Modern society is based on money which you get from a job. So if you tell people you need to work to survive then yes it is an evil.
Sounds like textbook coercion to me.
Necessary evils
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@3RU7AL
"opposites" only "exist" in abstraction.
Not according to most Eastern and Western philosophy, with or without quotes. Want to try under the Northerners? Well, in that case, the blues were opposed by the grays...
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@Athias
It is a delusion which attempts to diminish the evils perpetrated on select individuals under the guise of a collective benefit. It is as cognitively dissonant as the notion of "the greater good."
You're right.
We need to agree on an explicit definition of "evil" in order to avoid "begging the question".
In the meantime, would you accept, "necessary-unpleasantness"?
I propose,
(IFF) you wish to stay alive and achieve and or maintain some level of physical and emotional comfort (THEN) you may need to prepare yourself to engage in some "necessary-unpleasantness"
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@fauxlaw
"opposites" only "exist" in abstraction.Not according to most Eastern and Western philosophy, with or without quotes. Want to try under the Northerners? Well, in that case, the blues were opposed by the grays...
What's the "opposite" of a dog?
Oh, a dead dog?
No.
Perhaps a dog made of anti-matter?
A dead dog is not the "opposite" of an alive dog.
In the same way that a wooden plank is not the "opposite" of a tree.
The sun is not the "opposite" of the moon.
And don't you dare mention Taoism.
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@3RU7AL
Ok, I like where you're going with this.Would you perhaps say, INACTION IS NEVER IMMORAL?
Yes, I would.
You're right.We need to agree on an explicit definition of "evil" in order to avoid "begging the question".In the meantime, would you accept, "necessary-unpleasantness"?I propose,(IFF) you wish to stay alive and achieve and or maintain some level of physical and emotional comfort (THEN) you may need to prepare yourself to engage in some "necessary-unpleasantness"
I have a tendency to conflate evil with immoral. But let's put your proposition to the test. Suppose you have an identical twin brother. You're suffering from kidney failure and require at least one kidney to continue living. Your identical twin brother is a perfect match, but he refuses to give up his kidney. Do you steal it--his kidney that is? Is he--your brother--evil for not submitting his kidney?
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@Polytheist-Witch
Modern society is based on money which you get from a job. So if you tell people you need to work to survive then yes it is an evil.
There are a few issues with your statements.
- It presumes that money is only, or at the very least primarily, acquired through work.
- It presumes that everyone who survives works.
- It presumes earning a low wage is evil.
Would you mind elaborating on how each contribute to or inform evil?
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@3RU7AL
Sounds like textbook coercion to me.
Only under the premise that they're entitled to a given wage rather than the one informed by the commerce their production generates.
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@fauxlaw
I don't know... a dead tree has a lot more in common with a live tree than say with a rock. Why isn't a rock the opposite of a tree? Or 9h hey! How about a duckbilled platypus? Those are really different to trees!
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@Athias
Ok, I like where you're going with this.Would you perhaps say, INACTION IS NEVER IMMORAL?Yes, I would.
Well, we appear to be on the same side of this at the moment.
Now, purely hypothetically,
What if your grandparents made a contract with a bunch of people to give them a bunch of land they could presumably hunt and farm on (so they could stay alive) and then changed the deal and gave them much less land than they had promised and also polluted the water supply and killed off the animals.
You didn't do any of this.
But you know, hypothetically, what if your grandparents did this.
Does the passage of time magically make "wrong" things "normal"?
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@3RU7AL
"opposites" only "exist" in abstraction.There is no "opposite" of a dog.There is no "opposite" of a tree.
Well stated.
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@secularmerlin
Doesn’t change the fact that you contradicted yourself with your statement.
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@Tarik
Doesn’t change the fact that you contradicted yourself with your statement.
The two people then examine the tables and if there's a structural problem with one of the legs, they point out the problem and give the other a chance to modify or repair the flaws.
If a leg is fundamentally flawed it must be removed from that table.
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@3RU7AL
The problem is contradiction on his part, like how are you gonna argue in favor of agreeing on terms right after rejecting the dictionary that has many terms people agree on (hence why there usage is so popular).
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@Tarik
Incorrect. Terms are in the dictionary BECAUSE they are commonly used and popular they are not popular and accepted BECAUSE they are in the dictionary.
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@Tarik
The problem is contradiction on his part, like how are you gonna argue in favor of agreeing on terms right after rejecting the dictionary that has many terms people agree on (hence why there usage is so popular).
