An absurd (?) implication of the impotence of evil

[Henrik Unné 0]

According to the principle of the impotence of evil, the further away from the good you are, the more metaphysically impotent you are. This principle has led me to the counterintuitive, and at first sight absurd, idea, that most of my workmates and neighbors, who are "ordinary people", are morally still worse, in a sense, than such monsters as Adolf Hitler and Immanuel Kant.

Consider. Robert Stadler is a worse villain than Jim Taggart, because he, Stadler, was closer to the good than Taggart, and he betrayed that good. In real life, such individuals as Alan Greenspan and Nathaniel Branden, are in a sense, still worse than Adolf Hitler and Immanuel Kant, because they were, initially, closer to the good, and they betrayed that good. Well, are not my workmates and neighbors, who are "ordinary people", in between Alan Greenspan and Nathaniel Branden on the one hand, and Adolf Hitler and Immanuel Kant on the other? Are not the "ordinary people" of the world closer to the good than Hitler and Kant, but further from the good than Greenspan and Branden were initially? And does not that mean that the "ordinary people" of the world are worse, when they betray the good, than Hitler and Kant, albeit less bad than Greenspan and Branden?

So, Hitler and Kant are furthest from the good, my workmates and neighbors are closer, and Greenspan and Branden were, initially, closer still. So Greenspan´s and Branden´s betrayal of the good is worst, my workmates´ and neighbors´ betrayal of the good, when they betray it, is less bad, and Hitler´s and Kant´s betrayal of the good is least bad. So those of my workmates and neighbors who betray the good, are worse than Hitler and Kant! And most of my workmates and neighbors *do* betray the good. They "watch television while Rome burns". They virtually never get off their a-s and do some serious thinking about important abstract subjects. When I attempt to get them interested in Objectivim their typical response is "Ideas are a waste of time." and "Why should I care?"

So now that this idea has occurred to me, that most of my workmates and neighbors are, in a sense, worse than Hitler and Kant, I take it very seriously. I do not regard it as absurd.

Of course, my workmates and neighbors are not full of *malice*, like Hitler and Kant. Nor do they work hard to destroy values. So they are not as evil as Hitler and Kant. But I think that they are more morally depraved than Hitler and Kant, because they are metaphysically more potent than Hitler and Kant, and they betray their potential to do good.

Yes, I do think that the "ordinary man" is metaphysically more potent than Kant, the major philosopher, because the "ordinary man" *can* think, if only he chooses to. The helplessness of the "common, non-intellectual man" that Objectivists talk about, is in my opinion a misguided idea. If a common man does not think, and therefore comes into the grip of Kant, that is his *own fault*. Each and every "ordinary man" *can* help it. The "ordinary men" of the world are not helpless, notwithstanding the fact that they are unintellectual. Because it is each man´s own fault, if he is unintellectual. And the "division-of-intellectual-labor principle" does not excuse the common men of the world from the responsibility of thinking, and of telling the difference between poisonous ideas, and good ones.

As Dr. Peikoff observed - "To save the world is the simplest thing in the world. All one has to do is think." Each and every individual who habitually chooses not to think, is responsible for the destruction of the world, is a traitor to the good, and is, in my opinion, a moral monster. As I have stated in a number of other posts, my evaluation of mankind is that the vast majority of men are moral monsters. Only a few are morally mixed, and even fewer are heroes.

This negative assessment of the majority of the members of mankind does not make me pessimistic however, because the moral monsters, no matter how many they are, are metaphysically impotent, as long as they remain moral monsters. And since every man has free will, no moral monster is "programmed" to remain one. Still, I do not think that many moral monsters will break their habit of not thinking. But that does not matter, because they are second-handers, so they will go along with the trend set by us thinkers, if we try hard enough. I am optimistic, despite the fact that I have such a low opinion of the majority of the members of the human race.

[Betsy Speicher 0]

Henrik, I wonder how you would evaluate Eddie Willers.

[Paul's Here 0]

--------

Consider. Robert Stadler is a worse villain than Jim Taggart, because he, Stadler, was closer to the good than Taggart, and he betrayed that good. In real life, such individuals as Alan Greenspan and Nathaniel Branden, are in a sense, still worse than Adolf Hitler and Immanuel Kant, because they were, initially, closer to the good, and they betrayed that good. Well, are not my workmates and neighbors, who are "ordinary people", in between Alan Greenspan and Nathaniel Branden on the one hand, and Adolf Hitler and Immanuel Kant on the other? Are not the "ordinary people" of the world closer to the good than Hitler and Kant, but further from the good than Greenspan and Branden were initially? And does not that mean that the "ordinary people" of the world are worse, when they betray the good, than Hitler and Kant, albeit less bad than Greenspan and Branden?

So, Hitler and Kant are furthest from the good, my workmates and neighbors are closer, and Greenspan and Branden were, initially, closer still. So Greenspan´s and Branden´s betrayal of the good is worst, my workmates´ and neighbors´ betrayal of the good, when they betray it, is less bad, and Hitler´s and Kant´s betrayal of the good is least bad. So those of my workmates and neighbors who betray the good, are worse than Hitler and Kant! And most of my workmates and neighbors *do* betray the good. They "watch television while Rome burns". They virtually never get off their a-s and do some serious thinking about important abstract subjects. When I attempt to get them interested in Objectivim their typical response is "Ideas are a waste of time." and "Why should I care?"

