Evil

Question of Day June 21, 2012 ~ Malicious Evil

Sensitivity . I walked down a random street . A blasting cold chill came from a particular house . Gave me the willies . It felt like potent , malicious evil . I have not walked on that street in 20 years . Are you ‘ sensitive ‘ that way ?

I’m with Andrew
The cold feelings are a fear response.
Often we are not consciously aware of the sense data that has unconsciously triggered the fear response within us.
Often the triggering context can be from our pre verbal childhood.

So yes, I have the feelings, and no I do not interpret them as meaning evil exists.
And I have met some very dangerous people, people who have killed without emotional response, people who would have thought less about killing me than I would about killing a fly. Such people can be asocial or antisocial. Some are truly pathological, their systems so distorted by their upbringing that they get pleasure from inflicting pain on others. Plenty of them around, at all sorts of different levels of awareness.
I do not see such people as evil – dangerous certainly, but not evil – I do not classify the world into simple binaries like good and evil.

So for me, it is yes to people feeling chills, when their subconscious becomes aware of something that appears dangerous for whatever association; and no to any sort of evil.

[followed by]

Hi Mike & Torch

@Mike
Peck’s characterisation of evil as various forms of “self deception” has a lot of power, and is consistent in a variety of contexts, and there are more pathologies I would include under the heading – most particularly a cross linking of pain and pleasure – such that producing pain in others creates pleasure for self.

@Torch
In this context, I caution against equating law abiding with good, or law breaking with evil. Often laws are made to further the interests of a particular subset of society, and if one is working in the interests of society as a whole, then one is sometimes put in the situation where one must break some laws.
As Douglas Bader so famously said “Laws are made for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men”.

Perhaps Doug wasn’t the wisest of men, given the number of times he was shot out of the sky, and I like his sentiment anyway.