For the La Raza
Have them kill unacceptable babies (ones with defects, abnormalities)
Restrict education for certain members, have the rest treated as subhuman
Use animals and humans for blood sport entertainment
Develop and release diseases, plagues and toxins against their enemy and own people as needed
Have a one strike and your dead justice system
Sell life giving things like water, air, at insane prices, to kill off the poor
Encourage slave trading
Men using women as property
Training kids to be killers in the military from babies on
Making sure people are addicted to a drug, and using that to make them do what they want
Sacrifice people to a "higher god"
Make and sell planet or system killing weapons for profit
All been done before and cliche but they are something.
Have them kill babies that are the product of miscegnation between the True Blood and the Others.
Encourage the wirehead pleasure 'drug' which then allows the Warlords to make a deal...we cut off the wire, or you sign this 'work contract' aka slavery.
Okay, the Tarkan Dynasty is exporting their troublemakers for two reasons....A. To get rid of them. B. To weaken the people around them for eventual conquest. Inside, the TD, there are two groups....group A is currently in charge, but group B is going to take over in an in-group coup.
The babies trained for war is a metaphor for loyalties to other societies...so, train a baby with brainwashing, it forgets, and goes about its life....code word...all of a sudden all the Lawless are now Killer Soldiers.
At age three, you lock all the children in a room with some crude weapons and keep telling them, "As soon as only one of you is left alive you can come out and have some water"
Well, I don't want to be thaaaaaat messed up. Sticking the toddler in a VR fight game is bad enough.
Yeah for Kyler, have to say you want mildly not good for most of our evil :P
Kyler, I think you would probably have to have movies playing of people being beaten with said crude weapons to get the effect you want. The kids probably wouldn't comprehend that you wanted them to kill each other.
You ever heard of a Skinner Box? http://www.snopes.com/science/skinner.asp
Do what we want, get a reward. Do what we don't want, instant punishment, is the concept of it. I'll let the article speak for itself.
(Doing Therapy)
Right. This is supposed to be a functioning, if evil society.
Something like a Skinner Box sounds like a good metaphor for the brainwashing from the Lamestream Media. And it sounds horrifying, yet not too nasty for the story.
Kyler's method is how you dispose of the "Less than desirable" children. Batches of 10. The survivor is then forced into military service.
It's even a televised sporting event that people place bets on. The parents of the children are compensated and spared the burden of having a "Less than desirable" child. (That's how they would see it) and the child is brainwashed into a mindless killing machine.
(Doing Therapy)
Hmmm, perhaps. I'm thinkiing the miscegnation offspring are killed with the same arguements as are currently used for abortion. So, I suppose you could argue...its only animals that fight....and so you have some survivors who are Berserkers when they grow up...taught they are subhuman monsters and trained to be monsters.
I was not expecting to be here, but I got a phone call telling me I ought to see what was happening in this thread. So I'm just looking at this one thread.
MJ recently explained to me that Mother Teresa was in fact a selfish and evil person, at least by your definition. Why did she perform all of her wondrous deeds? In the hope of securing a better place in Heaven, right? So, everything she did was self-serving and therefore evil, by your definition.
For the record, what I told you was that Adam Smith would assert that Mother Teresa was evil and did all that good for that motivation. I do not believe that Mother Teresa had such a motivation; I believe that she honestly did good for the sake of good, did what she could for hurting people so that their lives would be benefited.
The point is that evil people do everything they do for their own self-interest and good people work for the benefit of others simply for the sake of those they benefit. But as C. S. Lewis said, good understands evil but evil cannot understand good--the evil person assumes that the good person is doing good for selfish self-interested reasons--to win the Nobel Prize, to gain the applause and approval of others, to make God happy.
To put that into perspective, I do what I can to benefit others around me simply because I want them to be benefited. I know that God loves me and is happy that I love Him and trust Him, and so nothing I do is motivated by trying to make Him love me more or make Him more happy with me. I help Baxter because Baxter needs help, and I can give it.
