The Tipping Point of Evil
The Tipping Point of Evil.
By which I mean the idea that the world might be destroyed when evil reaches a certain level.
Do any religious text supports this idea? The Bible does although in an inverted way.
In the book of Genesis God agrees not to destroy the wicked city of Sodom if among its population there exist fifty righteous individuals. After some haggling, God agrees to bring down the number to a mere ten. It is noteworthy that God’s criterion is righteousness rather than innocence, so presumably, children are not taken into account for this measure.
So, it seems that God’s guiding principle when judging the fate of humankind is not the amount of evil but the existence of a minimal quantity of righteousness which one might call it the quanta of righteousness. Incidentally, that idea took root in Jewish folkloristic tradition. It tells us that God would have destroyed humankind on many occasions but for the presence in every generation of thirty-six righteous individuals.
Reflecting on how the moral principle of not harming the civilian population even if it means sparing the wicked is enshrined in the UN definition of War Crimes which has wide implications to the conduct of wars. In this modern context, civilian replaced the biblical righteous. The equivalence is highly debatable. For instance, the Jihadi Brides were civilians, but could they be described as righteous, or even innocent?
In modern warfare, the combatants do destroy civilian population) in order to get at the ‘wicked’. It is referred by the euphemism of ‘collateral damage’. That is generally recognized as being wrong and condemned by moral purists. It stands in contrast to God’s strict criterion for the destruction of Sodom. Moral purists tend to condemn any action that results in harm to civilian, but could the defeat of Nazi Germany or ISIS had been archived wi without the killing of thousands of civilians?
It is encouraging that the moral need to do every possible to avoid casualties among non-combatants is taking root in public opinion of Western democracies and influencing their militaries. It is helped by modern technology. Precision bombing is still not precise enough to avoid civilian casualties but it is incomparably more discriminate than the carpet bombing by thousand bombers raids of WW2 If one needs a proof that such concern exists, it is amply provided by the terror groups who position their weapons among civilian population knowing that it would provide them with a human shield. It needs, however, to be pointed out that such concerns are unlikely to be shared by the likes of Assad Putin and Kim Ung.
In conclusion, it would appear that - at least in the Abrahamic faiths - the tipping point of evil does not exist because it is invariably counterweighted by a quanta righteousness. However, there could be another, a purely supernatural view of the question. Evil directly relates to agony, pain, and despair. Those are the emotions which are the source of traumas that in turn push neurons into overdrive level. Has this brain activity any effect on the physical world? Obviously not, unless one believes in the power of prayer, mind over matter etc..
By which I mean the idea that the world might be destroyed when evil reaches a certain level.
Do any religious text supports this idea? The Bible does although in an inverted way.
In the book of Genesis God agrees not to destroy the wicked city of Sodom if among its population there exist fifty righteous individuals. After some haggling, God agrees to bring down the number to a mere ten. It is noteworthy that God’s criterion is righteousness rather than innocence, so presumably, children are not taken into account for this measure.
So, it seems that God’s guiding principle when judging the fate of humankind is not the amount of evil but the existence of a minimal quantity of righteousness which one might call it the quanta of righteousness. Incidentally, that idea took root in Jewish folkloristic tradition. It tells us that God would have destroyed humankind on many occasions but for the presence in every generation of thirty-six righteous individuals.
Reflecting on how the moral principle of not harming the civilian population even if it means sparing the wicked is enshrined in the UN definition of War Crimes which has wide implications to the conduct of wars. In this modern context, civilian replaced the biblical righteous. The equivalence is highly debatable. For instance, the Jihadi Brides were civilians, but could they be described as righteous, or even innocent?
In modern warfare, the combatants do destroy civilian population) in order to get at the ‘wicked’. It is referred by the euphemism of ‘collateral damage’. That is generally recognized as being wrong and condemned by moral purists. It stands in contrast to God’s strict criterion for the destruction of Sodom. Moral purists tend to condemn any action that results in harm to civilian, but could the defeat of Nazi Germany or ISIS had been archived wi without the killing of thousands of civilians?
