#philosophy #war #peace
The belief that evil exists is the root of hate.
And hate is the root of violence and war.
Rather than thinking like a primitive, consider people who do bad things to be afflicted by a condition. If your dog becomes rabid, you need to put it down. But you don't hate the dog, nor believe it to be evil.
Hate evolved as a way to effectively carry out "putting down the dog", but it, like fear, is supposed to be a short-lived emotion.
Fear is the friction in conscious systems - it generates inertia .. when inertia is > payout the conscious response is called hate ..
It comes in many flavors
- hate to change the system - Windows is good .. why #Linux
- fiat is fine - why #bitcoin
when hate mixes with anger , it becomes the evil ..
"Consider people who do bad things to be afflicted by a condition." Yes, exactly. When we perceive human problems like this we are more likely to invent ladders that enable afflicted souls to escape their condition rather than using our power to throw them down into even deeper holes.
Hate is pointless, but evil certainly does exist. I wouldn't say any person is evil, but evil is their weakness multiplied by their incentives multiplied by everybody else's weaknesses and incentives. Or more simply, people thinking they can get something without working for it. Every different variation of wickedness is some version of that.
You're begging the question.
There is a qualitative difference between dogs and people. That difference is the capacity for judgement. Reason. The capability of moral understanding. A dog (especially one infected with a disease that makes it rabid) is not capable of moral judgement. You shouldn't "hate" a dog for acting according to its nature; a nature fundamentally incapable of understanding the meaning of its actions in any moral sense. This is the same reason we don't judge a child the same way we judge a full grown adult.
Humans are different. An adult is capable of understanding the meaning of his or her actions. There is no "affliction" unless they are rendered incapable of exercising their own agency (in which case, yes, we wouldn't consider their actions in the same light).
Whether or not you should "hate" people who engage in evil behavior is not necessarily a required reaction to facing evil (although if there is a valid use for hatred, it is probably of evil per se).
Nevertheless, it is certainly incumbent upon each of us to oppose evil honestly. That means recognizing it that it exists and that fully coherent humans are capable of it. If that means you go to war in order to protect yourself, your family, your friends, your community, your country, etc - then that's what it means. Pretending the problem away isn't going to solve anything.
no STUPIDITY is the root of violence and war
Hate is good actually
Stupidity = Bad
