Good vs Evil

The battle of good against evil is thousands of years old. But what exactly is evil?

A couple of years ago, I was reading this book by David Farland.  Off the top of my head I do not remember which, but it was one of the books in his Runelords series.  And the question of good vs evil came up. One of the characters had a definition for evil. I am describing what I remember of what he said.

He said imagine a circle that includes all of your possessions and ideals and  thoughts. Now imagine that circle being inside a larger circle which is all of the possessions and ideals and thoughts of your family. And now imagine one more circle outside of that one which includes all of the possessions, ideals and thoughts of your community.

As you go through your life each of those circles should continue to grow. Things that contribute to that growth are good. Things that take away from or injure the occupants of those circles are evil.
To be honest, I really like the imagery involved in that. It's very simple, cut and dried. A rival tribe comes into your community rapes, loots, plunders and murders your people. They are evil right? Against blatantly obvious examples, it allows you to feel justified in believing this system.It sounds good on the surface. But it's really too simplistic.

What about when it is your community that takes from you, decreasing your circle but increasing it's own?  Taxes for example. Taxes serve the community, allowing it to serve you.  Or community taking from your family. Let's say your son is drafted into the military and dies serving his country. He was forced to go. Your family circle was decimated by the loss and suppose your community(country) lost the fight he was in. Your community circle didn't gain either. And finally what about bank robbers. They make the community circle smaller by stealing from the community. And to a lesser extent it also affects the other two circles as well. So it's definitely an evil act right? But, how about if the bank robbers randomly dropped sacks of cash at people's front doors in your neighborhood? And what if your front door was one of those doors? They would be increasing your family and personal circles. So then it would be a good act right? And what about the robbers themselves? They are increasing their own personal and family circles aren't they? Wouldn't this just reinforce the action being good?

While it seems that the same action can have both positive and bad consequences on different people or groups of people this does not seem like a sound definition for good and evil. It does start to point us in the right direction though.

Religion would have us believe that it is any act or thought that is counter to what a god or group of gods says you should do. At first I would say this is a load of garbage due to what most people think of when they say the word god. I do not believe a supernatural power should be defining good and evil. I feel that each person should be making that decision for themselves.  Now wait a minute. That actually resonates with some of my previous posts. If you view yourself as a god, the author of your life, the ruler of what does and does not happen to you, then the definition of evil becomes any act or thought that you perform that is counter to what you think you should. It begins to come down to what you think is right and wrong for you to do. Anything outside of your moral code is evil.

Does that make anyone who disagrees with your way of thinking evil? No, not exactly. You get to define what is right and wrong for you. You do not get to define that for others, except your children. Good is what is right for you to do. Evil is what is wrong for you to do.  It boils down to good and evil simply being value judgements. Each person has their own value judgement system. So each person has their own code for what is good and evil.

More on this later. I promise just not sure when. I have a lot more to say but am not sure what direction I want to go in. See you tomorrow.

Somewhat of a repeat

In the process of doing some reading, designed to help with my goal of self improvement, I was asked to do an exercise that involves some self reflection. I decided to post the parts that I was writing down here, so that I can come back to them later. Some of the information I already shared here in the A bit about me post.

First I was asked to describe my five best qualities. This was pretty easy as I have a good opinion of myself and am not constantly struggling to come up with just one nice thing to say about me. I am honest, intelligent, loyal, hard working and observant.

The next one was a little harder though. I was asked to name ten positive things that I have done in the past year. Let's see. I have reduced our household's monthly bills by about $200 by making different choices with our air conditioner usage and internet provider. About a month ago I started a blog(this one). Recently, I have committed to(and have been) spending more time on self
improvement. Just a week ago I acquired completionist in DDO, which is something that I had been working on for about 2 years. In the last several months I have read several new books, some fantasy fiction and some on self empowerment. I have watched many of the movies on my to see list. Last week I helped some friends resolve an issue that has been plaguing their relationship for over a year. I have provided feedback and advice for someone close to me that is going through some of her own self improvement steps. Spent time playing with my son, probably the one thing on this list I have enjoyed the most.  And last but not least I encouraged a friend to get off his ass and stop procrastinating about going to vocational school.

The final area of self reflection for this exercise is about sharing some favorites.
My favorite types of music are heavy metal, classical music, hard rock and blues, pretty much in that order. My favorite band is Iron Maiden. I have been listening to them for over two decades. But I have found within just about every genre there  is something worth listening to. There truly is talent everywhere.