I almost disagree with Kyler's suggestion that it's evil to save your friends. I think it would be evil to save your friends at the cost of someone else's life, just as it would be evil to save your child at the cost of the lives of your friends, or save yourself at the cost of the life of your child. That is, the closer someone is to yourself, the more self-interested your efforts to benefit them might be; but then, whoever you benefit is going to become closer to you because of that. It is the selflessness that matters. (And I don't think that Kyler thought I was performing an evil act when I delivered food and money to his family when he lost his job, merely because I did not deliver food and money to every to me unknown unemployed resident of Clifton where he lives. It was a good and selfless act on our part to use our limited resources to benefit them, even if they are family. It would be more selfless were I to do the same for Adam Keller (who does not need it), and more so for me to do it for someone I don't know.)
*****
The notion of doing the right thing for the wrong reason has been raised, and it is perhaps the most difficult of moral issues. It is unlikely that you would do the wrong thing for the right reason, save as a mistake of fact (that is, you thought this was the situation, so you took a certain action which would have been right had the situation been as you believed, but had harmful consequences because of your misunderstanding). I think it better to do the right thing for the wrong reasons than to do the wrong thing because you can't do the right thing for the right reasons. It is better to do the right thing for the right reasons, and that is the nearest we can get to what we would call "good". The right thing is that which benefits others; the right reason is for their sake.
And Mike, this is very much the essence of the Christian ethic, although the ethic is not really the central aspect of the Christian religion. People get confused about that. The ethic arises from the faith, but is technically secondary to it.
*****
Concerning the train, I think that if ten children were hit by a train and you could have prevented the tragedy, you would be liable in tort for negligent wrongful death if you did not attempt to do so. You might be able to make the defense that you did not see a way to save those children without killing this other child, and it was too late to save the ten before you realized that there was no other way. If, though, you killed the one child in the process of saving the ten, that would be a defense of third persons defense--that is, the only way you could save ten people was to risk killing one, and so you made the choice to save ten at the cost of the one. The death of the one in that case becomes an unfortunate necessity, but the court would declare that you did the right thing in killing the one child in order to save the ten.
I note in this case that it is significant that you do not know either that the ten or that the one would not be able to avoid the train, but you do know that it is more likely that one child would avoid the train than that all ten would, and that even if eight would have been able to avoid the train you did the right thing to save the other two at the cost of the one.
It would be different if you were ordered to kill a child directly and intentionally in order to prevent someone else from directly and intentionally killing ten others. However, if because you knew that a killer was holding your child hostage you followed his instructions to assassinate a public figure, you would be convicted probably of murder two (lacking the mens rea for murder one). The person who engineered this would be convicted of murder one.
Also, in your scenario it is relevant that you are the railroad switchman. That means that you have a responsibility on behalf of the railroad to keep the railroad safe, and you are presumed to have the requisite knowledge concerning what changes you can make. If you were some passing individual who saw that a train was coming and that if you threw this switch it would hit the one child instead of the ten children, and you chose not to do so, you could be excused because you could not know what other ramifications might arise from throwing the switch. (E.g., you might send the train headlong into an oncoming train from the other direction, which would make you liable for a much more serious accident. If you were the railroad switchman you would know whether it was safe to divert the train to the other track, and that would figure into your decision.)
--M. J. Young
Wow--there were twenty-two posts between when I started writing that last reply and when it posted to the forum.
Of course, I was summoned to go eat in the middle of it, so it took a lot longer to post than I had intended. Still....
It doesn't look like I've anything to add at the moment.
--M. J. Young
So I saw MJ posted here, so I figured I'd pop in for a second, as I realized my commentary earlier could have been perceived as a direct attack on religion, which it was not meant to be.
I'm pretty familiar with Christian ethic, even if I couldn't explain it like you are able.
My issue isn't with the ethics that religion puts forward, but the bastardized use of religion that so many religious people seem to use it for.
My view of the world, as close to religion as I'm willing to have, is that I try to be as good as possible, and to help my friends when they need, and strangers when it doesn't endanger or worsen my condition. I guess that makes me evil by the definition arrived at here, as it's quite selfish, but oh well, I think I'm a pretty good person.
I'm straying from what I was trying to say though, my issue with religion is that I really think people should just try to be good people, I don't care how they define being a good person as long as it uses some form of logic. The use of religion to in essence allow bad behavior absolutely sickens me.
I would like to say though that this forum has been the largest contributer to me respecting religion, even if I do not chose to subscribe to said religion.
Now on a related note, I plan to post tomorrow some of my ideas for an evil functioning community, but I'm tired today and for a bit really was planning to just skip this thread entirely despite liking the concept that Eric is driving. I think I'll just skip John's posts in this thread.