-----------------

I think you have your value scale inverted. The more evil is not closer to the good. By such logic, the good is closest to the good and, therefore, most evil. In the scene describing the passengers on the train that was destroyed in the Taggart Tunnel accident, put in order those who you think are the least evil to the most evil. Let's see if we can agree on that. Start with the sentence "It is said that catastrophes are a matter of pure chance, and there were those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet were not guilty or responsible for the thing that happened to them" in Part 2, Chap 7. Who are the most evil and why?

[bborg 0]

According to the principle of the impotence of evil, the further away from the good you are, the more metaphysically impotent you are. This principle has led me to the counterintuitive, and at first sight absurd, idea, that most of my workmates and neighbors, who are "ordinary people", are morally still worse, in a sense, than such monsters as Adolf Hitler and Immanuel Kant.

As Dr. Peikoff observed - "To save the world is the simplest thing in the world. All one has to do is think."

Henrik, since you raise Dr. Peikoff I think you should listen to his podcast. Aside from being insightful generally, he occasionally reviews emails that offer arguments of the form you presented here. What you are doing is arguing rationalistically, taking a "principle" from Objectivism out of its context and attempting to deduce a theory from it. Your argument is just wordplay, it doesn't connect to experience at all. Just stop and do a reality check on your conclusion. The idea that the ordinary man is more evil than Hitler isn't just "counter-intuitive", it's complete nonsense. What is the ordinary man actually doing that is so incredibly evil? And don't say, he's refusing to think. So did Hitler, but he also exterminated millions, leading a campaign of tyranny that would have spread the globe if it weren't for a few brave nations waging war against him. What is your average person doing that can approach the scale of such horror? And don't say he's making a Hitler possible. Kant created a philosophy with the sole purpose of destroying reason for the sake of faith, the validity of man's senses for the sake of a supernatural dimension, and the self for the whims of any passing beggar. Yet you say that the ordinary man is worse? How? Use specific examples please.

[Henrik Unné 0]

Henrik, I wonder how you would evaluate Eddie Willers.

I would say that Eddie Willers is mixed, and not a hero. He does some thinking, but not really as much as he should.

I do not buy the idea that most men are born without any inherent ability to do "hard thinking". I really believe in volition. I think that every man, who has a normal brain (i.e. all men excepting such unfortunates as individuals with Down´s syndrome and the like), is born with the potential to become a really good thinker. Maybe not all individuals are born with the potential to become an Aristotle or an Ayn Rand (I am still out on that one), but I think that at least they could become thinkers on the order of such heroes as Thomas Jefferson, and the reason that most of them don´t is volition. I believe that the differences in different men´s intellectual achievements is due *almost* exclusively to volition. I do not think that "nature" or "nurture" plays a major role in it.

The vast majority of men simply do not choose to habituate themselves to abstract thinking when young children, and as they grow older they become used to "coasting" intellectually. "Coasting" becomes second-nature to them. As for Eddie Willers, he was not a "coaster", but neither was he an heroic thinker. He was in between. So he was a good man, in my view, but not a great man.

[Henrik Unné 0]

I think you have your value scale inverted. The more evil is not closer to the good. By such logic, the good is closest to the good and, therefore, most evil. In the scene describing the passengers on the train that was destroyed in the Taggart Tunnel accident, put in order those who you think are the least evil to the most evil. Let's see if we can agree on that. Start with the sentence "It is said that catastrophes are a matter of pure chance, and there were those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet were not guilty or responsible for the thing that happened to them" in Part 2, Chap 7. Who are the most evil and why?

I did not say that the more evil is closer to the good. I said that the closer you are to the good, then the worse you are *if* you subsequently betray it. Such men as Greenspan do infinitely more harm than such openly evil men as Obama. Also, I do point out that it is only *in a sense* that the majority of "ordinary men" are worse than Hitler and Kant. Hitler and Kant are full of malice, and they wage an all-out war to destroy values. Most of the "ordinary men are not malicious, and they are not on a campaign to destroy. So in a sense Hitler and Kant are much worse. They are evil. But the majority of mankind´s common men, commit a *worse treason* to the good than Hitler and Kant, because they are closer to the good, and they betray it (by acts of omission, not comission). So *in a sense* they are worse. They are not worse criminals than Hitler and Kant, but they are worse moral traitors. By this I mean that Hitler and Kant perpetrate evil, by acts of comission, while the majority of the rest of mankind, enable evil, by acts of omission. Remember the aphorism often (and probably falsely) attributed to Edmund Burke - "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil, is for the good men to do nothing."

[Henrik Unné 0]

Use specific examples please.

You wish me to give some concrete examples to illustrate my view?

Well there was a murder case back in the 1960s that became famous in criminology. I remember reading about this scandal when I was a boy in America back in the 60s. A young woman, I do not remember her name, was brutally stabbed to death in a neighborhood in New York City. It took her several minutes to die. That whole time, while she was being stabbed, she screamed for help. Several dozen residents in the neighborhood heard her screams for help. But not one of them helped her. None of the residents within earshot even phoned the police. Now would you say that the residents, who did not lift a finger to help the young female murder victim, were less depraved than the knife murderer? Well, the murderer was the one, like Hitler, who actively committed the murder. But were not the people who did not lift a finger to help the victim *in a sense* even worse moral traitors, and at least as vicious moral monsters?

I put it to you that the majority of the members of mankind are in some ways similar to those residents who did not lift a finger to help a murder victim. The world is going to hell around them, they are confronted with massive evidence that their cherished premises are wrong, but they simply cannot be bothered to think, and they simply will not get off their a-s and do something to fight or work for a better world (and thereby for a better future for themselves).

Remember the aphorism (probably falsely) attributed to Edmund Burke - "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil, is for the good men to do nothing." Well, how much are most of the members of "the masses" doing?

[GUY A 0]

Use specific examples please.

