The root of all evil?
 

Maybe we're all just scum and predisposed towards being evil (I know I am: see my music tastes if you don't believe me) but assuming there is an underlying reason or reasons for such behaviour, and discounting psychos who just kill for the fun or thrill of it, what would you consider the principle reason people commit evil acts? And before anyone like Batty asks, let's say murder, rape, violence against children, hate crimes - anything that could be generally characterised and categorised by most right-thinking and sane people as being evil?

I voted for power. Power over others usually seems to be the main motivator.

To me, it's a tossup between money and religion but a lot of good can come out of religion (Feeding the hungry, that sort of thing). There doesn't seem to be anything that comes to any good when it comes to greed. Money is why we're in the climate crisis that we're in presently for example.

I think none of these things are the root of evil, they are just means through which evil is brought out. Without money, people would also act greedy and exploitative, for instance

It's selfishness. It's built into every organism and influences them in some way. It's why male lions will kill a lioness' children, to remove future competition and make her fertile again quicker so she can help him sire his own children. It's why the cuckoo chick will try to push its step siblings from the nest or why a rat mom may eat the runt of the litter.

Life is competitive and the genes that we have today are the ones that managed to ensure their own survival by putting themselves first, the ones they rely on second and everyone else behind.

From this perspective, humans are actually extremely nice. Cooperation is something we're extraordinarily good at.

Ignorance.

I'd say power is #1, but it's close.

Selfishness is up there. The person who drives like a slalom skiier on the highway causes a pileup. Can you really call it an accident? I say the person meant to do it.

Of course religion plays a part.

There's the social aspect of it too. The sick person who can't afford their treatment. The person who has hit financial rock bottom.

For some, it's almost hereditary. Violence often begets violence.

yeah I'd argue with you on that one, Guybrush. What animals do is in their nature: they can no more control it than the sun can stop spinning around the Earth (sssh! They're already watching us! Act normal - ooh! Look at this lovely non-banned and approved religious text! How interesting!) - they have not the capacity to stop and say "meh, will I kill that other lion? What are the ramifications if I do? You know, maybe I won't: the guy has enough troubles already with those six cubs of his and his lioness always wanting the best gazelle at her table."

Humans are the only ones who can consciously decide to be evil, so it's I think unfair to equate our freedom of choice with the natural instincts of an animal, who does what it has to survive and endure.

I'd also like to point out that language is another reason for someone being evil. My provincial neighbours are doing some evil things over the French language of all things. Sacrament!

I'm leaning towards 'desire' as the closest thing to a good answer. For the purposes of the poll I'll go with 'other', though it's really more like 'all of the above'

All of the above is as good an answer as any in this case.

My vote would go to the mass framing moral decisions as immutable human nature.

What would be the benefit of greed if there's no money or barter system to incentivize amassing more than you could use yourself?

Evil is a human concept that we define. If you want to, you can extend it to explain non-human animal behaviour. I actually wouldn't, but then I also don't believe evil is real. It's just a way of saying something is bad without being specific as to the whys. Generally, we are able to be specific to the whys so "evil" is mostly appropriate for comic book villains and the like. Satan is evil. He also doesn't exist.

Humans are instinctively selfish, just like other animals. If a serial killer kills for sexual gratification, that for me is an example of extreme selfishness. If you keep eating meat despite a conviction that the world would be a slightly better place If you became a vegetarian, then that, to me, is also an example of selfishness. Being stingy about the price of clothes when you know textile workers suffer is selfish.

Democracies work for people because they let most people get what they want in a way that seems reasonably fair. But it also gives our selfishness a lot of freedom, f ex. to make choices that are good for our own comfort, but that will add to the suffering of other people or future generations.

Well, sure you could debate the "nature of evil" or even whether it exists till the bovines find their way back to where they originally set off from, but that's not really the question. I framed this poll in a way that asks what do you consider to be the root of what is generally accepted as evil, and I gave examples. Sure, you could say (I disagree) that being a meat-eater is selfish - I like my meat and I HATE vegetables - but I didn't ask what's the root of selfishness? In the same way, not all evil is necessarily selfish. That's another question altogether. Selfish in one way, I guess, as you are satisfying your own needs - be they sexual, racial, territorial or financial - without considering those of others, but if I had time to think about it (about to make dinner so quick post) I would imagine there are examples of evil that are not driven by selfishness. So some of those examples you give would not, for me (and I think for most people) fall under the heading of evil as we understand it. I know you're changing the question to what is selfish, but I don't think that really helps, or applies here.