PS.
One quick comment/question on topic:
Do the evil groups you're talking about have to be human? Evil societies are benefited by large birth rates so that assassinations and corruption are more easily filled. Goblins in particular seem to benefit from this, and goblin communities amuse me to create.
For the record, what I told you was that Adam Smith would assert that Mother Teresa was evil and did all that good for that motivation. I do not believe that Mother Teresa had such a motivation; I believe that she honestly did good for the sake of good, did what she could for hurting people so that their lives would be benefited.
Sorry for misquoting you.
I note in this case that it is significant that you do not know either that the ten or that the one would not be able to avoid the train, but you do know that it is more likely that one child would avoid the train than that all ten would, and that even if eight would have been able to avoid the train you did the right thing to save the other two at the cost of the one.
"If one life is saved, it's worth it." That's actually a false argument. How many lives would be saved by lowering the speed limit on the freeway to 25 mph? Would you personally think it was worth it?
(Doing Therapy)
Well, you could have genetically engineered humans that are basically Goblins in Spaaaaace!
Hmm, MJ, God talks of David with extra approval as a man after his own heart. It seems to me that God does look at some Christians with more favor than others.
For the sake of a rough draft, it's always feasible to do whatever you want then go back and alter for the final copy -- that's my philosophy. So, if in order to create a fuinctioning evil human society you choose t make a functioning evil goblin society, then go back and change all the goblins into humans but keep all the society basically the same....
@Eric: David was a foreshadowing of Christ (See Hebrews for the definition of the foreshadowing that I refer to.). As was Mozes and Elijah. Besides that I would like to see the verses that you refer too, but maybe not here. And your question was not directed at me. Sorry for interrupting. Just wanted to give my two cents worth.
@JohnA1nut: You are wrong and speak heresy. You do not want to be corrected. I will not pay attention to it anymore. I will resume listening when you want to be corrected.
@Kyler: you are very perceptive. I could expand on my reasons, but that would become more of a bible study. I do not feel that this is the place for it. If you want to know I'll revive my blog and post it there. I will provide you with a link if wanted. My main point is that there is a difference between egoism and searching joy and/or happiness. That seems to fade away with you up to a point where only asceticism is good and we should probably hurt our self daily so as to make sure that we do not feel joy and thus be egoistic. We've already had that and it was wrong. Be careful of building your whole worldview on one rule. Christ gave us a main rule, actually two and the rest to be viewed in its perspective. But instead of talking about 'creating evil' I find myself talking about how to live good lives, which is off topic.
@Glantri: Maybe this will interest you. (Video) Oh, and I do not want to force anything on you. You choose :)
Thank you Nikolaj, that was a really good video and I think really does justice to the positive side of religion.
It's not for me, but I don't look down upon religion when used the way the video presented it. He presents Jesus as an example to live up to, not God as a decision maker when you feel lazy. For what it's worth I really do like that ideology. However, I often don't do the selfless, because looking after my friends is one of my driving motivations in life. Whether the act they need me for would be considered good natured or not I'm always there for my closest friends.
On to the topic:
So I was thinking of a society where aging to adult hood took 5 years, and the natural lifespan of the race was unknown due to no one ever dieing of natural causes.
The political system is technically run by voting, however ever election all but one candidate either ends up falling on a knife or being poisoned, or potentially both.
The winner of an election has direct control over all other houses (the race is broken up into different clans or houses). Often times the winner picks a house to act as their slaves, ranging from having to clean the latrine to making the food to submitting to any desires of the master house.
There is a judicial system in place, that primarily deals with failed assassinations. A successful assassination is never tried, as without a person to levy charges the system congratulates the assassin. This is most often used in house wide assassinations, in which case any member of the house can raise a claim against the entire attacking house. As such an attack on another house has to be decisive and leave no member left behind, including babies. (I drew this aspect from RA Salvatores Drow Trilogy)
So while these guys might not be oozing evil yet their system is in and of itself evil.
They enslave, assassinate, and often kill entire houses including the babies.
Add on some external evil that fits in with the world you want it to run in and they have very few redeeming qualities as a race.
I read one of R.A. Salvatore's books about Dritz(z). It immediately reminded me of it. (In a positive way. It was well done imo.)