You wish me to give some concrete examples to illustrate my view?

Well there was a murder case back in the 1960s that became famous in criminology. I remember reading about this scandal when I was a boy in America back in the 60s. A young woman, I do not remember her name, was brutally stabbed to death in a neighborhood in New York City. It took her several minutes to die. That whole time, while she was being stabbed, she screamed for help. Several dozen residents in the neighborhood heard her screams for help. But not one of them helped her. None of the residents within earshot even phoned the police. Now would you say that the residents, who did not lift a finger to help the young female murder victim, were less depraved than the knife murderer? Well, the murderer was the one, like Hitler, who actively committed the murder. But were not the people who did not lift a finger to help the victim *in a sense* even worse moral traitors, and at least as vicious moral monsters?

I put it to you that the majority of the members of mankind are in some ways similar to those residents who did not lift a finger to help a murder victim. The world is going to hell around them, they are confronted with massive evidence that their cherished premises are wrong, but they simply cannot be bothered to think, and they simply will not get off their a-s and do something to fight or work for a better world (and thereby for a better future for themselves).

Remember the aphorism (probably falsely) attributed to Edmund Burke - "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil, is for the good men to do nothing." Well, how much are most of the members of "the masses" doing?

Her name was "Kitty" Genovese.

[bborg 0]

Henrik, this is the example you used in your original thread on this subject (are we up to 5 now?) so I would just direct you to my original response. You are using one example to damn billions of people around the globe to the status of "moral monster". Not only have you not demonstrated why the residents of the building should be considered worse than the killer and worse than Hitler, but even if that were true you have no grounds to generalize from this example to what is "average". You have recently admitted in a companion thread that despite your views on the average man, for some reason you do not feel that contempt for real people you encounter. How many more threads is it going to take to get you to drop this absurd premise? It doesn't matter how many ways you come at it, it's simply not true.

[rtg24 0]

Genovese was covered by many writers, including Malcolm Gladwell most recently (was it in the Tipping Point?).

What I remember (fuzzy memory) happened is that everybody else assumed somebody had already called the police/for some help (and since the area was dangerous, might as well not risk your life going down to see what was going on).

This is why in France it is a crime to stop assisting somebody if you are the first person assisting somebody in danger (e.g. an accident scene) - because passer-bys assume that the situation is already being taken care of and that therefore their duty of help is not engaged this time.

When I lost 1/4 of my face against tarmac thanks to a stupid cat running against my front wheel, I didn't feel that the cyclists wooshing past without a second look were evil. They had seen that I was talking to the mayor's wife who happened to be driving past at that moment, and who had called the fire brigade (who picks up the wounded in France). Had she not been there, somebody else would have stopped.

So I don't think it's a good example.

[B. Royce 0]

--------

Consider. Robert Stadler is a worse villain than Jim Taggart, because he, Stadler, was closer to the good than Taggart, and he betrayed that good. In real life, such individuals as Alan Greenspan and Nathaniel Branden, are in a sense, still worse than Adolf Hitler and Immanuel Kant, because they were, initially, closer to the good, and they betrayed that good. Well, are not my workmates and neighbors, who are "ordinary people", in between Alan Greenspan and Nathaniel Branden on the one hand, and Adolf Hitler and Immanuel Kant on the other? Are not the "ordinary people" of the world closer to the good than Hitler and Kant, but further from the good than Greenspan and Branden were initially? And does not that mean that the "ordinary people" of the world are worse, when they betray the good, than Hitler and Kant, albeit less bad than Greenspan and Branden?

So, Hitler and Kant are furthest from the good, my workmates and neighbors are closer, and Greenspan and Branden were, initially, closer still. So Greenspan´s and Branden´s betrayal of the good is worst, my workmates´ and neighbors´ betrayal of the good, when they betray it, is less bad, and Hitler´s and Kant´s betrayal of the good is least bad. So those of my workmates and neighbors who betray the good, are worse than Hitler and Kant! And most of my workmates and neighbors *do* betray the good. They "watch television while Rome burns". They virtually never get off their a-s and do some serious thinking about important abstract subjects. When I attempt to get them interested in Objectivim their typical response is "Ideas are a waste of time." and "Why should I care?"

-----------------

I think you have your value scale inverted. The more evil is not closer to the good. By such logic, the good is closest to the good and, therefore, most evil. In the scene describing the passengers on the train that was destroyed in the Taggart Tunnel accident, put in order those who you think are the least evil to the most evil. Let's see if we can agree on that. Start with the sentence "It is said that catastrophes are a matter of pure chance, and there were those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet were not guilty or responsible for the thing that happened to them" in Part 2, Chap 7. Who are the most evil and why?

Henrik, I would also add that the phrase "closer to the good", as you use it, is rather meaningless. In the context of getting closer to a goal a man wants to achieve, it does have meaning.

Men either practice virtue, or they do not. Some practice it more consistently than others; some all the time, some not at all. A man who practices virtue all the time, who has integrity, and then betrays it, is a traitor to his highest values. If he betrays them in a way that is vicious and destroys (or seeks to destroy) the lives or happiness of others, he is a moral monster. But a man who is never virtuous (who betrayed himself at the beginning) and who tries to destroy the lives and happiness of others, is also a moral monster.

The majority of men, who are inconsistently virtuous, or who drift passively, merely living from day to day with no attempt at sharp focus or serious long-range thinking, are merely morally inept. Yet some, even many, of these may practice the virtue of competence at their jobs (producing rationally objective values) and follow some degree of rational commom sense in other areas of their lives, and thus be open to rational persuasion. The majority of men are not moral monsters.

