Does evil have a greater impact than good?

12 Comments

If you buy a prosthetic leg for someone who had their leg amputated, it changes their life for the better in that they can now get around more easily. But if you were hack someone's leg off with a machete, their life is has changed much more significant way with a longer lasting impact*

*I have an uncle who lost an arm and a leg on his farm. The way he made it sound was that getting a prosthetic was a changed things a lot less than having lost his leg in the first place

No 2
Maybe 3
Don't know, don't care 3
Yes 7
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Comments ( 12 )
  • Tommythecaty
    1 year ago

    *takes reading glasses of and rubs eyes

    Ughhh…I don’t have the time or patience to give the incredibly complex answer to this…one that you’ll almost certainly misinterpret.

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    • dude_Jones
      1 year ago

      Well then Tommo, being the wise sage that you are, you give them a hint. Such as Google up ‘the butterfly effect’. The ratio of easy effort on your part, to the productive independent inquiry on their part is substantial. Notice that I have intentionally given you room for misinterpretation of my suggestion.

      Meow.

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      • Tommythecaty
        1 year ago

        I’m no sage, far more minty if anything.

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  • Grunewald
    1 year ago

    I think that evil has more impact than good when it is operating in its natural habitat.

    In sum, yes (usually).

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    • LloydAsher
      1 year ago

      Instance by instance? Of course. But theres more instances of good than evil so that bumps of the overall score.

      That's why I consider america to be a good country. Sure we do a LOT of wars. But we are also the worlds largest supplier of humanitarian aid. The second world supplier of humanitarian aid is the US citizens in their donations.

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      • Grunewald
        1 year ago

        I am afraid I don't think there are more instances of good than evil. Not in the world as I see it, from the UK and Western Europe, and my friends from Afghanistan and South Korea.

        We do what we can. The agents for good are mostly swallowed up by evil, but the goodness itself cannot be swallowed up. It stands as a witness to what made it.

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        • Anonymous Post Author
          1 year ago

          That's a really good way to put it. The agents for good are mostly swallowed by evil

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          • LloydAsher
            1 year ago

            More like overshadowed.

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        • LloydAsher
          1 year ago

          It's all about how you view the world. I give the base line standards for what is good. Are people starving to death? Are they living long. Basic stuff.

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          • Grunewald
            1 year ago

            It depends on whether you are talking about 'good' as a question of the virtue of individual human beings, or as a question of ethics of practice on a corporate business, community and governmental level.

            It also depends on whether the results of these agents' actions (for example, poverty, plenty, disease, health) are themselves part of the definitions of good and evil, or are just neutral consequences of them. After all, the concepts listed - for example, 'poverty' and 'plenty' - are abstract and relative, and while many people in developed countries have had to use food banks and may say that the need for food banks is a scourge on their country and an attack on their dignity, very few of those same people probably know what it's like to be starved to a living corpse, like the poor folk of Yemen.

            So are food banks (a sticking plaster over the bigger issue of a country's economy being broken or of wealth-creation practices being unethical, or of the welfare infrastructure of a country or a community not being powerful enough), evil? Is the feeling of hunger itself evil? The hunger of a person on a voluntary food fast may be objectively at the same level as the hunger of a person who can't afford their next meal. That being said, the hunger of the fasting person could be an evil ENDURED for an ulterior good... In an ideal world, would nobody know the physical feeling of an empty stomach? It gets really complicated, doesn't it?

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  • JellyBeanBandit
    1 year ago

    I think it's standard entropy really. It's much easier to destroy than to create. It's much easier to ruin someone's life than to fulfill their dreams. Literally any able-bodied person could ruin your life in seconds, but it could take a lifetime's work to fulfill your dreams.

    Still I think overall, evil is on the losing side. Over the millenia, crime has drastically gone down, while lifespans and living conditions have greatly increased. It may not seem like it, but we live in a utopia compared to previous times. Of course, there's still much improvement that can be made, but we're in a much better position than our ancestors were in.

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  • LloydAsher
    1 year ago

    I think humanity as a whole has a slight good factor working for us. The trajectory is slow and tedious but we have come so far. It's like a 1% incline but it's enough to keep us pushing onwards.

    Humanity has one glaring issue though. No one can widely agree with any one "good" aspect.

    Even ISIS truely believed they were the good guys, so did the nazis, soviets, the list goes on.

    That's the tragedy of human existence, everyone is fighting for their greater good.

    As for the amputation story. Losing a limb sucks. Getting a replacement limb won't give you the original limb back but it will still give you more of your old life back than if it was just a nub. The loss of a limb is more destructive for the individual than getting a prosthesis. It's a net loss. But if you were born blind and then given the ability to see through surgery it's an all around benefit.

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