Yeah, the Drizzt is protagonist in the Dark Elf Trilogy, which I improperly stated was the Drow Trilogy.
I really enjoy a lot of R.A. Salvatore's work, particularly the fight scenes.
Nikolaj,
I understand foreshadowing, but I'm not that sure how David is a 'type' of Christ. Nor do I see what foreshadowing has to do with being appreciated by God. Although I may have heard what you're saying preached at one point.
Glantri,
I can see how the parallel between assasination of a political rival and modern day politics could be drawn.
http://www.snopes.com/glurge/drawbridge.asp
It's that story I was talking about. Saving 10 children by killing one. They agree with me that you should do nothing and let it hit the 10.
He's the foreshadowing of Christ as King, in some way a bit like Mozes was as leader of Israël. Salomon also has a lot of that, but I think that is more for the end time reign. (or something, I'm typing as it comes to me.)
I did not mean that he was more appreciated for it, but maybe more emphasized. He was a man after Gods heart because he loved God and followed Him. All who love God and follow Him are men (and women) after His heart. David was very radical (and he had to be, he was (and is) an example, being King)
I hope that makes sense. If you want to discuss more I can mail you or you can mail me. I don't want to drag this off topic.
Nikolaj wrote:
@JohnA1nut: You are wrong and speak heresy. You do not want to be corrected. I will not pay attention to it anymore. I will resume listening when you want to be corrected.
This was said in response to my assertion that the "If one life is saved it was worth the cost" argument is wrong. My point was that there are necessary evils in the world. How many lives would be saved if cars were banned entirely? I bet you would be hard-pressed to find people who thought it was worth it. Sometimes there are necessary evils in the world, and you have to deal with them.
If you genuinely think the lives saved would be worth the banning of automobiles, then put your money where your mouth is and never drive or ride in another car so long as you live.
I do not even have a drivers license John.
Furthermore I suggest that you read the links that you post because the story you gave us (and the motivations for it) differs drastically from the one on the link that was posted.
I do not even have a drivers license John.
Yeah, but you ride as a passenger sometimes, correct? Face it Nikolaj, the lives saved would not be worth the banning of cars.
Furthermore I suggest that you read the links that you post because the story you gave us (and the motivations for it) differs drastically from the one on the link that was posted.
No, you're the one who didn't read it carefully. That story is in the last 3 paragraphs.
How many lives would be lost if we banned cars? Some situations clearly call for medical treatment in a hospital setting as quickly as possible, so it's a good thing we have cars to get them there.
And a great deal of those are caused by car crashes. And you're just reinforcing my point. Some things are necessary evils.
Like me (necessary evils)
"If one life is saved, it's worth it." That's actually a false argument. How many lives would be saved by lowering the speed limit on the freeway to 25 mph? Would you personally think it was worth it?
John, I don't think anyone here made the claim you quote--I certainly did not. That makes it a "straw man" argument, a logical fallacy in which you misrepresent the position of the opposing view and then show the flaws in your own misrepresentation.
Having higher speed limits on our highways benefits the world in many ways. It does increase traffic fatalities, certainly; but it also increases commerce and production, which increase the means we have to save lives. It would be very difficult to determine whether the cost of lowering the speed limit as much as you suggest would save more lives than it would cost. It is also not entirely clear that saving a life is worth the cost when that cost is not another life or lives. There is a strong argument for the death penalty instead of life imprisonment in the fact that housing a convict costs so much, and if he is never to be released it raises the question of why he is being kept alive. That also is one of the strongest arguments for some forms of euthanasia, particularly in those cases in which a patient appears to be brain dead and so unrecoverable. Sending soldiers into war is quite simply accepting that some of them will die; we do it because we think something worth that price, whether it is the lives of our civilians, the lives of others in other countries, or human freedom.
As to the Snopes page, you are correct that they give as the "correct" answer (and they put it in quotes) that you ought not move the switch. They also say that it is the correct answer for a philosophy test if you can give your reasons. The correct answer for a law exam is that if you are the switchman you should throw the switch, because one death instead of ten would be reasonable efforts to mitigate the damage of the accident (and if I were writing an essay I could expound for several pages on the reasons why from a legal perspective you ought to throw the switch.
As to their assertion that the theological answer also says to leave the switch alone because of providence, that's probably a very Calvinist theology, and I would object to it.