[Henrik Unné 0]

I think you have your value scale inverted. The more evil is not closer to the good. By such logic, the good is closest to the good and, therefore, most evil. In the scene describing the passengers on the train that was destroyed in the Taggart Tunnel accident, put in order those who you think are the least evil to the most evil. Let's

The majority of men, who are inconsistently virtuous, or who drift passively, merely living from day to day with no attempt at sharp focus or serious long-range thinking, are merely morally inept. Yet some, even many, of these may practice the virtue of competence at their jobs (producing rationally objective values) and follow some degree of rational commom sense in other areas of their lives, and thus be open to rational persuasion. The majority of men are not moral monsters.

I don´t agree with the idea that it is not all that bad to drift passively. What really is the practical difference between not thinking and actively evading? In both cases you fail to gain the knowledge that you need to live. Both the evader and the drifter *sense* in some form, that they will not gain knowledge, and that they need that knowledge. Both the evader and the drifter sense that what they are doing is wrong. And what is the practical difference between promoting death by an act of commission (evading), and by an act of omission (drifting)? In both cases the result is death. And it is wrong to argue that the drifter does not have any scienter. He has at least an inkling of the fact that he is doing something wrong. Question an habitual drifter´s moral status, and he will almost certainly become hostile, because he knows that what you are doing is justified (i.e. he *knows* in some terms that it is wrong to habitually default on the responsibility of thinking).

I know from personal experience that drifters will sooner or later cause grievous harm, to themselves and/or others. My own mother was an habitual drifter. She was like on of the inhabitants of Starnesville in Atlas Shrugged. And she was *not* malicious. She did not *intend* to bring about any harm to anyone. So she was not like Kant and Hitler. But she nearly got me killed. Since she never bothered to think about abstract subjects, she taught me all the wrong ideas (altruism, intrinsicism, duty ethics, skepticism etc.), and she gave me disastrously wrong advice on concrete issues in my life. As a result I got so messed up that I made two suicide attempts at the age of 15, and became psychotic (i.e. she drove me literally crazy, with the help of my father and my schoolteachers).

I do not see any real difference between almost getting someone killed by intent and by knowing default (and my mother did know that she was doing something really wrong when she never bothered to think about abstract subjects, so it was a *knowing* default, she showed that by the fact that she was swimming in guilt most of the time). Therefore I nowadays evaluate my own mother as having been (she is dead now) a moral monster. And I see no reason to view other drifters as being better.

And if Ayn Rand, in the tunnel disaster in Atlas Shrugged, meant to say that evaders are significantly more immoral than mere drifters, then I have to respectfully disagree with her.

[Henrik Unné 0]

Genovese was covered by many writers, including Malcolm Gladwell most recently (was it in the Tipping Point?).

What I remember (fuzzy memory) happened is that everybody else assumed somebody had already called the police/for some help (and since the area was dangerous, might as well not risk your life going down to see what was going on).

This is why in France it is a crime to stop assisting somebody if you are the first person assisting somebody in danger (e.g. an accident scene) - because passer-bys assume that the situation is already being taken care of and that therefore their duty of help is not engaged this time.

When I lost 1/4 of my face against tarmac thanks to a stupid cat running against my front wheel, I didn't feel that the cyclists wooshing past without a second look were evil. They had seen that I was talking to the mayor's wife who happened to be driving past at that moment, and who had called the fire brigade (who picks up the wounded in France). Had she not been there, somebody else would have stopped.

So I don't think it's a good example.

OK, if the facts about the Genovese case are what you say they are, then the case did not illustrate my point so well. But I still think that my point was valid. The men who are so indifferent that they do not help the victim of a murder attempt, even when no risk is involved in giving help, and just let the victim die, are at least as morally depraved as the murderer. Remember Ayn Rand´s view that the leftists who sanction the torture of innocents in Communist dictatorships are just about as bad as the torturers themselves?

[B. Royce 0]

Genovese was covered by many writers, including Malcolm Gladwell most recently (was it in the Tipping Point?).

What I remember (fuzzy memory) happened is that everybody else assumed somebody had already called the police/for some help (and since the area was dangerous, might as well not risk your life going down to see what was going on).

This is why in France it is a crime to stop assisting somebody if you are the first person assisting somebody in danger (e.g. an accident scene) - because passer-bys assume that the situation is already being taken care of and that therefore their duty of help is not engaged this time.

When I lost 1/4 of my face against tarmac thanks to a stupid cat running against my front wheel, I didn't feel that the cyclists wooshing past without a second look were evil. They had seen that I was talking to the mayor's wife who happened to be driving past at that moment, and who had called the fire brigade (who picks up the wounded in France). Had she not been there, somebody else would have stopped.

So I don't think it's a good example.

OK, if the facts about the Genovese case are what you say they are, then the case did not illustrate my point so well. But I still think that my point was valid. The men who are so indifferent that they do not help the victim of a murder attempt, even when no risk is involved in giving help, and just let the victim die, are at least as morally depraved as the murderer. Remember Ayn Rand´s view that the leftists who sanction the torture of innocents in Communist dictatorships are just about as bad as the torturers themselves?

The obvious implication of Rand's view is that she regarded "the torturers" as worse. He who initiates force is always worse than the witness who does nothing to help the victim. He who has initiated force has decided (consciously or not) to destroy values. He has decided to create a victim. The witness has made no such decision. The witness would not even exist as a witness if not for the perpetrator of the wrong. Both victim and (potential) witness have been created by the perpetrator. There is nothing more to say.

