I have heard people state, there is no such thing as a good gesture and everyone is helping themselves and not helping others, especially active charity workers and the like. I understand this thought process and perhaps even agree, but looking further there is good reason. Again nature is amazing and has likely planned all this.
We all have issues and are built to imagine our past could always be better, this may be abusive parents, too caring parents or other issues like environmental or social standing etc. The list is endless actually and great that it is.
So why would somebody wish to help others, is that person saving themselves, in the bigger picture does that even matter. In the study of complexity theory we learn things like the butterfly effect and why small changes can lead to enormous differences, even catastrophic at times. In general good grows good and vice versa.
So are good deeds selfishly for you or are they actually you being a good person. I firmly believe it's the same thing! This is where I agree with the no good deed is pure and only for others. It cannot be, but in the same token it makes complete sense and if anything it makes the good deed even more important.
What about bad people doing bad deeds and what is a bad deed?
I think there is a disease in society and it takes many forms;
- Greed and money lust
- Fighting every possible fight
- Acting without knowledge
- Believing bad to quickly
- Constantly shouting at injustice (even perceived)
Of course religious and political extremism need to be added, I think considering these as the same thing and just extremism is good enough. I can see no difference in either, in both cases children are influenced into one 'church' or another or in some cases go to the other 'church' in defiance of some other issue (usually parents).
So lets get straight to it, there are no completely bad people, even mass murderers and rapists have been interviewed and seen as really nice calm and caring individuals and to many who know them this is what they are, but to their victims they are the devil incarnate and rightly so. So there are people who are a bit bad and a bit good, this works in reverse as well so it's a relative balance, but what is the constituent part of our make up that can be considered the fulcrum of this scale of good verses evil.
Who can judge the middle part, or do we take a simpler view, there is an extreme bad and crossing that makes somebody permanently bad (it seems that is the case). So what about extreme good, can a person do so much good there outcast as an extremest. Well it depends on the judges, does it not ? In the latter example if the judges are extremist religious group who celebrate the ultimate sacrifice (and good deed) of a suicide bomber who skilfully kills lots of 'the enemy'.
So who is the judge, is it the majority, what then of minority protection, should we abandon this and just kill all the red headed people for instance?
Here comes complexity theory again and the little we know of it.
Let's go back to or minority group, the extremists, that is religious and political activists (yes activists, not extreme activists, just activists).
There are some famous experiments carried out at Stanford that look into human perceived levels of crossing the line (or placing the fulcrum), in all of these experiments it showed the evil (relatively measured) everyone is not only capable of, but indeed easily (in a few hours) adopt what we would consider an evil personality and not only that but maintain it and allow it to grow very quickly.
The reason for some of these experiments was to try and figure out just how some atrocities can happen like the holocaust or what the crusaders did to the Muslims and the uncountable mass acts of barbarism there are to choose from.
This gives clear results and shows we are very easily manipulated, but it leaves a bigger question, what's natural, evil or good? there was no attempt to answer this question, perhaps we are to scared to know. I note another interesting thing about these experiments though, they seem to be mostly measured against men, I did not see any women involved, perhaps there is a clue there.
Were men evolved from hunters and therefor fighters with ability to kill and do so without remorse or much thought ? Did it have to be to get us here ? and is this a mostly dormant although overwhelming emotion that exists in us all. I know many previous people say it is, but that is too easy and a cop out headline hunting thing to say.
What about women then, are they easily manipulated to not question these acts? I would think they have to be just as much as it's possible for a male to be 'evil' it's possible for a female to ignore that. Maybe that is why so many evil men get married in prison to women they have not met!
Is it wrong then?
Well it's probably not, it is what nature had to do to get us here, where we are today. Therefor we need to not only accept it but be thankful for it.
Is that getting better ?
Absolutely! If we take all known data about population and deaths, particularly deaths of a person by another (including all war) then there is an exponential decay. This means we are moving towards zero, but unlikely ever to get there. This is what exponential decay means, not a worry we may be so close to zero it's immeasurable. What ? pardon ? how can that be ?
Well people kill people in a variety of ways, perhaps the recent banking crisis has killed more people than say a few plane crashes or wars (personally I think it has). These deaths may be subtle like people who commit suicide due to it or people who have not been able to live their dream of crating a new thing for us all, effectively killed as far as humanity is concerned as they may now never fully contribute. There not zero but closer.
xxxxxxto be continued or finished if possible ...
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