I'm not sure that's a "contradiction".
Just because some sports star or movie star or rock star is "popular" doesn't mean that it's my personal favorite.
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@3RU7AL
Why should I dare not mention Taosim? A little testy, yeah?
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@secularmerlin
Difference is not opposition.
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@fauxlaw
A dead tree doesn't oppose a living tree.
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@fauxlaw
Why should I dare not mention Taosim? A little testy, yeah?
Taoism can't be used to "explain" anything.
I think of the term “necessary evil” as referring to any action chosen out of a moral dilemma. The first one that comes to mind is abortion. Between pro life and pro choice, both positions result in what many would think of as evil, but necessarily, one has to take hold.
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@secularmerlin
life and death do; life and death of any organism
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@3RU7AL
According to whom? Your sock puppet?
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@secularmerlin
in excess to the benefit received by any.This seems an imprecise metric.Does this mean it is not evil to willfully inflict excessive harm so long as at least one person benefits sufficiently?Or perhaps to willfully inflict excessive harm to an individual or small group that as long as enough people benefit?If slavery benefits enough slave owners to a high enough degree does that effect the essential evil that comes from the harm slavery does to the enslaved?
I used this short form related to necessary evils. Vaccine trials are placing risk on a few, for the benefit of all; therefore it is not evil to test vaccines. That vaccines need to be tested for the benefit of billions of people, makes testing them necessary therefore not evil.
The slave analogy could perhaps hold for minor forms of slavery, such as prisoners being used basically as slave labor. The harm to them doing that work while they're in prison already, is fairly low, thus easy to outweigh. Kidnapping someone, torturing them, etc., would be almost impossible to outweigh. Further, any acts of malice toward the hypothetical slave would assure that the slavery evil. ... This is also ignoring that slavery has not been shown to be necessary, to then be tied to the topic under discussion.
To give an example of how this definition can work for excessive harms: I'm a combat veteran. Killing a terrorist benefits the lives of almost everyone they would have otherwise interacted with in future. This may be an excessive harm to them, but the benefits experienced by others is much greater.
A clear evil would be breaking into someone's car. You might steal stuff and sell it for say $100, but the victim is disproportionately harmed immediately with having to spend around $1000 to fix the window, plus replace however much was stolen, and possibly miss work while doing the repairs, and onward. There could be exceptional cases where it is needed for survival (like the La Miss break a window pane to steal a loaf of bread), but such would be few and far between.
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@fauxlaw
life and death do; life and death of any organism
I disagree. Death is not the opposite of life it is a part of it.
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@3RU7AL
What if your grandparents made a contract with a bunch of people to give them a bunch of land they could presumably hunt and farm on (so they could stay alive) and then changed the deal and gave them much less land than they had promised and also polluted the water supply and killed off the animals.You didn't do any of this.But you know, hypothetically, what if your grandparents did this.Does the passage of time magically make "wrong" things "normal"?
How could they have changed the deal if they made a contract, at least unknowingly to the other party? The stipulations should have been made known to each party involved before the deal was final. That is, if the other party did not want less land and a polluted water supply, then they could've opted out.
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@secularmerlin
What do you think the medical profession is all about combatting? Opposing, if you will? Don't presume, medicine has been the practice in my family for three generations. Not my schtick personally, but I have guilty knowledge. And, as Jim Morrison once said, "No one here gets out alive."
We don't oppose death while living?
Go fish.
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@secularmerlin
Be it as it may your still rejecting a popular group of peoples common usage of a term which is slightly hypocritical considering in the next breath you preach agreement.
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@3RU7AL
Just because some sports star or movie star or rock star is "popular" doesn't mean that it's my personal favorite.
No but if your of the belief that EVERYBODY should be in AGREEMENT in regards to this stars popularity then it’s hypocritical to say that when in the next breath you DISAGREE with them. You see it’s not the DISAGREEMENT that’s the hypocrisy it’s the fact that you preached AGREEMENT and went against just that.
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@fauxlaw
If medicine "opposes" death does that make medicine the opposite of death? Johnson and Johnson should use that as their new tag line.
Seriously though opposite is a thing we as humans made up and it is a subjective oppinion.
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@Tarik
Be it as it may your still rejecting a popular group of peoples common usage of a term which is slightly hypocritical considering in the next breath you preach agreement.
I'm not even so much rejecting the dictionary as not being limited by it. IN THE CORRECT CONTEXT the definitions contained therein are perfectly serviceable it is just insufficient to our discussions if as you claim my definitions are not represented.