It is encouraging that the moral need to do every possible to avoid casualties among non-combatants is taking root in public opinion of Western democracies and influencing their militaries. It is helped by modern technology. Precision bombing is still not precise enough to avoid civilian casualties but it is incomparably more discriminate than the carpet bombing by thousand bombers raids of WW2 If one needs a proof that such concern exists, it is amply provided by the terror groups who position their weapons among civilian population knowing that it would provide them with a human shield. It needs, however, to be pointed out that such concerns are unlikely to be shared by the likes of Assad Putin and Kim Ung.
In conclusion, it would appear that - at least in the Abrahamic faiths - the tipping point of evil does not exist because it is invariably counterweighted by a quanta righteousness. However, there could be another, a purely supernatural view of the question. Evil directly relates to agony, pain, and despair. Those are the emotions which are the source of traumas that in turn push neurons into overdrive level. Has this brain activity any effect on the physical world? Obviously not, unless one believes in the power of prayer, mind over matter etc..
Comments (46)
When I heard the Conservatives were in for five more years...
But not all is lost! We still have the handfull of the righteous (the LibDem)
And, I would not count. on five years. History os in an overdrive.
I can’t help but be reminded of the famous story of Winston Churchill not ordering the evacuation of (I think it was) Manchester prior to a major bombing raid, because it would have tipped off the Nazis that they had cracked the Enigma code, thereby nullifying the enormous strategic advantage provided by the code breakers. Many thousands died as a consequence.
Very difficult judgement, indeed.
Life itself is essentially good, so to kill it off because the accidental, evil, has become overwhelming, is fundamentally irrational.
All that is required is one kernel of good, at any given time, because the good will take root and flourish, while the evil will die off in the future.
There is a qualitative difference between hitting military targets and knowing that civilians in the area will likely be killed and deciding to mass kill civilian targets. And the Allies did both. I don't think one need be a moral purist in the pejorative sense I think you meant above to distinguish these two types of military actions and decide that the latter one is a bad idea. Here I argued from a consequentialist position, since generally those in favor are consequentialists. I think one could also come at it from a deontological standpoint and still not be a 'moral purist' in some negative sense.
And of course with ISIS we could have not made it easy for them to get weapons and not been so Machievellian in relation to our own interests in Syria while pretending to be outraged by the Syrian government. Then we would not have had to deal with ISIS, a phenomenon the West is very culpable in. But that's another type of issue.
This is a good response to Jacob. I want to point out that the intentional bombing of civilians almost certainly DID help shorten the war; case in point Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I think the historical consensus is that had these bombs not been developed and dropped it would have meant for an invasion of mainland Japan which would have been extremely bloody for US troops and prolonged the war considerably.
I think that's possible, though there are many who think that Nagasaki was in excess and was more of a message for the Russians that Hiroshima was no fluke. I do wonder if there could not have been some way to simply show the Japanese military command without taking down a city or two. And I am not will to simply concede on consequentialist grounds that these were ok civilian attacks, however I think an argument can be presented here because the weapons were utterly new and overwhelmingly powerful. Nothing about Dresden would have suprised the Nazis tecnologically or in the number of bombs, so I don't think it did anything.
I was scared you were serious. And since I've found much weirder stuff on the internet (who hasn't) I don't judge myself to harshly for that reaction.
Nowdays, the
"This, to me hides an important distinction. There is collateral damage and there is intentional targeting of civilian populations, like say in Dresden. I don't think things like this shortened the war. And I don't think the German bombing of civilian London helped their cause and perhaps actually made the British more determined."
Nowadays the bombing of Dresden coming less there three months before the collapse of the Third Reich and killing many thousands would be considered as war crime comparable to The Russian bombing of Aleppo. However, the timeline context cannot be ignored. It came after many German the bombing of purely civilian targets starting with Guernica. Rotterdam was bombed after the Dutch surrendered jus for the sake of 'teaching a lesson'. And, the Red Army liberated Auschwitz a month
earlier thus revealing the enormity of the German Genocidal crimes. Whilst two wrongs do not make right, the bombing of Dresden has to be viewed in the general context of WW2.
