Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

i think the human-being is born "evil". however i am not sure if my argumentation is adequat.

bsically, this is my fundament of argumentation:

look, i thought when you parent a child, on the one hand you care that much so he/her won't die the physically way. on the other hand you try to show no feelings/love (or in other words, you try to ignore) towards your children. this would theoretical mean that the mental stage of the child will change as little as possible.

- to me this sounds logical or atleast imaginable

this is the rest of my argumention/or how i imagine it could be:

during the time of growth the childwill try to get some attention. but sooner or later he/her realises that he still will be ignored, which makes the children sad.now the children dont want to stay in the stage of sadness/dissappointment, so i think sooner or later (depends on the psychially skin) the child will turn angry and seek for revenge/and also to get attention).

- well i guess it is a bit wishy-washy expressed, but still imaginable.

i know that my thought ain't new (i guess jean-jacques it was), but you know every generation has to found the wheel anew.

basic question: does it sound reasonable/imaginable/logic to you? (if not, why?)

does my theory have major flaws?

ps: you could also do me a favor, if you want to argue with me (what i want), try to imagine like you would argue with a little children, let say 10 years old (from a language point of view)

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

well yes, i think most children are unreasonably attuned to simply 'getting their own way' at one point or another in their lives. Sometimes all through, depending on all sorts of things. Most manage to build up some kind of independence though, and should learn to look after themselves, first in basic things, then, eventually, everything.

i do think the 'revenge' reason sounds rather specious though. Sometimes, you just want to hurt someone to get back at them for some perceived wrong you have sufferred. That's true enough, but i don't think it boils down to the level of evil. That's just anger, and it passes. I personally don't see anything evil about anger, although it is sometimes undesirable.

those were just my thoughts after reading your thing through once, maybe theyll be a tiny bit of help.

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

I was actually born evil but my parents beat it out of me aged 3 years old. When you are that age and getting beaten every day and told you are not evil, eventually you realise that you are not evil but a good person.

Let me tell you, from those days onwards I was never evil again. To this day, I swear I would beat the crap out of anyone I thought was evil and I'd torture then to a point they was not evil anymore. Goodness will prevail over all evil.

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

Damn, I wish everyone was like you. Lets beat them Evil people. :P

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

i think that i personally am an evil person who desperately wants to be good. Whether that in itself makes me good or not is up for debate, but it certainly gives the impression.

i very much doubt im a typical case however.

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

Evil by what definition? Your own?

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

This is a good point, which leads me to ask: Was Evel Knieval evil or just poorly named?

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

but dont you think one form of anger can turn into evilness?

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

is there an objective/universal definition of evil?

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

if i understood you right, well ofc you can turn into evil through different expierences. but that is not my point.

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

this doesn't seem to be about philosophy, it seems to be about child psycology.

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

Saying that people are evil has pretty much no explanatory value whatsoever. "Why does he do evil things? Because he is evil. But how do you know he is evil? Because he does evil things"

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

All I am saying is that I think evilness is not something you are born with, it is something you get taught at an early age by evil nannies. Mary Poppins wasnt evil so the children she looked after didnt become evil, if she hadnt have given them a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine to go down then she could possibly have been considered evil.

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

Only in the sense of something which is abhorrant to a moral code.

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

Your theory sounds a lot like Piaget's theory of development, if you only replaced the word "evil" for "egocentric".

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

Who the hell tries not to show their kids that they love them?!!

The psychological growth of a child is basically linked to fundamental concepts that all young posess i.e. id, they need attention, help, feeding and care in order to become full formed.
Hence a baby has no concept of anything but their own needs. They garner the sence of others, empathy etc. as they progress towards adulthood.
These concepts are then prevelent when they are then able to breed and have young in order for them to nurture, care, feed and look after the next generation.

Children are not born 'evil', they have no concepts of anything but what their minds are able to formulate.

If you neglect a child, not show it love, not care for it...then you will, no dount, damage them psychologicaly. It's a physical and psychological need they have for love and attention. If you deny anyone their needs (not just their wants) then it will affect them greatly.

Saying that neglecting a child shows that it is inherantly evil is nonsence.

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

The Victorians

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

Oh those crazy people from the past...will they ever learn?

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

i agree - being "evil" or "immorally bound" is not a basic instinct - it requires the full awareness of what is morally right and morally wrong, which usually happens on the first year of a child's schooling, directly exposed, without supervision, to other children and adults alike and therefore to the outside world

in my opinion though, being "sinful" is a subconscious nature that gets 'tapped' out into consciousness upon exposure to the outside limits of their households, and depending on their upbringing, a child will willingly allow whatever degree of "sinfulness" or "being bad" based on what a child is used to seeing at home - so kid_1 might punch his girl-schoolmate in her face for calling him a 'dummy' because he's used to his dad punching his mom when theyre arguing, then kid_2 might just fall into a negative emotional response from it

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

you forgot to define what evil is and who decides what evil is.

Also, you limit your outcomes to one possibility... there are also other possible out comes that you dont defend against.

You make too many assumptions.

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

Anecdotally speaking I didn't feel that ignored as a child. The human desire for attention is not necessarily infinite or even omnipresent!

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

Jonny sure uses a lot of long words.

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

:(

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

Or the desire for attention is omnipresent, you just had enough lovin'

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

The number of letters in the longest word in my post is the same as that of the number of letters in the longest word in QDS' post and less than the nunber of letters in the longest word in demiGOD's post (I picked those two because they were the posts directly above mine).

So relatively speaking (and aren't you the big relativist?) you're incorrect.

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

That's an invalid comparison. It would be valid if TomKat said you used big words, because you're looking merely at the length of hte longest word; as he said you used a lot of big words, you have to look at the numbers of such words in each post, because, in any of the examples, the word chosen could well be an outlier.

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

Without seeming like I'm a complete moron, what does being a "big relativist" involve?

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

Having at least 6 cousins.

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

I'm pretty sure my examples actually hold up as regards both the length of words and the number of supposed long words used you ****ing pedant mark.


PS This does tomkat.

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

If you're tall, your cousin or somebody could say "heh, there's my 'big relativist' "*









*I'll get my coat.

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

I'm afraid not, camper.

[edit]

o hay, wow, 20,020.

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

This is quite possibly the worst argument I've ever been in and last night I was involvedin an argument about whether or not arguing is fundamentally pointless.


PS Congratulations friend mark. May the rest of your days of posting be blissful and pleasing.

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

entirely my own. My moral compass seems to be vastly different to that of the general populace. Which would seem to suggest that i am. However, there are deeper reasons, im not ashamed to admit (well, i am slightly actually) that i occassionally entertain dark and disturbing thoughts, and a callousness for others that in other moods i find extremely distasteful.

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

No it isn't

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

You'd be wrong there.

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

No I wouldn't

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

i know that my thread is "over", but dudes, is this neccessary?

Re: Amateur Philosophy, please criticise
 

Where else are they going to do it? Legal enquiries?