I was assuming there would still be some kind of barter system. I think as long as material possessions exist, so will the amassment of them for the sake of bartering

yeah you can do evil without necessarily just doing it for what we would call purely selfish reasons in terms of status etc. Someone can be motivated by an ideology to do evil and be so dedicated to it they will actually make sacrifices for it. Like Osama didn't need to turn to extremism, he had a pampered life in Saudi Arabia and ended up living out of caves in Afghanistan.

Obviously whether what he did was even evil is a matter of interpretation. But for whatever category of behavior you categorize as evil there's gonna be a variety of potential sources and not one singular root of all evil.

If you do "evil" for non-selfish reasons, then someone will probably think you're doing good. It becomes a matter of interpretation. Some see a terrorist. Others may see a holy warrior fighting a great evil.

People thought the Nazis were good too. Why is it that if a different culture or whatever thinks it's good that's not evil but if it's just one individual psycho who thinks it's good then it is?

That's fair, but I think the blame falls more on systems that reinforces exploitation.

There are varying degrees of selfishness, and while selfishness does not always produce evil, it is always a component of evil. As such selfishness is imo the universal underlying root of all evil.

So what you're saying is you want to debate determinism vs. free will? :laughing:

I generally think that how morally good or bad an action is depends on the consequences in terms of joy / suffering rather than what one believes. If you did something and everyone but you think you're evil, I guess the chances are higher that you did something that caused significantly more suffering than joy. It's an indication perhaps, though no guarantee.

I think I have an okay handle on it, having studied biology.

The most basic human drives and behaviours are generally explainable by concepts we know like kin selection and reciprocality. If you wanna get into weird altruism, ants is where it's at (like it says in your sig).

Nah, I'm just pointing out that animals have no free will, so to equate what they do as a natural process of their lives with what we can do (or not do) because we choose to is, what, a false tooth? No, equivalency? Something like that anyway. Animals can't be evil as they haven't the choice we have to decide to be. They may look evil or how they kill others, or even humans, may seem evil, but it can't be taken to be evil.

Certainly, but selfishness is still something that's going to shape all humans' behaviour.

Is selfishness a biological factor?

Not to mention that evolutionary psychology anthropomorphizes outcome, is unfalsifiable, promotes hierarchy, flattens diverse factors to make them traceable, presumes correlation as cause, and is flat out racist yo.

Certainly interesting as a thought experiment but should in no way be treated as scientific.

I don't really believe in evil. I believe in broken beings, unevolved beings, and selfish beings, all with their own unique roots for less than ideal behavior... but what the hell is 'evil' anyways?

Editing to add - rape, child murder, etc.... generally considered evil but after lurking the other comments I think it's important not to make sweeping philosophical declarations that exclude our animal brethren. Who very much enjoy rape and child murder, and we don't judge them for it.

Jesus on a pogo stick! Carpe! Welcome back! :beer:

ok so then if you are using that lens for example (the consequentialist pov) then don't you agree that someone could do something that leads to more suffering without necessarily being motivated by what we describe as selfishness?

I also think it's important we consider what we mean by selfishness because some people (not sure if you are one) talk about all human behavior as being motivated by selfishness some way some how, even apparent altruism. So maybe you could also clarify your terms before answering the question above.

So is slavery evil now but not back in the day? I mean if it's that subjective even on a societal scale then is it even useful as a concept you can rely on, or is it more like a statue where you have to chisel away only the correct bits of stone to reveal a correct conception of evil?

I'd say slavery is still evil. Some would argue that it's still very much alive today.

I agree... Also I feel like defining selfishness in such a way that it refers to any and all behavior in and of itself makes the term fairly useless in the context of human behavior. It only carries meaning as a term when there is something to contrast it to. I think defining it so broadly really sacrifices any true insight you can derive from a statement like selfishness is the root of all evil if it's being presented as the driving force behind all behavior. It's like saying being alive is the root of all evil.

As a biologist I don't think he's referring to selfishness in the moral sense but "selfishness" as a word in the English language being used as well as it can to refer to a self-preservation instinct.

It's definitely still alive today.

How Bangladeshis are lured into slavery in Libya - 2021

Oh yeah absolutely

It's a consequence of natural selection when genes and the organisms that carry them compete against each other. I might clear some things up further in my reply to jwb below.


Yes, I agree. I wouldn't say misguided altruism is at the root of all evil, though.


I am one of those people and I do think that selfishness kinda underpins by far most of all human social interactions, even that which on the surface seems like altruism. That's why it's at the root of evil (still hate that word, though).

I've already written on selfishness / altruism this a few times here (like in the ant thread), so sorry for repeating myself. I'll still do it for clarity.


Even if selfishness kinda permeates most basic behaviours, I still think knowledge and discussion about it is useful and could possibly result in better ideas about society. In the ant thread, we discussed altruism. I made an example somewhere along these lines:

Imagine a population of altruists. Let's say they are flea picking monkeys. Every monkey will happily groom any other monkey and their grooming behaviour is genetically coded for. If you look at the overall fitness of that population, this altruism works for everyone so that everyone, as a result, has higher fitness. It's an ideal utopia and something we may consider desirable.

