Bad People Don't Exist
- Thread starter Poetic Justice
- Start date
Lets hope so
To be honest I'm only about 80% sure I agree with this myself. Hopefully someone will help us decide with a bit more certainty
Oh, no, I'm pretty sure bad people do exist.
At any rate, people who do bad things definitely exist, and it is our actions that make us who we are after all. If I learned to play the piano, I would be a piano player, but I haven't so I'm not.And unless you can figure out a way to un-murder someone, then truly "bad" actions are fairly permanent, I would think, in most cases. I'm sceptical of reform or of people drastically changing, they don't change much, in my experience.
So there. LOL.
Perhaps. Although "bad person" can exist as a useful idea, rather than as an actual person or the status of an actual person.
Liar isn't something you do. A lie is something you can perform. If you perform a lie, you are a liar, similar to the way a performer of art is an artist.
Perhaps.But what of being alive or dead, real or imaginary, loved or forgotten?
What of the broken, the hopelessly addicted or the insane?
This is perfect to make my point about my 20% uncertainty
If you learned to play the piano at age 16 you could be called a piano player. What if you then went on to never play the piano again.
At age 70 could you still claim to be a piano player?
True. I guess we're lots of things apart from human. This is not really relevant to my main point though
Well, quite possibly, I don't know. You would certainly have the skills and potential to be a piano player. You can't take back your previous piano-playing, it still happened and you can't deny it.
And some people are naturally born being truly excellent piano players with little help; for the rest of us, we are inclined to not so be great at playing the piano unless we have 1. actually seen/heard pianos, and 2. have grown up in an environment in which piano playing was taught and encouraged.
So I would say that some people have a natural affinity for playing the piano, right? But for most people it is learned. And all of us have the potential to be excellent piano players, unless we are born with some trait that makes it impossible.
(Substitute "murder" or something really awful for "piano playing", same thing. Assuming murder requires skills, desire and aptitude, which I'd imagine it does. Some people will be better at it than others and some people will willingly practice it more than others.)
Oops. I just made this about nature vs. nurture. Well, we know the answer to that is "both", right?
Oh, yes, and one more thing: I bet you get better at it over time, the more you practice it, whatever it is, murder, piano, anything.
Using this same logic we are all bed wetters and thumb suckers
In fact we are all also thieves, hateful people, quitters etc
Hmmm
Well, yes, but some actions require much more in the way of concious thought than others and therefore say more about the skills, desires and aptitudes of the people who choose to practice them. And environment! I forgot environment. You can tell a lot about a person by their concious actions.
Bed wetting is not really a concious thing, piano playing and murder generally do require concious thought.
In other words, if I sat on a piano accidentally and unconciously produced a Rachmaninoff symphony with my rear, that does not make me a pianist, any more than a child who wets the bed in his sleep deserves to be called a bed wetter for the rest of his life. If I set out to conciously play Rachmaninoff that is a different situation, even more different if I show a strong aptitude for it.
Not everyone chooses to do certain things, but yes, the potential is there for all of us.
I am not at all sure I'm explaining it correctly, so, sorry about that.
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It just sounds like you are arguing the fact that existence and experience are separate things. I think the 20% uncertainly has to do with the fact that while existence is a given, the force of experience tends to shape that existence. Does it not then become more than just existence? Force has been introduced to one's self which fundamentally alters/changes one's nature and is incorporated into existence. The force of the experience of lying makes you a liar--it is now part of your existence.
I think scientists have identified a point of growth where a child becomes aware of their toes as an important step to recognizing their own sense of self. I can't remember but it was like somewhere around 3(?) months or so. I could see that until one is aware of self that they just soley exist because they don't have the ability to understand the effect of experience upon their psyche.
I think scientists have identified a point of growth where a child becomes aware of their toes as an important step to recognizing their own sense of self. I can't remember but it was like somewhere around 3(?) months or so. I could see that until one is aware of self that they just soley exist because they don't have the ability to understand the effect of experience upon their psyche.
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Well, we are what we do; we are human, if nothing else. I believe people can change. So I agree with you.
There are people out there who can help me, hurt me, or remain neutral/ignore more. Those who help me or a friendly are good. The people who would harm me or negatively affect my life are bad. Strangers, casual acquaintances are neutral with the potential to be good or bad.
People will attempt to hurt me by lying, cheating, using violence or threats, stealing, manipulating, condescending.... those people would be "bad" to me. And since I frown upon those behaviors used against others since they are the cheap way to getting what you want, anyone who harms others is "bad". Yes, it is human nature to desire, and some will do anything to satisfy their hungers, but harming others to fulfill your materialistic greed is quite a travesty.
It's why I like Buddhists. Our desires and attachments lead to our sufferings, and only when we reach nirvana are we truly free. I think Fight Club told the same message too. :lol:
People will attempt to hurt me by lying, cheating, using violence or threats, stealing, manipulating, condescending.... those people would be "bad" to me. And since I frown upon those behaviors used against others since they are the cheap way to getting what you want, anyone who harms others is "bad". Yes, it is human nature to desire, and some will do anything to satisfy their hungers, but harming others to fulfill your materialistic greed is quite a travesty.
It's why I like Buddhists. Our desires and attachments lead to our sufferings, and only when we reach nirvana are we truly free. I think Fight Club told the same message too. :lol:
What can a person be if not the actions they do? To be is to do, as some wise philosopher once said. The only way that could be that I can figure out is if you denied free will in absolute totality, but I don't think anyone here is claiming that free will or volition is an illusion.
We need some Aristotle in here! Yeah it's kinda long, but it gets at how I think that there are definitely good and bad people. They become bad or good by choice and practice, measured up against how their actions affect the pursuit of living. Actions turn into habits, habits turn into character traits.
"Again, it is from the same causes and by the same means that every virtue is both produced and destroyed, and similarly every art; for it is from playing the lyre that both good and bad lyre-players are produced. And the corresponding statement is true of builders and of all the rest; men will be good or bad builders as a result of building well or badly. For if this were not so, there would have been no need of a teacher, but all men would have been born good or bad at their craft. This, then, is the case with the virtues also; by doing the acts that we do in our transactions with other men we become just or unjust, and by doing the acts that we do in the presence of danger, and being habituated to feel fear or confidence, we become brave or cowardly. The same is true of appetites and feelings of anger; some men become temperate and good-tempered, others self-indulgent and irascible, by behaving in one way or the other in the appropriate circumstances. Thus, in one word, states of character arise out of like activities. This is why the activities we exhibit must be of a certain kind; it is because the states of character correspond to the differences between these. It makes no small difference, then, whether we form habits of one kind or of another from our very youth; it makes a very great difference, or rather all the difference."
Well, yes, there are liars, murderers, and thieves. Just look at the news. But, more importantly, whether you are a liar, or a murderer, or a thief, does not make you a bad person. It makes you a good person, which I really want to believe we are all, who screwed up. In the cases of totalitarian dictators, ones who screwed up millions of times. But even they, I think, genuinely believed that lying or murdering or stealing was good, in some outlandish sense of the word, and any attempts to engage in ethical relativism or philosophy, whether enlightened, as this is, or Randian and pompous, as others are, is just so much smoke and mirrors.
liars murderers thieves
all labels
and it's true, we are not our labels
but we lie
we steal
we murder
in my opinion that makes us bad at being humans