[Henrik Unné 0]

OK, if the facts about the Genovese case are what you say they are, then the case did not illustrate my point so well. But I still think that my point was valid. The men who are so indifferent that they do not help the victim of a murder attempt, even when no risk is involved in giving help, and just let the victim die, are at least as morally depraved as the murderer. Remember Ayn Rand´s view that the leftists who sanction the torture of innocents in Communist dictatorships are just about as bad as the torturers themselves?

The obvious implication of Rand's view is that she regarded "the torturers" as worse. He who initiates force is always worse than the witness who does nothing to help the victim. He who has initiated force has decided (consciously or not) to destroy values. He has decided to create a victim. The witness has made no such decision. The witness would not even exist as a witness if not for the perpetrator of the wrong. Both victim and (potential) witness have been created by the perpetrator. There is nothing more to say.

Well, consider this. Ayn Rand once remarked that she did not know who was worse, the perpetrator of an evil, or the victim who let the perpetrator do it to him without resisting. And she continued to say that she now knew that the latte was still worse than the perpetrator. I do not remember the context for this remark, the place where she made it and the exact type of evil that she was talking about. She may have been talking about the issue of pacifism, and making the point that an agressor, and the pacifist who refuses to defend himself as an agressor . Well, I think that it is obvious that Ayn Rand had a valid point.

By your reasoning, B. Royce, the pacifist must be less depraved than the agressor, because after all, there would be no aggression that called for self-defense, if there were no agressor.

My reasoning is this - the passive enabler of evil, is more depraved than the perpetrator of evil, because his moral treason is more *gratuitous". The perpetrator of evil is at least trying to satisfy a sick emotion. But the passive, indifferent person, is giving up the good for *nothing*, for the mere "pleasure" remaining almost unconcious. The passive enabler is not after anything. He just wants to be dead (in regard to consciousness). The perpetrator of evil also wants to be dead *ultimately*. But at least he wants to get a "kick" before he dies. The passive enabler is content to just die (in effect, since being unconscious, i.e. not thinking, is essentially the same as being dead).

[Paul's Here 0]

I think you have your value scale inverted. The more evil is not closer to the good. By such logic, the good is closest to the good and, therefore, most evil. In the scene describing the passengers on the train that was destroyed in the Taggart Tunnel accident, put in order those who you think are the least evil to the most evil. Let's see if we can agree on that. Start with the sentence "It is said that catastrophes are a matter of pure chance, and there were those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet were not guilty or responsible for the thing that happened to them" in Part 2, Chap 7. Who are the most evil and why?

I did not say that the more evil is closer to the good. I said that the closer you are to the good, then the worse you are *if* you subsequently betray it.

YOUR sentence was: "Consider. Robert Stadler is a worse villain than Jim Taggart, because he, Stadler, was closer to the good than Taggart, and he betrayed that good." That is, "... Stadler ... is worse ... because he ... was closer to the good..." This does not say what you say it says above; it says what I said you said. (Got that?!)

Such men as Greenspan do infinitely more harm than such openly evil men as Obama. Also, I do point out that it is only *in a sense* that the majority of "ordinary men" are worse than Hitler and Kant. Hitler and Kant are full of malice, and they wage an all-out war to destroy values. Most of the "ordinary men are not malicious, and they are not on a campaign to destroy. So in a sense Hitler and Kant are much worse. They are evil. But the majority of mankind´s common men, commit a *worse treason* to the good than Hitler and Kant, because they are closer to the good, and they betray it (by acts of omission, not comission). So *in a sense* they are worse. They are not worse criminals than Hitler and Kant, but they are worse moral traitors. By this I mean that Hitler and Kant perpetrate evil, by acts of comission, while the majority of the rest of mankind, enable evil, by acts of omission. Remember the aphorism often (and probably falsely) attributed to Edmund Burke - "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil, is for the good men to do nothing."

Those who sanction evil are not more evil that those who are evil. People like Greenspan or Stadler are harmful because they give the impression to ohters of being good when they are evil. But they cannot be classified as more evil that those who perpetrate evil as the goal.

[TerryJ2 0]

Henrik, with all due respect, I agree with the others, but I can understand where you are coming from. I was lucky in that while I had a mother somewhat like yours, I had a father who taught me to think.

In fact, he often told us kids that people had to learn to "think." We loved arguing with him, assuming that any human being had the ability to think. And we were partially right.

But what he meant was critical analysis, abstract thinking, cause and effect, etc., rather than mere consciousness. When we were kids, we assumed that consciousness, the ability to realize you are human, and that there is a yesterday and tomorrow, was thinking. That is awareness but not deep thinking.

So, I'm not sure that I would say that my mother was a moral monster, except on occasion. My dad tried, but she was misdirected and philosophically mushy. He came on too strong and scared her. She was directedy purely by emotion, and if someone gentler and kinder, as it were, had tried the same arguments and discussions as my dad had, she may have had a better understanding. Also, when she was young, her parents never really taught her to think. They spoiled her and doted on her. They continued to dote on her after she was married, so how was she to learn?

I remember the nuns at school using Genovese's plight as a talking point in religion class when I was a high schooler. During the discussion, we all came up with ideas as to why no one would have responded. Several people said, correctly, that everyone assumed that everyone else had called the police, and several other people said that witnesses were afraid for their own safety and lives, also true. We also discussed whether these people were making conscious decisions or whether they were simply reacting out of fear, that is, not taking action in a fight-or-flight response.