My favorite books are invariably sword and sorcery style fantasy fiction and science fiction. The best fantasy book series ever written is the Wheel of Time, by the late Robert Jordan.

My favorite movie is Independence Day or really anything directed by Roland Emmerich. The special effects are so amazing. He is always blowing up large real world structures, quite often through massive natural disasters.

In the past I would say may favorite television show was either Firefly or Heroes. Of the things currently running my favorite is Castle.

After sharing my favorite TV shows it should come as no surprise that my favorite actor is Nathan Fillion.  I do not really have a favorite actress. Though I suppose Hayden Panettiere , Natalie Portman, Michelle Pfeiffer and Amy Adams are all in the running.

I really do not often watch professional sports. So I don't have a favorite sports team. I enjoy watching the Olympics, both summer and winter. Sometimes I watch the playoffs for basketball or every other year the Super Bowl for football.

It may surprise you to know that I have never really been on vacation. My favorite city that I have been to is Columbus Ohio, the fast food capital of the world.  I'd like to visit Ireland one day though.

My favorite type of car is either a Lamborghini Countach or the Mclaren F1 .

My favorite type of food is either a porterhouse steak cooked Pittsburgh style or a breaded deep fried pork chop. And funnily enough my two favorite places to eat, Antonio's Pizza-rant and Char-Hut do not serve either.

I do not drink often, but when I do, I prefer to drink a lot.  My favorite alcoholic beverages are Oatmeal Cookies and Paintballs.

And that's all for now. More soon.

Commitment pt3

So we are talking about commitments and how people use the way you handle your commitments to determine their judgement of you and your overall value to them. It seems logical then, that we discuss what the most likely possibilities for how you can handle your commitments.

The first thing that comes to mind is that you can commit to whatever anyone asks you to do, even if you have no intention of actually doing it. This is one of the worst possible ways of handling things. It doesn't start out seeming that way though. In the beginning people will think you are awesome because you agree to all kinds of different things that need doing. And they "say man won't it be awesome to have all these things done! "  But, then as time passes and people see that your words and your deeds do not meet up, they may start to get angry that you don't do the things that you say you will. Worse yet, if you are consciously, making agreements that you have no intention of keeping you are lying directly to the people that you are making those agreements with. Isn't lying intentionally telling someone something that you know is not true? So this option makes you an unreliable liar.

Then there is the absolute opposite end of the spectrum. You do not want to make commitments that you are not going to keep, so you decide not to make any commitments at all. And at first, this seems like it might be a good idea. I mean at the very least you are not lying about what you are going to do. You just aren't declaring anything.  The problem here is that no one can count on you for anything at all. You might be on time, you might not, if you bother to even show up. You might pay your bills, you might not. You might shop, read a new book or watch the neighbor's kids, or you might not. Nobody has any way of knowing what you will or will not do. So you aren't a liar, but you are still unreliable and can't be trusted to do anything without supervision.

Those are the main extremes. Now we start moving towards the center. This next option is done a lot by nice people that are afraid to upset others around them. You can commit to everything that people ask of you, with every intention of keeping all of the commitments that you make. From my experience this is the most common mishandling of commitment. Again, at first, this doesn't seem like a problem because you haven't made that many commitments and things are manageable. You can keep all of your commitments at once. But, as time goes on and people see how good you are at keeping commitments they ask more and more of you. You have value to them as a person and they want more.  This makes you feel good so you make more and more commitments with more and more people. That's where the problem comes in, over committing. Regardless of what you do, there is only so much time in a day.  You agree to everything that is asked of you and to help make sure things get done you prioritize the commitments and do them from most important to least. What ends up happening, since you have made such an overwhelming amount of commitments, is that you get the big ones done(or mostly done) but there just isn't time for you to do all of them. AND as time goes on, you make even more commitments and a higher and higher percentage of them goes undone. This causes a couple of problems. One, your value to other people plummets because you are unreliable, untrustworthy and some people may start to think you are the liar from the first example. Also all kinds of problems tend to happen within yourself, such as guilt from your word being constantly broken. You may become overwhelmed and even depressed from all the work you have created for yourself. Or, you may develop self worth issues from the constant inability to do what you say.
Join me tomorrow where we will finish up the not so good options and talk about how you should handle your commitments.