a corpse. i mean the corpse is not alive so there really is no way to rape it, you can have sex with it sure but it doesn't really hurt it and there's no way for it to be against it. i might be able to buy and argument that necrophilia is not immoral, but i still think it's fucking disgusting.

Pants, the terrible · October 17, 2011 08:58 AM

but you wouldn't be psychologically hurting the baby or the corpse, knowing they wont have memory of such an encounter for various reasons, and they would not spread their torment onto others.

so, in the long run, the baby and the corpse are better candidates for rape than a man, knowing that man would eventually become dangerous do to the harmful event in his past.

is a physically disgusting act worse than a more societally harmful one?