Calling an act evil pushes it away from explanation. It denies the need for further discussion. Evil is what They do, not us. Hence it also denies that evil is commonplace, and ubiquitous.
The root of Righteousness is doing what is right - obeying the moral code. Hence the Righteous do not have to think about what they do in any ethical way. They just need obedience.
And the Bible is not as Good a book as its many proponents suppose.
Various narratives and traditions address evil.
I don't see any value in judging in advance how one or another point of view will respond to it.
By their fruits, you shall know them.
“We need to grasp clearly how appallingly human beings sometimes behave. And we must see that we cannot always shift responsibility for that behaviour off onto an abstraction called ‘culture’ ... There have to be natural motives present in humans which make cruelty and related vices possible.”
Quoting Jacob-B
Quoting Wayfarer
I agree, @Wayfarer that it was a very difficult judgement he made, and in terms of the war, necessary. And probably the right decision, too. But it would still be an evil act to knowingly allow citizens to die in those circumstances. The fact that Churchill made the decision, and others supported it, indicates how we can act evilly by choice, anytime.
Edit: in fact what he did was to allow an evil act to take place by not acting.
https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/myths/churchill-let-coventry-burn/
Interesting, and thanks for the correction, but even as a hypothetical it illustrates the point at issue.
Quoting Wayfarer
Which would be true.
Instead I would look at the bombing of Dresden by British and American forces. In this case they actually committed the act, whereas in Coventry they allowed it, if true.
They knew what would happen, but they withheld part of themselves to enable themselves to commit to the act, which was evil. It may have been justified but it as still a conscious act that would kill many people, civilians. So that tipping point is reached by withholding the morality we apply to ourselves.
I’m inclined to viewing that as a war crime.
The great difficulty is dealing with ‘degrees of evil’. It would seem to me the only way to avoid participating in war would be to be an ascetic renunciate with nothing to defend. That was how Indian Buddhists responded to the Mughal invasion of medieval India - which resulted in the destruction of Buddhist India.
Quoting Wayfarer
Is that because it’s an act of evil? If not what could it be?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don’t think evil will ever “ die off”, because it’s inherent in all of us.
I've never read up on it. A quick glance at the Wikipedia article shows that the assault was retrospectively justified by the Allied forces on the grounds of it being a major centre of the war effort. But on the other hand, it also had high cultural significance, and of course huge numbers of civilians were killed in presumably ghastly circumstances. It is, I think, one of those episodes that is emblematic of the evils of modern warfare.
The broader point is: can there be a 'just war'? I'm inclined to think there has to be, but that it's always going to be a very vexed argument, and should be. But my immediate forbears served in WW1 and II, and had I been alive, I probably would have served also. I do think the Nazi war effort was an evil cause and that fighting it was an unfortunate necessity.
Quoting Wayfarer
I think the efforts of the allied forces of WW11 could be called a ‘just war’. But there were certainly acts carried out that could be called evil. Decisions were made by individuals at all levels that called for decisions and acts they would not normally carry out and that would have put them in prison in peace time. My point is that the their morality was put on pause so that they could do what was required.
What is PTSD but the living with what you have done or seen that you know is evil? At the time you coped, but later the truth of things comes to bear on you.
Perfectly agree. War brings out both the most noble and the most evil in people.
Quoting Jacob-B
Well, if you're going at this from a religious point of view you may want to consider what I think is a coincdence that maybe both the source of and "evidence" for such beliefs.
You've framed the issue in terms of an imbalance between the forces of good and evil; thus we have a "a tipping point" at which evil overcomes good and you know the rest. The question that naturally arises is why haven't we reached that threshold as of yet? Put otherwise, why is the good in the world today sufficient to balance the evil that no one can deny is present? After all isn't the tipping point just the case when the good join the ranks of the evil hordes? Personally, I think we haven't reached that threshold when evil overwhelms the good because there is just the right amount of resources (food, water, etc.) that can sustain a counterbalancing population of good people. IF there's enough for everybody, goodness exists and is sustainable.