I have been able to apply that discussion (and concept) to my personal life many times over the yrs. The first happened when I was a child, and a visibily drunk woman was staggering across a busy street near our house. It was cold (above zero, but cold enough to wear a coat in the US) and she was not wearing boots. In fact, I think she was missing one shoe. I was able to see her from my parents' dining room window. Cars were slowing down, going around her, avoiding her, but it was only a matter of time before someone hit her. I told my father to call the police. He said someone else would call. We watched her for another couple of minutes, she got up on the curb, and then walked out into traffic again. Again, I told him to call. I was just a kid, so telling my dad, an adult, to do something was very brave of me. Finally, I said, "If you don't call, I will," and I walked up to the phone and lifted it off the receiver. My dad took the phone from me and made the call.

We continued to watch the woman for about 8 more minutes, until a squad car pulled up. My dad admitted, "I'm glad I made that call. If it hadn't been for you, I wouldn't have thought of it."

Wow. What a life lesson. This, from a man who could have been Ayn Rand's clone when it came to economics, and who had always shouted at us to "THINK!" Often, when he'd ask us why we'd done something particularly stupid, we'd respond, "I didn't think it mattered." He would interrrupt at the word "think" and shout, "That's exactly right. You didn't THINK!"

Another example is the time one of my high school friends witnessed a car accident on the freeway. The car flipped over, went airborne, and landed in a ditch. My friend and her family continued driving, never stopping to help, never calling anyone. This was in the days before cell phones, but still, they could have pulled over. That's what people did back then.

I got on her case, and she said her parents said that someone else would call. No one did. I got on her case again (poor thing, she wasn't even old enough to drive and I just wouldn't let it go), and a week or two later, she said that maybe they should have called. She had read in the paper that the driver was trapped in the car and burned to death.

"Maybe" they should have called? "Maybe" they should have stopped? To this day, she is a "wilting violet" and she is no longer my friend. Her parents taught her too well.

Who taught your mother? Did she really have a chance?

And in regard to Genovese, there is an expression about the word "assume." "It makes an ass out of you and me."

ASS-U-ME.

A third example occurred about 10 yrs ago when I was an adult, and this had a happy ending. A woman in a nearby neighborhood (an awesome neighborhood, restored homes from 1910-1920, very close knit) was raped. She screamed her head off. Before the rapist could get away, a half dozen people from a half dozen different homes descended upon him. He was toast. No one assumed that someone else would help her. Maybe it's people like Genovese who have ignited those of us who remember her.

Again, I disagree w/your conclusion about why Ayn Rand did not know who was worse, the perpetrator of an evil, or the victim who let the perpetrator do it to him without resisting.

I don't think this is the type of thing she meant.

She grew up under repressive Soviet rule. She didn't understand why everyone else just went along with it. She was young. She knew fear, but only to a point. She was able to escape and then, to "resist." She spent the rest of her life "resisting."

I think that sometimes, in order to resist, you have to personally experience something worse, so that you can know what the end result would be. IOW, some people don't understand that not resisting is adding to the evil. They think that just not participating is good enough.

They need to be educated.

[Henrik Unné 0]

I think you have your value scale inverted. The more evil is not closer to the good. By such logic, the good is closest to the good and, therefore, most evil. In the scene describing the passengers on the train that was destroyed in the Taggart Tunnel accident, put in order those who you think are the least evil to the most evil. Let's see if we can agree on that. Start with the sentence "It is said that catastrophes are a matter of pure chance, and there were those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet were not guilty or responsible for the thing that happened to them" in Part 2, Chap 7. Who are the most evil and why?

I did not say that the more evil is closer to the good. I said that the closer you are to the good, then the worse you are *if* you subsequently betray it.

YOUR sentence was: "Consider. Robert Stadler is a worse villain than Jim Taggart, because he, Stadler, was closer to the good than Taggart, and he betrayed that good." That is, "... Stadler ... is worse ... because he ... was closer to the good..." This does not say what you say it says above; it says what I said you said. (Got that?!)

Such men as Greenspan do infinitely more harm than such openly evil men as Obama. Also, I do point out that it is only *in a sense* that the majority of "ordinary men" are worse than Hitler and Kant. Hitler and Kant are full of malice, and they wage an all-out war to destroy values. Most of the "ordinary men are not malicious, and they are not on a campaign to destroy. So in a sense Hitler and Kant are much worse. They are evil. But the majority of mankind´s common men, commit a *worse treason* to the good than Hitler and Kant, because they are closer to the good, and they betray it (by acts of omission, not comission). So *in a sense* they are worse. They are not worse criminals than Hitler and Kant, but they are worse moral traitors. By this I mean that Hitler and Kant perpetrate evil, by acts of comission, while the majority of the rest of mankind, enable evil, by acts of omission. Remember the aphorism often (and probably falsely) attributed to Edmund Burke - "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil, is for the good men to do nothing."

Those who sanction evil are not more evil that those who are evil. People like Greenspan or Stadler are harmful because they give the impression to ohters of being good when they are evil. But they cannot be classified as more evil that those who perpetrate evil as the goal.

1) OK. I get it. I should have been careful not to omit the word "if" in my original post. But Stadler *did* in fact betray the good (as Ayn Rand wrote the novel), and Greenspan and Branden *did* in fact betray the good, so they *were* in fact traitors to the good, and by my reasoning, in a sense worse than Htiler and Kant. Not more *evil*, because Hitler and Kant destroyed values on a larger scale, but Stadler, Greenspan and Branden were more morally depraved, because they committed a worse treason to the good. Remember that a false friend, who betrays you, can harm you more than an open enemy.