There's a clever story about a man trapped in his home by a flood. He's sitting on the ledge of his second floor window when a man comes by in a rowboat and offers him a ride. "No, that's all right. The Lord is going to save me," he says. A while later, the water has risen and he's on his roof, and a motor boat offers him a ride. "No, the Lord will save me, you go ahead," he says. The water keeps rising, and he is perched on his chimney when a helicopter drops a ladder to him, but again he declines the ride, saying, "The Lord will save me." Then the water rises and he drowns. He gets to heaven, and says, "Lord, why didn't you save me?" The Lord says, "I sent a rowboat, a motorboat, and a helicopter for you, what else did you expect?"
We could say that God could send angels to save the ten children on the tracks. But guess what? Sometimes we are those angels. Sometimes God has sent us.
--M. J. Young
So I'm going to try and get this thread back on track of something that actually has to do with using evil in multiverser:
Are we trying to make something an apparent evil or an unquestionable one?
For example, if you verse into a situation where you meet one group first, who have done some horrific things in their own right but down tell you about that. They tell you of this evil group that poisons their wells and does all these horrific things. So you go to deal with the evil group, and are told a whole bunch of bad things about your group. Some are true, some are fabrications, but they're all pretty horrific. The original side obviously denies it and claims it's simply propaganda.
So I was leading somewhere with that. I think it would be neat to have a world where both functional societies were undeniably evil if you knew everything about them. But they were also fighting each other for power, and are good enough at propaganda that outsiders couldn't see the blatant evil. Drop the verser into one of these societies, let the society win them over to their side and then get them to try and deal with the other side, and see how they handle the fact they are being lied to by both sides.
The above reminds me of Babylon 5, the Vorlons and the Shadow, The Shadow are evil through and through, but they are completely honest about it, whole the Vorlons are good, but they do things like create telepaths in the other races artifically, wipe out whole planets that the Shadow have influence over, and aside from one, are dishonest and even outright hostile to anyone questioning them or their methods.
"God will move mountains for you, but you've got to use the shovel."
Glantri,
I'm aiming for an evil in modern society that can be reclothed for Military SF so that plasma cannon armed marines can go in and Set Things Right.
Does that answer your question?
That said, this is not only about me, and other ideas are valuable.
To go classic but cliché, there is substance X, we want it. Problem, other people are living on it. (oil in Iran, gold supposed to be in indian (native American) land (see the pocahontas movie evil side motivation). I think even Avatar (the movie) uses this.
So say that this country (or planet or what have you) is rich in, umm, orachlium or something. The bad guys want it. Other people live on it. The bad guys don't care.
Yah, its too common. Avatar was pretty bad.
Let me think about this.
Well, when in doubt, hit up the seven deadly sins and see if your bad guys are missing any. Cannibalism is always a serious evil trait as are many philias (but I doubt you'd want your subject matter to sway in that direction). It's also nice to take something undeniably lovely and pervert it in ways to make it undeniably cruel (not to be confused with things that are so good they are terrible), ie having a donation fund to help poor sick people (children is more evil) 90% of the proceeds to which are used on "vaccinations" to euthanize the majority of the poor children so that they aren't living on taxpayer money.
Nikolaj's got something of the right idea. Particularly, you make Orachlium (love the name) something that has become vital to the survival of the universe--our computer control systems need fresh supplies of it to continue maintaining our terraformed world conditions, or it's the core of our antimatter-based energy systems, or something that makes it indispensable. It then becomes the attitude that the lives of people in thousands of star systems throughout the galaxy depend on finding new sources of Orachlium, and these primitive people who have no concept of its value are using it to decorate jewelry. It's better than one should die to save ten; it's better that a hundred billion primitives should die to save the decillions upon decillions that populate the rest of the galaxy.
What, negotiate for the stuff? Sure, we'll offer trinkets to take what they don't realize they have. But then, we'll be mining it so fast we'll destroy the environment anyway, so the planet is doomed.
--M. J. Young
I thought he said orihalcum; but orachlium does sound cool, yes. edit: It was orachlium. Funny, my brain saw all the right letters and automatically assumed it was something it recognized.
Orihalcum is something? My spellchecker chokes on it, but I use words the spell checker doesn't like, so that doesn't prove anything.
--M. J. Young