As resources are finite and the population seems to be growing exponentially there will be a time when there won't be enough resources to go around for everybody. When this point is reached, goodness will be like a fish out of water; people will need to adapt if they're to survive and the only way to do that will be to become evil. Thus resources, their finite nature, and population, its exponential growth, will be the decidng factor for the tipping point of evil.
Of course there are other ways things can go downhill. For instance, a virulent ideology may give birth and affect the balance between good and evil. Nazism is a good example. Imperialism might resurrect itself, etc. In short there are many ways things can go bad and upset the equilibrium between good and bad but none of them have the certainty of spawning evil by the multitude as a scarcity of resources.
Now when does or when will resources run out or when will the population reach such a size that it would be indistinguishable from a resource scarcity? No one can put an exact figure on the time frame but we all know it'll be after a long time. The Earth can support a lot of people and population growth, even exponentially, takes time.
I mentioned coincidence as being the source of such beliefs; beliefs that the world gets destroyed when evil reaches a certain limit. In what sense is coincidence important for such beliefs? Well, there's another thing that occurs after a long time - disasters at a global scale. We've all heard of world-destroying asteroids, floods, pandemics, etc. These are rare events because they require, in my opinion, an improbable conjunction of necessary conditions.
So, here we have a situation where the tipping point for evil is reached after a long time and global disasters also occurring on a similar time frame. There's a likelihood then that the two will coincide and it's this coincidence that people interpret as divine judgment for the evils of men.
Quoting TheMadFool
What exactly are these forces of good and evil?
Ask the OP.
Good would be the people who follow some moral principle. Bad would be people who don't.
I agree, we will never reach the ideal of complete and total good, in the absolute sense. But what I really meant was, that the particular evil will die off. As particular things come and go, so will particular evils..
in
any
way
makes it more undertandable to commit a counter one.
'Understandible' hovering ambiguously between,...yeah sometimes humans react like that
and
'morally justificable'
I see no reason to be afraid to call the Allies out on something like Dresden. it's not unfair. And it should be in the air, for any future such decision makers, that history could and hopefully will look unkindly on such a choice. Further that they might think differently when weighing options.
Isn't that like asking "are there no bad good people?
A contradiction in terms.
As for Hitler, he can be "explained" not by a moral philosophy but a morally deficient ideology - racial supremacism. Even then he was "good" to the Aryans.
Quoting Coben
This is an interesting point. My feelings about morals are that they are inherent and that they contributed towards our successful evolution and consequently those morals were carried through with us. But if a moral is a way of behaving that contributes to the success of a group, that throws it forward into the future so that it thrives even further, then does it have to be moral in the sense of being good, or right, as we understand it?
It does seem that the societies or communities that have this concept of morals are the most successful. But what if, for instance, it becomes necessary to reduce the world population in order to survive, does that become the right moral decision?
Quoting TheMadFoolNo. I am arguing that saying someone has moral principles is a descriptive statement. Psychopaths do not have moral codes. They do what they want and if they act morally it is simply to avoid certain consequences. Hitler had very strong morals. That is descriptive. He thought X was good and Y. And he tried very hard to be good and to make others good and punish the bad.
To say someone has morals should not be a value judgment.
Now this gets into equivocations because to say someone is a moral person, means they are a good person. But that's everyday speech.
Hitler was not a psychopath. I think he actually meant to do good by his evaluation of good. A psychopath is not trying to do good things.
This doesn't mean Hitler was good. this depends on the morals of those evaluating him. I think we need to make it clear that there is a difference between saying someone is a good person: this means we evaluate someone according to some moral system that we believe in - and saying someone had morals. IOW they thought some things were bad, others good and evaluated behavior and actions along those lines. I think we would be remiss to think that Hitler did not care about Germany and Germans and Aryans and dogs and children (aryan ones), and that he really just liked destruction.Quoting TheMadFoolTo me that's as if you have access to objective morality. Which of course most people believe, as did Hitler. He has a moral philosophy, a very rigid one in fact. Other people with other moral philosophies judge his as evil. Even between republicans and democrats there is tremendous difference between ideas of what a good person is and should do. I think it's problematic if we just assume 'we' have the objectively morality and can say, that person has no morals. We can certainly say their morals are bad ones.