2) Sure, I agree with you that Hitler and Kant were more *evil* than Stadler, Greenspan and Branden, because they, the former, pursued a career of the destruction of values. I say that Stadler, Greenspan and Branden are *worse in a sense*, they are more morally depraved, because they commit a worse treason to the good, given that they were originally so close to being good. I do not regard the concepts of "evil" and "morally depraved" as being synonyms. I view "evil" as being a subcategory of "morally depraved". An evil person is one who not only is morally depraved, i.e. who not *only* defaults on the responsibility of thinking, but who *also* embarks on a campaign to destroy values. I believe that everyone who defaults on the responsibility of thinking all the time, is morally depraved, but far from all people who do that, subsequently embark on a campaign of destruction.

[Henrik Unné 0]

I think that sometimes, in order to resist, you have to personally experience something worse, so that you can know what the end result would be. IOW, some people don't understand that not resisting is adding to the evil. They think that just not participating is good enough.

They need to be educated.

But you do not need much previous knowledge to know, in some terms, that you *should* think. You do need some knowledge to know *what* things you should think about. But if you start thinking, which you do know in some terms that you should do, then you will eventually, if you do not give up too easily, discover what subjects it is that you need to think about and study. I did not know from the start that I needed a knowledge of rational philosophy in order to live successfully. But I started thinking about the subjects that I did know were important, primarily politics and economics. and I set out to find knowledge of those subjects, by reading books. And as a result of that I, after about 5 years of reading books about politics and economics, discovered Objectivism.

I say that a person cannot avoid being ignorant at the start of his life. That is obvious. But if a person is *still* ignorant, when he has reached, say middle age, then his ignorance is entirely his own fault (assuming he lives in a free society and has a normal brain).

Man is the rational animal, and it is up to each individual himself to exercise his faculty of reason. If he does not do that, time and again, over the course of his entire life, then he is subhuman, and a moral monster. In order to be a decent human being you must in reason have *some* pride, some ambition to become better, which means, in essence, to improve the state of your knowledge.

[Mercury 0]

Use specific examples please.

You wish me to give some concrete examples to illustrate my view?

Well there was a murder case back in the 1960s that became famous in criminology. I remember reading about this scandal when I was a boy in America back in the 60s. A young woman, I do not remember her name, was brutally stabbed to death in a neighborhood in New York City. It took her several minutes to die. That whole time, while she was being stabbed, she screamed for help. Several dozen residents in the neighborhood heard her screams for help. But not one of them helped her. None of the residents within earshot even phoned the police. Now would you say that the residents, who did not lift a finger to help the young female murder victim, were less depraved than the knife murderer? Well, the murderer was the one, like Hitler, who actively committed the murder. But were not the people who did not lift a finger to help the victim *in a sense* even worse moral traitors, and at least as vicious moral monsters?

I put it to you that the majority of the members of mankind are in some ways similar to those residents who did not lift a finger to help a murder victim. The world is going to hell around them, they are confronted with massive evidence that their cherished premises are wrong, but they simply cannot be bothered to think, and they simply will not get off their a-s and do something to fight or work for a better world (and thereby for a better future for themselves).

Remember the aphorism (probably falsely) attributed to Edmund Burke - "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil, is for the good men to do nothing." Well, how much are most of the members of "the masses" doing?

Just out of curiosity -- as I have no burning desire to get into a long discussion -- if your wife does not become an Objectivist, will she also be evil, in the way you have used that term here?

[Paul's Here 0]

I think you have your value scale inverted. The more evil is not closer to the good. By such logic, the good is closest to the good and, therefore, most evil. In the scene describing the passengers on the train that was destroyed in the Taggart Tunnel accident, put in order those who you think are the least evil to the most evil. Let's see if we can agree on that. Start with the sentence "It is said that catastrophes are a matter of pure chance, and there were those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet were not guilty or responsible for the thing that happened to them" in Part 2, Chap 7. Who are the most evil and why?

I did not say that the more evil is closer to the good. I said that the closer you are to the good, then the worse you are *if* you subsequently betray it.

YOUR sentence was: "Consider. Robert Stadler is a worse villain than Jim Taggart, because he, Stadler, was closer to the good than Taggart, and he betrayed that good." That is, "... Stadler ... is worse ... because he ... was closer to the good..." This does not say what you say it says above; it says what I said you said. (Got that?!)

Such men as Greenspan do infinitely more harm than such openly evil men as Obama. Also, I do point out that it is only *in a sense* that the majority of "ordinary men" are worse than Hitler and Kant. Hitler and Kant are full of malice, and they wage an all-out war to destroy values. Most of the "ordinary men are not malicious, and they are not on a campaign to destroy. So in a sense Hitler and Kant are much worse. They are evil. But the majority of mankind´s common men, commit a *worse treason* to the good than Hitler and Kant, because they are closer to the good, and they betray it (by acts of omission, not comission). So *in a sense* they are worse. They are not worse criminals than Hitler and Kant, but they are worse moral traitors. By this I mean that Hitler and Kant perpetrate evil, by acts of comission, while the majority of the rest of mankind, enable evil, by acts of omission. Remember the aphorism often (and probably falsely) attributed to Edmund Burke - "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil, is for the good men to do nothing."

Those who sanction evil are not more evil that those who are evil. People like Greenspan or Stadler are harmful because they give the impression to ohters of being good when they are evil. But they cannot be classified as more evil that those who perpetrate evil as the goal.

1) OK. I get it. I should have been careful not to omit the word "if" in my original post. But Stadler *did* in fact betray the good (as Ayn Rand wrote the novel), and Greenspan and Branden *did* in fact betray the good, so they *were* in fact traitors to the good, and by my reasoning, in a sense worse than Htiler and Kant. Not more *evil*, because Hitler and Kant destroyed values on a larger scale, but Stadler, Greenspan and Branden were more morally depraved, because they committed a worse treason to the good. Remember that a false friend, who betrays you, can harm you more than an open enemy.

