Is evil a purely religious concept?

Debate Room
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He’s not my president and it isn’t my country, but what he does IS affecting Europe politically and economically, so I’ll chip in with a thought.

If evil is immorality, the willing and conscious decision to do what you know is ethically and morally wrong, then perhaps Trump isn’t evil in this sense. For a person to be conscious of the notion of right and wrong they must surely possess some kind of moral compass that can swing between these poles.

But if a person has no moral compass whatsoever, making them amoral, then they have no inner concept of right and wrong. The concepts of good and evil elude them, confuse them and irritate them. They see people with functioning moral compasses acting in ways they cannot understand.

From this inability to comprehend the mindset and the actions of the other springs the notion that others are just like themselves. That everyone else is just out for themselves, just as they are. Which logically leads to the amoral person believing that anyone who takes a moral stand and opposes them is, in reality, out to get them.

This might go partway to explaining Trumps anger towards any legal or judicial body that takes a stand against him by upholding the rule of law. These meddlers can’t be opposing him for moral reasons because (for him) morality doesn’t exist and is too foreign a concept for him to understand.

Combine this with his deep-seated ‘I never lose’ mindset and you can perhaps see why he can never recognise any person, nation or authority that takes a moral or legal stand against him. Such as the Supreme Court re Tariffs, such as Denmark re Greenland or like Keir Starmer, the British Prime Minister, for not coming down on his side against Iran.

If you’re not loyal to Trump and with him, then you’re against him.

It doesn’t matter that you might be opposing him on moral, ethical or legal grounds. He can’t understand those. He can’t comprehend right and wrong or good and evil. There’s only what he wants.

But, if this holds water, the question that troubles me is this.

Which kind of world leader is more dangerous? An immoral one who knows when they are doing wrong or an amoral one who only knows what they want and will do anything they can to get it?

Thank you,

Walter.

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Sort of like the choice between bone cancer or leukemia…

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I seem to remember at one point, describing the Orange Scrotum as "pure Id’. Obsolete though Freudian terms may be, I still regard this as an apposite summary of this specimen.

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Although I mostly agree with your assessment, I am not completely convinced that Trump lacks any moral awareness at all. In fact I think he gets off on hurting people, on “getting away with” immoral actions. He repeatedly says he can do anything he wants, there are no limits other than his “own mind” on his actions, and of course there was his famous comment that he could shoot someone in the middle of 5th avenue and get away with it, or that “when you’re rich they let you do [anything you want]”.

This suggests to me that he’s making the effort to cast off moral restraints he’s at least somewhat aware exist and previously had to at least appear to follow.

Remember that in his first term, many of his cabinet and top officials were at least competent and would repeatedly explain that certain things couldn’t be done, and why. In this go-round on the other hand he has installed clowns and lickspittles who are hungry only for power; he’s found his people.

But that was a devolution on this part. It was a process. That he wasn’t always THIS bad suggests his depravity is progressive rather than inherent. It is very advanced now, but one can see that it HAS advanced over time. I am not of the view that his devolution is 100% from mental deterioration. It is also the increasing realization that no one is willing to stop him, despite that plenty of people are ABLE. He has been looking for this kind of license his whole life, but durst not fully utilize it until now – therefore, he has at least a kind of primitive moral awareness.

All that said, I think the dichotomy you raise here is one without a distinction, since the net result will be the same. Whether wrong is done knowingly or not, it is still enacting harm either way. If a person does wrong without understanding it’s wrong they will not take that wrongness into account in any way, before or after they act or to dogfood it back into future actions. If they do wrong knowing it’s wrong then they are ignoring rightness or wrongness and prioritizing their immediate needs / desires / objectives. Either way, people will be hurt exactly the same.

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Curiously enough Mordant, since I last logged off I’ve come to more or less the same conclusion about which kind of world leader is more dangerous.

Why? Because immoral or amoral, they tend to act in mostly the same way. With little external difference as regards their actions, all that might differ is their inner understanding of morality.

An amoral person can’t fathom ANY aspect of morality, good or bad. Meanwhile, the immoral person understands the difference between the good and the bad, but sneers at the good as being something only for losers. And the morality card is just something they can play at the right time to get these losers on their side and give them the power base they want.

Sound familiar?

Talking about things that sound familiar. This thread has caused me to recall a documentary (PBS?) I saw several months ago about the Yalta and Potsdam conferences.

FDR, Churchill and Stalin first met in Yalta in February 1945. Then the heads of three powers met again in Potsdam in July and August of the same year. By that time FDR was dead and Truman was president. Churchill had been voted out of office and his seat was taken by Clement Attlee.

What I remember is the documentary voiceover talking about Stalin’s reactions to the changes of leadership of the Western powers. He understood that another leader must step into the power vacuum left by the death of a predecessor. No problem there.

But apparently Stalin was bemused and puzzled by Churchill allowing himself to be voted out by the people of his nation. Surely, if a leader wants to stay in power and go through the formality of a voting process, all he needs to do is to rig the election in his favour? Stalin couldn’t see why Churchill would allow free and fair elections and then respect their result and allow the people to remove him from power.

That sound at all familiar in the context of this thread?

:slightly_frowning_face:

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Even people with Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) may weigh the consequences of their actions, when they perceive that their reputation might be damaged by those actions. They lack empathy of course, but they can feel guilt, remorse, and shame, it’s just that these feelings stem from how their behaviour affects them, instead of other people. NB Senator Palpatine usually plays the victim when he is accused of wrongdoing, make of that what you will. I am not aware of him ever admitting to being wrong, let alone admitting of wrongdoing.

To be clear (and I am not a psychologist), I question whether knowing that others view things as right or wrong, is evidence he is capable of morality, or instead has he just learned to mimic others when necessary, and to modify behaviour only when he suspects his actions might harm him as well?

I should have scrolled down. It seems we are considering the same possibility.

FWIW I view morality as subjective and relative, and yet if asked would not hesitate to say that morality is how we behave when there are no consequences to us, or when if you like, when no one is watching. The difference I suppose is that if you have NPD, there would be no discerning line between an action considered wrong but not resulting necessarily in harm, speeding momentarily with no one around say, and torturing someone to death for amusement.

Now someone with NPD might recognise that those actions could harm them, but they would not care about the other consequences and thus they’d be measured in a different way.

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I would imagine so for the time being.