It's a bit like when conservatives, a few years back, in the US, often said that liberals have no values. Of course they have values and of course they have morals. They just differ from the conservative ones. (underneath this is deontologists judging consequentialists, and also more flexible morals being judged by more rigid ones, at least on the surface. It's changed since that period, because now the left has come out extremely rigid on moral condemnation, in a way i am more used to the right being)
It seems to me that morals have a function, otherwise they would disappear over time with the tribe/community they didn’t serve well. The morals that we live by are the inherent morals that contributed to a successful society. They bound us together and served as the basis for what was best for the community, what was regarded as “ good” and “ right” and from which our values and ethics sprung from, that acted out those morals
I don’t know what the timeframe is to determine whether a moral is working. But if it wasn’t working I imagine trouble would be apparent within one generation which would lead to slow deterioration. The moral value isn’t that the “ good’ will make things better for the group, it’s that what makes things better for the group becomes the moral value. Time will decide if the morals they live by were the most advantageous. I’m not suggesting that a community can simply decide on a set of morals in a relativist manner. The Stalinists and the Nazis chose a set of morals on that basis and lost very quickly. It may take awhile for a set of morals to evolve, but they will continue to evolve if they serve the community well, as opposed to the quick end if there are no advantageous.
Would any group jeopardise it’s survival in a moral cause? On the basis of what I’ve suggested that would be immoral, which is not what you meant, I think.
Quoting Coben
Quoting Coben
Is that really true? Are their moral centres that are different?
Quoting Coben
I meant that a set of morals could deteriorate in a generation, an evolving set of morals would take longer, but only if they served the community well.
Quoting Coben
I think this is true, but not in the numbers to be considered as human nature. This is more of a sacrifice. It could be said that Britain risked its survival fighting against Naziism in the name freedom. But it had no choice, it’s survival was under threat. It did not purposely risk its survival.
Quoting Brett...served the community well in a certain period of time, but perhaps not after that. IOW an moral approach to free speech or privacy might work fine until the internet is used by most people. And then a shift in those morals in response to a technological change or a political change - say the Patriot act changes after 9/11 - might take hundreds of years to be shown to be disastrous. It might take only a much shorter time. But i can't see setting any threshold where we decide 'it's been working for X years, so it is beneficial'.
Perhaps, perhaps not. Hitler would have been able to focus on the USSR. Perhaps in the end it would have gone for Britain, perhaps not. Hitler considered them closely related race wise to germans. They were not particularly communist. I think we can say Britain took a moral stand which its leaders knew was taking a direct and immediate risk regarding their countries sovreignty. Yes, a longer term risk was certainly there and Germany might have been in a much stronger position later. But I think that is not quite seeing the types of decisions even large groups are capable of making.
That's a bit of the whole point with most moral systems. Doing things because they are (considered) right, even if they are against one's own self-interest. Or one wouldn't need these morals.
I am not sure one can even call it a moral, ultimately, if it is only a heuristic designed to maintain group survival. You could also just call that a survival tactic.
Also this is at the national level. Nations are highly complicated amassings of many groups. And recent in history.
Countries can explain and justify made decisions by a moral stand, but that justification hardly is the reason why they would do something that puts them into peril. With something that isn't as dangerous, isn't very risky, one can indeed put what is morally right on a pedestal on go with that because of domestic politics.
In 1940 it was truly about existential questions, not a moral question that Chuchill took. At hindsight it's totally obvious that you could not trust someone like Hitler. Just look what trusting Hitler gave Stalin.
Of course. I just don't think we can rule out countries and certainly not groups choosing to put themselves at risk for a higher value. Higher according to them. It seems to me deontology for sure and even many consequentialist value systems implicitly demand this. The do of individuals.Quoting ssuI wasn't arguing that anyone should trust Hitler.
