Michael Mitchell: Archive

You want the funk? This is utter nonsense. The concepts "good" and "evil" don't exist in a psychological vacuum. What does it even mean for a human being to be good or evil? Not for something to be good or evil to a human being, but for a human being himself to be good or evil? Good or evil to whom? Other human beings? Now reform the question: Are humans inherently good or evil to other humans? See?

I believe this is what's called a "package deal". Simply asking the question in this form implies we're all evil, by nature, to each other, that we can be judged before we've even acted, before we can even ask the question, before we even know what good and evil is. But that's not what I find interesting about this issue -- Original Sin -- which is very tiresome if you're an egoist, like myself, someone who completely rejects the altruistic moral ideal of self-sacrifice required to even imagine it. What's interesting to me is why we struggle to make and hold the distinction between, not good and evil, but the relative and the contextual.

There was a spider in my room last night...