Is evil or good the right path?

[Fat Tony!]

The world has always portrayed being good as the right thing to do, help others, be kind, be friendly. I was watching a program in uk "Richard and Judy" they usually put on some good issues there and they started to talk about video game violence and mentioned GTA. The guy who was against the games said something like: "why do people seem to find killing people a form of entertainment? where has the world come to?" I laughed it off for a second since I knew it wasnt real and I thought it was generally fun killing people on the games. But then I thought, why do we enjoy killing? Why does killing occur in the world?
All thes things are bad things, "evil". It makes me wonder, Is it ok to be evil? Why cant we just go around killing people in real life, go around torturing others and shooting animals dead. How does that affect me? and even if it does effect me, does it matter?

Now before you go and flame me, dont worry. Its quite clear in my mind that being good makes me feel warm, happy and the whole of society can become better structured and efficient.
Of course if I went around killing people and was a generally evil person I would love it, anyone who is like that would. Why should we be good? Why cant we be evil? Or a good mixture between the two?

Hmm I cant explain this very well I cant get my head round it, its probably due to it being drilled into your head as a child about what is good and what is bad and the suggestion that being good is best. If we can understand this, we can understand the reasoning of murderers, people like hitler etc...

 

[MurderScene]

first of all, who gives the right to say what is evil and what is good?
for others evil may be good, to some good might be evil.

personally i think violence is part of human nature. its just...there.

 

[Tr0n]

Oh so raping and killing is a good thing?

 

[Dedalus]

the middle path is always the best.

 

[CrazyHarij]

Raping and killing etc are results of the many urges we carry, part of instinct, lower psychological aspects of the psyche. I'd suggest the concept of original "Evil" is giving in to those urges.

If you look through the religious scope at this, I think the bible used the concept Satan and demons as symbology for these psychological defects, "I"s or "ego"s as some psychologists call them. For instance, there's a story about jesus exorcising "demons" out of a sort of madman and sent them into a bunch of pigs, which killed themselves.
This could just be a symbol of these aspects being behaviour with it's origin in the animal kingdom.
Considering how much the stories in the bible Jesus told were highly symbolic, why wouldn't the concept of God and Satan etc, be? Back then, all scriptures in all major parts of the world were written with high symbolism to let people explore the texts themselves and work to interpret it in the "right" way to comprehend what they meant.

If you interpret most religions in that sense and look away on localised laws and perceptions, I'd say most religions are pretty much the same, if not identical. And this is not just the major religions today, many native religions like the aborigins, african and native american religions are set in the same way somehow.

"Good" in general is considered doing something unselfish, even becoming a better person or perfecting yourself can do it for this purpose, if you try to be a better person just for those around you. But since this isn't due to urges or "defects", but rather looked upon as conscience or just "goodness", what could it be then?
Perhaps I'm wrong and it's just due to empathy in an effort to survive, by the individuals caring for eachother, like in the animal kingdom, but alot of these actions, mainly among human beings, seem to have no connection with this. I'd guess much of our behaviour isn't quite working together on the same level so much as it seems to.

If you compare emotional thinking with rational thinking, they're clearly on different levels of the psyche and seem to be working against eachother most of the time, when you're putting effort in observing this.

 

[Gray Fox]

It's fun in games cause you can't do it in real life, and it's like reanacting what your heroas in action movies do. Life and death situations are something that ecite us, we would like to be in a world where everything is more black and white like in games ,where you have bad guys and good guys and you can easily kill em, fighting with someoen to the death is exiting and you feel especially good if you come on top, and it's even better when the guy you kill is not a real beeing so you don't feel guilty, violance is also there to make it more dramatic. Games arent only fun because of violance, but it's a part of a larger picture.

 

[Fat Tony!]

Oh so raping and killing is a good thing?

Silly tr0n, trust you to misunderstand.

the middle path is always the best.

Id say the best path is to be purely good but if that was to be then well there would be lots of problems. The middle path is the most feasible, to judge things to suit the situation. Most people are not on the middle path, they are more tilted to the evil side, unforunately . One of the most important drives in life is to live and to enrich your life and to do that you have to take things from others, this is why capitalism is so popular.

It's fun in games cause you can't do it in real life, and it's like reanacting what your heroas in action movies do. Life and death situations are something that ecite us, we would like to be in a world where everything is more black and white like in games ,where you have bad guys and good guys and you can easily kill em, fighting with someoen to the death is exiting and you feel especially good if you come on top, and it's even better when the guy you kill is not a real beeing so you don't feel guilty, violance is also there to make it more dramatic. Games arent only fun because of violance, but it's a part of a larger picture.

Yeah you got a bloody good point, that point hasnt been suggested enough in these games debates.

However none of you have explained why I shouldnt go out with a gun right now and kill everyone I see. But well I was thinking about it further and I think I answered my own question, I suppose its like saying "why shouldnt I smack my head against a wall until I smash my skull in" if you go and do evil to others they will do no kindness to you, so if I were evil I would impact on me. So logically there is no point in doing so.

 

[Tr0n]

Silly tr0n, trust you to misunderstand.

I was being sarcastic. :|

 

[Fat Tony!]

use the sarcasm tags , you should know im stupid

 

[marksmanHL2 :)]

Good...


But I am evil to evil people. (Well... really evil people anyway...)


:thumbs:

 

[Steve]

the middle path is always the best.

All right, Siddartha.

 

[MurderScene]

Oh so raping and killing is a good thing?

raping no, killing on the other hand depends.
again, other people could view these things opposite mine.
hell, back in the dark ages raping and pillaging were a part of life.

 

[Danimal]

All thes things are bad things, "evil". It makes me wonder, Is it ok to be evil? Why cant we just go around killing people in real life, go around torturing others and shooting animals dead. How does that affect me? and even if it does effect me, does it matter?

Killing a man = breaking the law

Torturing others = Bad reptutation, breaking the law or lawsuit for mental anguish

Killing an animal = Shame on you!

 

[Ryjalon5k]

how long do you people think you could survive on a killing spree?

 

[Fat Tony!]

It depends on how long the cops take to get there, and whether there are are of the public with weapons

 

[Farrowlesparrow]

It depends on how long the cops take to get there, and whether there are are of the public with weapons

Or you might fall and break your neck when you try to pull outa gun...

You also be going on a fisticuff killing spree. In which case I don't think you'd last very long.

 

[Fat Tony!]

The only thing ive learnt from GTA is that using tanks is the only way. Unfortunatly I need to get 6 cops stars after me so I have to gun down some policemen first.. hmmm