And I am not arguing that it must be a moral stand when governments claim it is, as they always do. I think politicians lie about this all the time. I do think however that groups are willling to fight what they consider evil, even if given the option not to. Otherwise this means we are deciding that groups never oppose evil except for selfish reasons. They would never risk themselves for what they consider good. Honor and morals are really just self-interest. And note, I am not saying these morals or the sense of honor need be good. Do gooding has perpetuated all sorts of horrible things.
I just think it's confused to argue that morals are really only about self-interest and people only do things to further their group's survivability.
The existence of national sovereignty or the existence of the state is usually that "higher value". After all, extremely seldom does the enemy literally think of genocidal extermination of the people and to make an "artificial desert" of the area. (Even if that has happened in history, unfortunately)
Quoting Coben
And the most evil things people can do is when opposing 'evil'. Evil in itself implies that one cannot understand it, one cannot reason it. Otherwise one oneself would be evil too. Fighting evil means that you have a firm view that you are right and that your opponent is wrong. Not wrong in the way that his objective as bad, but that they are wrong also in moral terms. This goes to the heart to the issue how you face "an enemy": is your opponent a person fighting on the other side, following his or her flag and people, is your opponent just an advocate of an ideology you don't believe in or is he or she truly evil.
As I said myself...
Quoting Coben
Quoting ssuI am not saying that people should fight what they consider to be evil. I am not saying that evil exists. (And then note that this statement does not fit well with the other one.....
Quoting ssu)
I am saying that people do not do things just for their own survivability. Push them to the wall on certain moral issues, they will put themselves at risk. Even at the group level.
I said above that the shift to discussing morals at the nation level is problematic since these are not groups with a single set of morals. These are fairly artificial conglomerates of various groups with various moralities. That said,I think some nations have gone to war at least in part for moral reasons. This is not to say this is good or bad. AS it happens I don't believe in objective morals.
I think it is a mistake to view morals as, really, just self-interest. That's where I came into the argument. This is now being taken as me advocating for moral crusades. If I say something exists it doesn't mean I am advocating for it.
I think part of any morality is precisely a being willing to risk self-interest or, heck, you don't need a morality.
Now this gets tricky at the sociological level. Since individuals follow moral laws that sometimes or often go against individual self-interest can be good for group self-interest.
However I still think groups will take risks and even become groups to fight what they think is immoral even if this puts the group itself as risk.
I think people, in general, might fight a war against an alien advanced civilization that wanted to control us and protect us, but didn't respect any freedoms or local cultures and wanted us to live in some kind or alien run fascism.
Now the group might be convinced it would survive as kind of pets or zoo animals, but they might be willing to put survivability of the entire species at risk, because of values they hold dear.
The person I was arguing with seemed to think only things which enhance group survivability become morals.
I don't think that's the case.
And smaller groups with cohesive monocultures have been willing to fight to the death, to risk extermination, because of their other values.
I assume that countries much smaller than Russia and China might declare war on the US if we started stealing some, but not all of third nations' babies for food. Or if the US became the nation of pedophilia promoting child rape worldwide. Even if a war with the US would likely be one sided and devastating. I think there are morals that when crossed individuals - certainly, there can be no doubt of this - but even groups will put their own existence at risk for moral reasons.
I fully agree. The whole notion of talk at the 'national level' is difficult. After all, the whole idea of nationhood is invented, yet however 'artificial' people say it is, it is quite real. And a functioning idea of a nation joins together quite different views on just what that nation is about.
Quoting Coben
At least I'm not saying that. The vast majority of people will make sacrifices that cannot be said to be done in self-interest, and there you can observe just how complex humans interacting in societies are to compared to anything else.
Quoting Coben
Not actually.
You see countries with nuclear weapons will restrain from using those weapons, hence weaker states can call their bluff.
One perfect example is the Argentinian Junta invading the Falklands: here a smaller and far poorer state attacked a Great Power with a nuclear weapons arsenal. For the UK the war was indeed a close call, one aircraft carrier sank by an Argentinian submarine and the British fleet would have had to sail back and Thatcher would have lost the next elections.
And we may see this playing out just now when the US and Iran have come quite close to a conflict.