"Evil Men"

[Illuminatus]

Like everything else, evil is completely relative. There are moral standards that you can apply (and yes, ones that I completely agree with) but to say anyone/anything is evil is at it's heart a subjective moral judgement, and subject to criticism by anyone with a seperate view from yours. There are many fundamentalist Christians that say homosexuals are inherently evil. I think that THEY are evil for being so damn intolerant of people different than themselves. Hell, I'm sure that there are people who have moral standards that are so fucked up as to be the complete inversion of the generally accepted ones that I and most people hold to (i.e. murdering/rape is wrong, genocide is evil)

On a less abstract note, I feel like if you're looking to see a pure example of true evil, read Shakespeare's Othello, and look at the character of Iago (my favorite Shakespeare character). He is overcome with hatred of Othello, and with full lucidity and consciousness of his actions, proceeds to destroy his life. Iago IS evil. That pure, malicious hate for the life of another human is how I define the word.

(Thanks for reading. I'm intoxicated, and haven't posted on the forums in probably a year)

[Mannix]

Originally Posted by Illuminatus

There are many fundamentalist Christians that say homosexuals are inherently evil. I think that THEY are evil for being so damn intolerant of people different than themselves.

Doesnt' that make you intolerant as well?

At any rate, my feelings on evil is that you can do something without being it. Being something implies you didn't have a choice. Like how none of us had a choice in what species we wanted to be when we were born. We are people and nothing can change that. A black person will always be black by happenstance of birth. They have neither choice nor abilty to change (Michael Jackson doesn't count and you know it). Same with just about any other thing you can "be." No matter what you define evil as, being it implies its the above.

[Illuminatus]

Originally Posted by Mannix

Doesnt' that make you intolerant as well?

EXACTLY my point. It's all relative.

[Monstructor]

Originally Posted by Mannix

First off I want to clarify that I want this thread to focus on linguistic particulars rather than on any particular "evildoers." Now that that's out of the way...

I think the English language is limited in its capacity to describe people that do bad things. I believe this is the case because far too often when discussing men like Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin, various serial killers and the like (that weren't actually, physically, clinically insane) we tend to default to terms such as crazy, insane, evil, monster, etc etc etc to describe their actions and nature.

I believe that conducting a dialogue on such people using the outlined terms and the categories they represent cheapens the consequences of their actions and provides them with an existential "out."

Why? Because crazy/insane people are not in control of the mental faculties, and saying, for instance, that Saddam is 'insane' because of the crimes inflicted on the Kurds gives him the psychological excuse of 'hey I couldn't stop myself, I can't control my own mind.'

Evil/monster present the same problem. Evil and monsterous beings do not posess the capacity for good in their nature. They act in a vile nature because they can do no other - its what they are to their very core.

The people that perpetrate these crimes are human beings that posess the capacity for choice. Each and every situation presented to an individual allows for essentially two choices - help or hurt. I'm not saying that there aren't situations that have multiple solutions, just that those solutions can be categorized as helping something or hurting something. Yes, sometimes those things conflict - hurt one person to help another, etc - and sometimes the solution results in nothing at all, but those situations are rare and I'm speaking in general terms.

Every time the DC sniper pulled the trigger, he had a binary choice - kill/don't kill. Every step on the way to invading Poland, Hitler had the choice to reverse his path. The list can go on and on, so my point is this; these guys that are refered to with the terms I listed at the begining made deliberate descisions they were fully cognizant of. They had every chance and capacity to do otherwise and they willfully chose not to.

What I haven't been able to figure out is what kind of language we should use to discuss these kinds of situations, because the way we do it now just doesn't cut it for me.

What I don't like is your use of the term evil *men*. There are lots of evil women in history. And I'm not trying to be politically correct...quite the opposite, in fact. Every female ruler or leader has done something bad that's gotten lots of people killed. Instead of listening to feminists and gender traitors, howsabout you actually look at the history textbooks? There are as many evil women in history as there are evil men. And I don't recollect there to have ever been any goodly female rulers. So gimme a break about your feminist nonsense.

[shiney]

What the fuck does that have to do with anything?

No but seriously I missed the part where that makes any goddamn sense. I'll need some references to where that isn't anything but ridiculous. I'd say get it together but you're bandodging so like, when I am awake tomorrow and with it, I'll probably have to get rid of you.

[Krylo]

Lazy ass.

[Nique]

I guess really, evil would be knowing that something is wrong - and by that, I mean you yourself belive in a paticular moral code which makes this distinction for you, personally - and betraying that belife or knowledge.

That's somewhat obtuse... I mean, I break my moral code at times, and I don't belive that means that I am evil... I suppose if I continued to do so without any tangible remorse or attempts at retification, that would make me evil.

We say 'insane' and 'nuts' and such I think becuase we like to belive that men like Hitler were truly misguided instead of intentionally wicked... Wrong as it may be, rationalization comes into play in a much of the unspeakable acts committed by humans towards each other. It leaves us with very little hope if induviduals who just like to hurt people arise with no apparent excuse or reason for acting, well, evil.

[Gascmark de Leone]

Here is my definition of an evil man: a man, who is of sane mind, that will, with full knowledge of what he is doing, kill a man, and do it again, and again, not because the people he kills are trying to kill him or other such things, but because he wants to.

To summarize, a person who likes to kill others because he likes it.

To my list of evil men (and there are plenty of women, I'm sure), I would include Hitler, Stalin (he screwed over Russia, and did his own Holocaust on Russians of German descent in WWII), and Osama bin Laden.

[The_Editable_Wiki]

Sometimes a few words can't describe them, these evil people.

Hitler hated jews. With a passion.He was in power, and used that power to indulge in his hate for Jews, and others who he did not see fit for life.Thus, we use the words 'evil, monsterous fiend who slaughtered innocent lives' to describe them. But, that is playing the negative side of him, there had to be a good side, there always is.

The english language does not have a word for everything. That would make school ridiciously easy. So, that's why the 'sentence' was born. If you still can't find what you were describing, you make a paragraph, and so on. There we find the problem of 'we need a word that describes all this'. The only problem is, they havn't made on yet. So it comes full circle.

But, I don't really think it is the point of being able to describe the entire human mind in three words or less. The point is what they have done, and your opinion forms without the absoluete definition of that opinion. Until your vocabulary expands.

Long story short;there probally is a word that describes it, you just havn't made it up yet. And that is really doesn't matter at all.

[Sir Pinkleton]

Yunno, I actually had this same predicament a while ago.

I was thinking about the "if you had three wishes" question, and thought up a brilliant idea! All the people who would do bad (evil) things would get weaker, while all the people that who would do good things would get stronger! But then there comes the predicament: what defines evil?

I wish I had more than just that to add to the thread, but everything worth saying has been said in this thread, or at least that seems apparent.