But it is not so much that you don't evaluate them as good as much as that you evaluate them as evil by their present actions that justifies you calling them morally depraved.

For instance, you might have a friend whose values change over time and he drifts away from you as a close friend. You may not regard him as a close friend because his values changed, not because you regard him as evil. Thus, it is not his closeness and then his distance to your values as such at that you use to evaluate him as evil. One evaluates him as evil when his actions or ideas indicate that he is evil. The fact of his change from what you consider to be good is irrelevant to your judgment of him as evil. Suppose Stadler had just decided to retire at the height of his career instead of going on to endorse government science. He did nothing but sit around and watch TV. Galt might evaluate this as a waste of talent and he probably wouldn't regard him as a friend any more. But his evaluation of sanctioning evil would be entirely different. Stadler's evil is not that he was good and betrayed it, but that he is now evil by his own actions.

[Henrik Unné 0]

Just out of curiosity -- as I have no burning desire to get into a long discussion -- if your wife does not become an Objectivist, will she also be evil, in the way you have used that term here?

No, my wife does not have to become an Objectivist. But if she shows no interest in abstract subjects *at all*, over a period of years, then I will gradually lose the respect that I feel for her now. And, eventually, I will I suppose have to come to the conclusion that she is like the others, and that she therefore is morally depraved, even a moral monster, but *not* evil. An evil person is exclusively the kind which intentionally destroys values. And I have seen no signs whatsoever that Thi is malicious, and wants to destroy values.

As long as Thi does *some* thinking about important abstract issues, and thereby demonstrates that she has *some* pride, that will be enough for me. She does not have to become an Objectivist. Although that would be best.

[Henrik Unné 0]

But it is not so much that you don't evaluate them as good as much as that you evaluate them as evil by their present actions that justifies you calling them morally depraved.

For instance, you might have a friend whose values change over time and he drifts away from you as a close friend. You may not regard him as a close friend because his values changed, not because you regard him as evil. Thus, it is not his closeness and then his distance to your values as such at that you use to evaluate him as evil. One evaluates him as evil when his actions or ideas indicate that he is evil. The fact of his change from what you consider to be good is irrelevant to your judgment of him as evil. Suppose Stadler had just decided to retire at the height of his career instead of going on to endorse government science. He did nothing but sit around and watch TV. Galt might evaluate this as a waste of talent and he probably wouldn't regard him as a friend any more. But his evaluation of sanctioning evil would be entirely different. Stadler's evil is not that he was good and betrayed it, but that he is now evil by his own actions.

I have reread my original post and, as I thought, I had not anywhere in the post written that the majority of "common men" or Stadler, Greenspan and Branden were more *evil* than Hitler and Kant. I wrote that they were *worse* and that they were *worse villains*, but I did not write that they were more *evil*. In fact I wrote explicitly that the majority of "common men" and the three moral traitors, were *not* equally evil as Hitler and Kant, since they were not malicious, active destroyers of values, as Hitler and Kant were. I do not think that I am quibbling over semantics. As I have written before in this thread, I take the concept "morally depraved" to be a different concept than "evil". So when I say that the mental drifters are *in a sense* worse than the active evaders and destroyers, I am saying merely that they are more morally depraved, not that they are evil. And I do not think that that is a logical contradiction. Because a person can be "worse" than another in different senses. The mental drifter commits a worse moral treason than the active destroyer, since he foregoes values, and by default brings on death, more *gratuitously* than the destroyer. Incidentally, I think that indifference is a still worse psychological attribute than malice.

[Betsy Speicher 0]

Well, consider this. Ayn Rand once remarked that she did not know who was worse, the perpetrator of an evil, or the victim who let the perpetrator do it to him without resisting. And she continued to say that she now knew that the latte was still worse than the perpetrator.

Where did she say that?

I do not remember the context for this remark, the place where she made it and the exact type of evil that she was talking about.

In a situation like this, context is everything.

She may have been talking about the issue of pacifism, and making the point that an agressor, and the pacifist who refuses to defend himself as an agressor . Well, I think that it is obvious that Ayn Rand had a valid point.

It is not obvious to me that this was even Ayn Rand's point. Given what I know about Ayn Rand's views, I strongly doubt it. Please provide a cite.

[Henrik Unné 0]

Well, consider this. Ayn Rand once remarked that she did not know who was worse, the perpetrator of an evil, or the victim who let the perpetrator do it to him without resisting. And she continued to say that she now knew that the latte was still worse than the perpetrator.

Where did she say that?

I do not remember the context for this remark, the place where she made it and the exact type of evil that she was talking about.

In a situation like this, context is everything.

She may have been talking about the issue of pacifism, and making the point that an agressor, and the pacifist who refuses to defend himself as an agressor . Well, I think that it is obvious that Ayn Rand had a valid point.

It is not obvious to me that this was even Ayn Rand's point. Given what I know about Ayn Rand's views, I strongly doubt it. Please provide a cite.

I don´t remember where in all of Ayn Rand´s writings I read it, and I do not have time to look for it right now (I am going to go to work in a few minutes). But I will try to look it up when I get the time. I am *certain* that I read somewhere that Ayn Rand said/wrote something to the effect that she once wondered whether the perpetrator of an evil, or the victim who let it be done to him without resisting, was worse. And she then said (roughly) - "I now know that the victim who lets it be done to him is worse." I am certain that Ayn Rand said/wrote something to that effect. And it seems to "fit". Ayn Rand was of course very critical of selflessness, and the choice not to fight for one´s values is profoundly selfless.