(October 9, 2017 at 10:58 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:(October 9, 2017 at 8:39 pm)paulpablo Wrote: If it was judgment like this has been a computer game and I'm adding up my score so far, and it's based on suffering/pleasure or well being I've given to others, I've done pretty good. I never murdered or raped anyone and I'm really not a cruel person, not very cruel to animals except I do eat meat. I can be pretty kind and thoughtful.
But I don't think it takes a mentally ill person to do very bad things. I've been listening to a lot of podcasts recently that are sort of about this subject, more specifically dealing with the importance of knowing how potentially evil you can be.
It's also about moral superiority doesn't come from avoiding doing things you couldn't do anyway. Just a few examples off the top of my head, I couldn't say Tiger Woods is a horrible womanizer, I'm better than him. I'm not tempted by anywhere near the number of women he is, just because I don't womanize possibly to the extent he did, it doesn't mean much.
I couldn't say I'm better than a slaver who took slaves as a way to make a living a thousand or so years ago. I've never had the opportunity to take a slave, I don't deal with any stress I imagine ancient people had to live with, I've never come close to having to make the moral decision to take a slave or not.
There are somethings I could really never imagine doing no matter how hard I try, I suppose it's just not in my genetics. A lot of things like rape, murder, cruelty are more easy for me to imagine, especially as a teenager when I feel like I was less morally stable and when hormones run wild. If I'd been put into a situation like a 3rd world country war zone instead of just a pretty bad area in the north west of England in my teenage years I could have been capable of a lot of evil.
What podcasts? Sounds interesting.
There’s a lot of online content by Jordan Peterson. He also does a huge series about stories and lessons in the bible. He’s an atheist but the series is about what he considers to be the good points of the bible. You might like it but it is long winded.
Are you ready for the fire? We are firemen. WE ARE FIREMEN! The heat doesn’t bother us. We live in the heat. We train in the heat. It tells us that we’re ready, we’re at home, we’re where we’re supposed to be. Flames don’t intimidate us. What do we do? We control the flame. We control them. We move the flames where we want to. And then we extinguish them.
Impersonation is treason.
