Bad People Don't Exist

Which comes first, existence, or essence?

Sociopaths are bad people, or you could say that they are people whose minds are broken beyond our current abilities to repair.

This of course implicitly suggests morality and essence I suppose.
 
Good and bad are subjective ideas. What is considered a terrible crime in one country can be seen as an upstanding act in another. Terrorist or liberator; it's all down to how people see it.
 
Jacobi said:
Good and bad are subjective ideas. What is considered a terrible crime in one country can be seen as an upstanding act in another. Terrorist or liberator; it's all down to how people see it.
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That's debatable, don't you think? After all, many people believe that 'what is good' is truth to be discovered, not merely a series of opinions to be abandoned when faced with the reality of different cultures. If the suffering experienced through murder, rape, or torture is universal, why shouldn't the opposition to them be?

Then again... that's just what I'd expect to hear from Ming the merciless.
 
People also get joy out of suffering rape and torture. Look at American history, rape, slavery and burning people alive were all acceptable legal practices at one time or another.

You can say we're past that but Hiroshima was only 67 years ago.
 
So that line is convenient for those in power, but it is the hallmark of a monster through the eyes of the oppressed.

While those in power may enjoy their dominance, they to experience suffering when victimized. You cannot refute the universal experience of suffering by arguing that some men use desire as a justification for their crimes.
 
then there are no good people

though I'd say that there are, on a subjective level
 
It's not just some, normal people treated others like animals just because of the colour of their skin. Women were treated like servants just because they had less physical strength than men. Hell, marital rape wasn't outlawed until 1976.
 
One of my posts has gone missing so I'm going to retype it as best I can. Admin, did you delete it? if so, why please?

It is useful to have a word to identify, if only to yourself, the types of people you would like to stay away from. Whatever term you decide to use will eventually take on the connotations of "bad person" anyway so I don't see anything wrong with using that term.

However, we are all subject to the whims and desires of our own bodies and brains. To a certain extent that kind of does mean there is no free will. Or it at least means that free will is is only free insofar as our brains let it be.

Everyone makes the best decision they can based on the information available to them. Narcissists could be called bad people but they live a life of fear. They typically believe everyone else is doing the same dodgy shit they are doing so in their minds their actions are a justifiable necessity. They need to protect themselves from percieved threats. Is it their fault that their brains warn them of threats that don't really exist and force them to "defend" themselves?

If later in life they realise the error of their ways and make a genuine attempt to change their bad behaviour, is it right to continue calling them bad people?

What of forgiveness and understanding? Someone who doesn't practice this could also be called a bad person. Right?

CindyLou said:
Bad people exist. I hope you don't get tangled up with any of the truly bad so you can keep thinking they don't.
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Already happened on many occasions.

*Points at "forgiveness and understanding" above*
 
Poetic Justice said:
However, we are all subject to the whims and desires of our own bodies and brains. To a certain extent that kind of does mean there is no free will. Or it at least means that free will is is only free insofar as our brains let it be.
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Yes, we are subject to these things and there are limits on free will. We are creatures of time and nature, in addition, we have free will.

Poetic Justice said:
If later in life they realise the error of their ways and make a genuine attempt to change their bad behaviour, is it right to continue calling them bad people?
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I have never seen that happen; not on a large scale. For more minor, inconsequential "badness" or harmful habits, I have seen it happen. All people always make mistakes, including me; I'd be inclined to say the scale of those mistakes matter.

For instance, an addiction you've recovered from and which drove you to harm others is a totally different situation from a person who's exhibited a lifelong pattern of intentionally harming others, and who takes pleasure in inflicting pain on people and animals. Neither can deny what they've done, but both situations came directly from the type of person they are inside, and that doesn't change, not really.

Maybe Bad and Good are just labels but they're pretty useful ones to describe what a person is likely to do. Maybe a person's brain can be bad or good, some people may have a talent for harming people or animals.

Poetic Justice said:
What of forgiveness and understanding? Someone who doesn't practice this could also be called a bad person. Right?
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Well, sure, they can and are called bad. But you can forgive someone without giving them another chance to harm you! They're not the same things, forgiveness and action, forgiveness is internal, an emotion, what you do with that forgiveness is what really matters. Someone who gives people another chance out of forgiveness, is oftentimes someone who gives them another bullet to shoot with because they missed the first time.
 
Poetic Justice said:
One of my posts has gone missing so I'm going to retype it as best I can. Admin, did you delete it? if so, why please?

It is useful to have a word to identify, if only to yourself, the types of people you would like to stay away from. Whatever term you decide to use will eventually take on the connotations of "bad person" anyway so I don't see anything wrong with using that term.

However, we are all subject to the whims and desires of our own bodies and brains. To a certain extent that kind of does mean there is no free will. Or it at least means that free will is is only free insofar as our brains let it be.

Everyone makes the best decision they can based on the information available to them. Narcissists could be called bad people but they live a life of fear. They typically believe everyone else is doing the same dodgy shit they are doing so in their minds their actions are a justifiable necessity. They need to protect themselves from percieved threats. Is it their fault that their brains warn them of threats that don't really exist and force them to "defend" themselves?

If later in life they realise the error of their ways and make a genuine attempt to change their bad behaviour, is it right to continue calling them bad people?

What of forgiveness and understanding? Someone who doesn't practice this could also be called a bad person. Right?



Already happened on many occasions.

*Points at "forgiveness and understanding" above*
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I completely agree with you, although the only people I would label as "bad" are those that can't change. They can't. They are corrupt and not capable of change. They can't because they can not see themselves as someone needing change. Ever deal with someone like that? Its maddening thinking they are like us and can change. Its like its not possible; they're missing something the rest of us have. If someone shows the sign of change, I wouldn't label them as bad.