In nature, we generally think of such an ideal state as inherently unstable. The reason is selfishness - the grooming gene (let's just say it exists) can mutate to create a selfish version. It's just a matter of time. In this population (and discounting everything but grooming), a single selfish monkey that doesn't groom anyone will have a higher fitness than all other grooming monkeys. It enjoys all the benefits of altruism, but none of the costs. Because the selfish mutation is hereditary, it will start to rapidly spread in the population. At worst, the selfish version may eradicate the altruistic gene entirely and cause an end to grooming. Even if that doesn't happen, it's likely to cause some kind of temporary crash at least where altruists drop significantly very fast. After a while, a somewhat stable ratio between altruists and selfish individuals may be established, perhaps at 80% altruists and 20% selfish individuals. In the end, the overall fitness of the population is lower than it potentially could be if only the purely altruistic state was stable.

So in this example, selfishness corrupts the individuals' behaviour (makes "bad" monkeys) and it corrupts the population (stabilizes general fitness at a lower level than what would be possible without selfishness). The same is true for human individuals and our populations / societies.

A reason I think it's good to reflect upon this is so we can understand how to avoid it. If we want to maximize everyone's happiness and / or minimize suffering, we should create a society that is stable at very high levels of altruism. That means we should recognize where selfish strategies might flourish and put systems in place to combat them. Preferably, we need to create environments / societies that don't give selfish strategies a competitive advantage. In nature, such environments are created by stuff like animals being able to recognize or remember selfish individuals and reciprocating (at least once) in same manner when exploited. In human societies, we of course have laws and regulations.

The above may seem a little abstract, but I can use a trivial example from my old job. Among other things, it was my job to follow up pollution from car washes. The things that a car wash need in order to have clean wastewater are expensive. Oil separators are big installations that go in the ground. If you do nothing to regulate these businesses, you create an environment where those that don't follow the law are rewarded. After all, they don't have the cost or upkeep associated with oil separators and thus have a competitive advantage. As a result, if you leave this situation to stew, breaking the law by doing nothing is the most competitive strategy and so should be expected to increase over time. The car wash owners know what they're doing is wrong, but society is actually selecting for the ones that don't give a crap. They're the ones that will proliferate.

Needless to say, I'm not an anarchist.

Going into meme theory, you can also argue that selfishness has a way of corrupting ideologies and religions. Instead of monkeys, imagine a religion that has a benevolent god. That religion exists in the minds of many believers. Imagine that it mutates somewhere into something not so benevolent, that not believing in this god will guarantee you an eternity in hell. That mutated version can have a higher fitness because it plays on fear and this may give it a competitive advantage against its benevolent competitor. The hell-version can then have a very high fitness in the religious mindscape and spread around. We might call it selfish because it promotes itself via the fear and suffering of believers, but of course the idea itself has no motive. It's just competitive in an environment, perhaps more so the more fear mongering you have.

In any case, religions and probably also ideologies are other arenas where also selfish behaviours can do very well (selling pardons? "Seeding" money?), but I guess this rant is long enough.


Trying not to be snarky, I'll just say that suffering also happened back in the day and was also bad back then.

That’s easy

I'd be interested to know how you, Guybrush, then characterise selfless acts? How can they be selfish? If someone runs into a burning building to save another person, okay there's the "I'm a hero" and the possible fame after it, but do they do it for these reasons or just because it's the right thing to do, and if the latter, how is that selfish?

Also, loath as I am to hold myself up as an example of selflessness, tell me what's selfish about what I do for my sister? I don't gain anything from it and if anyone praises me (as a lot do) I just shrug and say it's what anyone would do. My life has been more or less stopped in its tracks and will be until one of us dies, so can you characterise my actions as selfish? Am I just trying to be "the big man", and if so, why am I not going around telling everyone about it, which I don't?

Or, to move from me then, what about people who constantly adopt children and/or animals? How are they selfish? Of course none of this is evil, but the discussion seems to have shifted in the direction of what is/everyone is selfish, so I think my questions are valid.

This isn't meant to come across as combative by the way, so sorry if it does, but I am genuinely surprised at how you see altruistic acts as being selfish, if I've read your replies right.

Well...

If the public thinks something is good then how do you prove it's evil? How do you use utilitarianism to show suffering when people will just say it's not suffering or that the joy will outweigh suffering? Is it suffering when you punish a child? Is it suffering when black people don't feel pain the same way whites do? Is it suffering if you're bringing them civilization and salvation?

In that case, evil is the biological basis of evil.