Is practiced good true or an illusion of evolved, pure evil?

[Da_Ze_Ir]

After all this time (my time), I have concluded that good is an evolved state of selfishness, but I think that shouldn't justify nihilism. After much selfishness, the being learns that there is more to be valued.

The question is, does that value imply selfishness or not? Is what we lean to value truly selfless or just a transformation of selfishness itself?

In any case, good must be respected and searched out, or else everything will fall into chaos. Is this selfishness?

In the beginning, the ego encompasses oneself, then more and more? And is that still ego? When ego encompasses everything in existence and everything you can think of, if you identify with it, when your will is straightforward to the good (without the thought of satisfaction), is it that what we are truly doing is for the for the universe become oneself or have we been educated to do so, to the point of blind reflexes?

Does true love exist or is it truly an illusion and a comfortable state, a balance in a universe driven by pure evil? 

[Caid Ivik]

Are you some kind of philosopher? You seem to like this forum ;D  Relation between good and self could be seen in three general forms. At first good may be based on personal selfish pleasure, what was ment by term of "relative good" by various ancient greek philosophers. Then there is a transcended selfishness, kind of what teach more modern ethicians: you do to others what you want from them to do to you. Or third, fully abandon self and aim for an external definition of absolute good, for example God and his Revelation, universally logical maxims or similar. Borders between these teachings are always quite blurry, but may be seen if we had a particular case more detailed.

I prefer the third way, because only there it could be said, that there could be something else good as the moral agent. Sure, an active good person can make it all better, but you also never can say that without them it is driven by "pure evil". People often tend to describe things outside their power as bad, altough they are simply not concerning them.

[TMA_1]

I do not really know. I think a lot of it depends on your own perception of things. As far as things like utopian social ideals, true love, and absolutes of that nature go, they are things that cannot be obtained. The fact that we can reckon these things though makes me feel that there is a perfect model that exists, which we cannot reach to.

[Dante]

Absolutes do not exist. There is no true good, no true evil, no true love, and no true standard by which to measure such concepts. Therefore what matters is not what 'is,' but what the perception is. If someone thinks that they are living a good life by the standards that they have set for themself, then that is true as far as they are concerned. Since there is no actual 'goodness' to measure this by, who or what is to say that they are not correct?

In other words there cannot be an illusion of selfishness impersonating goodness, because goodness is nothing but a perception (by no means a universal one at that) and selfishness the same.

And if you do think that good and evil actually exist seperate from human perception, then all you have to do is prove it.

[Caid Ivik]

First two sentences are in connection? For truth and absoluteness are two different predicates. "1+1=2" may be true, but it isn't absolute principle of mathematics; it is one of many of its principles. Or, on the next level, "1+1=2 is true" is a partial principle of both truth and mathematics, but also not absolute. Similarily, "my living standard is good", defines a part of goodness.

Another way. In ethics we find much more absolute definitions like "all that is good is a Sadaqa". Doesn't this absolute definition exist?

[Dante]

I define 'true good' not as that which is good, but what 'good' is. A more physical example would be to say that Niagra Falls is the 'true' Niagra Falls, it is the absolute Niagra Falls. It is absolutely and completely Niagra Falls. But there is nothing that can be pointed to or described that truly is the summation of 'good.' The same applies to evil, love, and other such subjective concepts.

I think the problem here has arisen primarily from the language barrier, because 'true' is being used in a slightly different context than usual. Rather than meaning "not false" it is defined as "authentic" or, in a word, "absolute."

[Egeides]

Typical reply for Dante:

Could you push this to say that the Nazis were not bad or evil?

[Acriku]

One could easily say the Nazis were not bad or evil. If you value science (misdirected or not), purity of race, and global domination more than human life, compassion, and mercy/pity then you can say the Nazis were not bad or evil. It's just a shift of values and whether or not one value is greater than another. Purely subjective and conceptual.

[Caid Ivik]

Nazism is a political movement. In politics, you create and preserve legislative, not ethics. Difference would be, that in society you may be a hypocrite and legally clean.

I define 'true good' not as that which is good, but what 'good' is. A more physical example would be to say that Niagra Falls is the 'true' Niagra Falls, it is the absolute Niagra Falls. It is absolutely and completely Niagra Falls. But there is nothing that can be pointed to or described that truly is the summation of 'good.' The same applies to evil, love, and other such subjective concepts.

I think the problem here has arisen primarily from the language barrier, because 'true' is being used in a slightly different context than usual. Rather than meaning "not false" it is defined as "authentic" or, in a word, "absolute."

Well, difference between good and 'good' is hard to understand. Also the example of Niagra Falls: sure, when you point at it and call it so, I would accept that it is true and only Niagra Falls. But this is a particular, you would say that it is a true waterfalls, but surely not, that it would be an absolute. You may say "Niagra Falls are typical waterfalls" but hardly "Niagra Falls are all, what word waterfall may mean".

My truth definition had been written up in previous post: sum of all correspondings between language and reality. "False" is another word, and "authentic" or "absolute" too. Authenticity may be a closer word in meaning to corresponding (altough it implies some "author", what is hard to say in speaking about language itself). Absoluteness little less, as it implies independence on other concepts in language, while "good" is still a particular case of universal problem of morality. Sufficiency, could be also used perhaps. Sure, to sum up all correspondings between language and reality is impossible and thus I can't write the full definition right down here. Same as if sufficient definition of good is a sum of all correspondings between personal activities/perceptions and universal moral principle (which I may postulate). As possibilities are infinite, I also can't simply point at it as an Niagra Falls, but can describe it in the way as I would describe waterfalls.

[Egeides]

One could easily say the Nazis were not bad or evil. If you value science (misdirected or not), purity of race, and global domination more than human life, compassion, and mercy/pity then you can say the Nazis were not bad or evil. It's just a shift of values and whether or not one value is greater than another. Purely subjective and conceptual.

That they/we have certain values makes them correct? And I think that to define this as "ok, it's their view" ends up being murderous. Truth has a natural advantage over falsehood, but I don't see how it can exert its advantage without the stances.

There might be shift of values, but I think that some values hit you back even when you're not too sure how exactly that was. On what ground could you defend science then, other than "my personal views"?