There is this idea that because I or anyone has labeled someone that we haven't forgiven them. Can someone explain that to me? They're still bad; I've still forgiven them but I don't reconcile with them because they're bad and they'll always be bad.

I strongly believe bad people exist and I also believe it would be immoral to refuse to identify them just because I risk being "bad" if I do. Wouldn't that be selfish? We are all "bad" and I'm okay with accepting darker parts of myself, but there is a difference...

I believe there is a boundary...a line crossed... that once crossed someone can't go back.

As far as understanding...that is how I came to my conclusion. For a long long time I was like..."oh poor bad person. They were abused as children and couldn't help it..." whatever excuse I could come up with to rationalize their behavior.

With understanding came wisdom. Those people make the conscious decision to do harm. Conscious. They can help it. Explain to me how someone can abuse their wife but never ever touch their mother? How out of control are they, really? What about the man who at an opportunity to kill and gets an erection because he loves to kill so much but stops himself because he doesn't want to go to jail? He wants to kill but won't but its not because he doesn't want to kill another human being. Its not because he doesn't like to kill and hurt. He enjoys killing and hurting others. What if this man is coming after or around you?
 
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Jacobi said:
It's not just some, normal people treated others like animals just because of the colour of their skin. Women were treated like servants just because they had less physical strength than men. Hell, marital rape wasn't outlawed until 1976.
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And yet it was because enough normal people opposed these things on a moral basis that caused them to be eventually outlawed. It's not that normal people used to support the morality of slavery and changed their opinion, rather until it started being loudly opposed, people didn't think of it as a moral issue at all. It's a good example of what some would call discovering moral truth.
 
How can you not see slavery as a moral issue? How can people not realise, treating a person like that simply due to a difference in colour is wrong? You're saying it took a few good people to stand up to it before others saw the cruelty in it. Surely something so heinous would be apparent to everyone. Even after it was abolished, black people were looked on as dirt by the majority. It's only been in the last few decades that they've been treated as human beings.
 
Jacobi said:
How can you not see slavery as a moral issue? How can people not realise, treating a person like that simply due to a difference in colour is wrong? You're saying it took a few good people to stand up to it before others saw the cruelty in it. Surely something so heinous would be apparent to everyone. Even after it was abolished, black people were looked on as dirt by the majority. It's only been in the last few decades that they've been treated as human beings.
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Slavery wasn't always associated with racism, that was actually more recent, aristocratic societies weren't always picky about skin color. Even after slavery, blacks had to deal with racism in the form of social darwinism that had many thinking still that control of ethnically different nations by greater European nations was the most benevolent, and best for them.
 
Does that really matter? That fact is that one man was used as a slave for another man's use. It was accepted as normal and sadly still is in some parts of the world.
 
Jacobi said:
Does that really matter? That fact is that one man was used as a slave for another man's use. It was accepted as normal and sadly still is in some parts of the world.
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It matters because until the association occurred, no one understood slavery for the systematic evil that it was. People who were cruel to their slaves were just considered 'bad masters' those who were kind were 'good masters'. Lockean ideas of self-ownership and intrinsic rights were also an important key to our understanding.
 
Jack said:
It matters because until the association occurred, no one understood slavery for the systematic evil that it was. People who were cruel to their slaves were just considered 'bad masters' those who were kind were 'good masters'. Lockean ideas of self-ownership and intrinsic rights were also an important key to our understanding.
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The hell are you talking about? There are writings from all SORTS of people who understood slavery to be both immoral and wicked in their own times and ours. It was institutionalized and a required evil for many of the societies that used it. You seem to be going off on some tangent trying to equate truth/evil/good/bad with objective reality. You're wrong. Period. Its all subjective. You cannot PROVE morality.
 
Billy said:
The hell are you talking about? There are writings from all SORTS of people who understood slavery to be both immoral and wicked in their own times and ours. It was institutionalized and a required evil for many of the societies that used it. You seem to be going off on some tangent trying to equate truth/evil/good/bad with objective reality. You're wrong. Period. Its all subjective. You cannot PROVE morality.
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If you think you can provide examples of people in earlier history, such as the first century (for example) who thought that slavery was systematically immoral, then give examples.

Also, it's all subjective? That's quite an assertion.

Can you prove that?

Really, I want to know, what makes you so certain morality is subjective? Do you have any evidence at all?
 
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Also Billy, I hope you can see that you're only being tacitly inconsistent if you were to insist slavery is actually immoral, and also that morality doesn't exist objectively.
 
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Jack said:
If you think you can provide examples of people in earlier history, such as the first century (for example) who thought that slavery was systematically immoral, then give examples.
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Well, then you run into issues with the idea that the definition of "slavery" as we understand it now didn't exist in the first century. As far as I know (and I'm no expert)--the idea of slavery as a means of forced labor for economic gain is the more recent incarnation. Slavery (or what might be considered slavery) was typically the capturing of hostiles and/or women/children of enemies and bringing them into the tribe. Many captives could gain acceptance and had rights of their own. The idea of just capturing people who were not hostiles or taking people because of force of arms and refusing to give people the right of control over their bodies began much later. There were decriers of Columbus during his era which IMO is where you see the more modernish version of "slavery" based on supposed moral high ground and/or race.

edit: I also believe you can prove morality exists though. Perhaps you can't prove 100% acceptance of morality or that people follow moral codes but morals do EXIST. We have a term called Norms which defines the prevalent accepted behavior of a given society. Norms are tempered by how rigid and conforming the society they exist in allows. For example, Catholics do not believe in divorce, yet Catholics divorce. The moral that divorce is wrong Exists but that doesn't mean it is followed.
 
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