Not Quite Creative Writing... This Time...

Ah, I have returned. For those who read my first post, thank you very much; for those who didn't, the grass may be greener on the other side, but that's really quite subjective.

Anyways, today I will be giving you something a little... different... you might say. Not creative writing.

This time, it is a piece on morality. Or, more specifically, my own views on good and evil.

I hope you enjoy it.

—The JP

---

So often I hear people talking about what I like to refer to as “cosmic allegiances” whenever they discuss the topics of morality and choice. But was Ghandi truly “good”? Can Hitler be considered as being “evil”? Did Anakin Skywalker betray the “good” and join the “evil”? Was Snape pretending to be “evil” so that he could serve the “good”? All of this leads to the question: what are “good” and “evil” anyways?

I like to refer to “good” and “evil” as ‘cosmic allegiances’ for the very reason that they seem to lack any form of substantial definition and are often used in a metaphysical sense, and thus carry no real substance that makes them truly exist. Good and evil are referred to in various ways: light and dark, God and the Devil, Aesir and Vanir (not that anybody will know this last example…), so on and so forth. But the big problem with all of this is that the terms good and evil are completely and utterly ambiguous!

Think about it for a minute. Ever heard the sayings “a means to an end” or “the ends justify the means”? These sayings basically state the following: “it’s okay to do something ‘evil’ so long as it serves the ‘greater good’ in the end”. Now, this raises a problem: what means to the end are justifiable and what means are considered evil? That is where the true ambiguity arrives.

Everybody on this planet has his or her own definition of what is morally right and what is morally wrong. One who followed the Ten Commandments to the letter would believe that murder, no matter what the reason, is wrong, but an Islamic Jihadist (for lack of a better example; sorry to any Muslims that I hope I haven’t offended) may view the murder of heathens as a means to an end, and justified by his or her holy war. The blurred lines between good and evil appear in American laws as well. Don’t believe me? Here’s your proof!

In America, we have various degrees of punishment for killing a person: involuntary manslaughter, manslaughter, 2nd degree murder, 1st degree murder, and probably others; I’m no law student so I don’t know all of them. Now, a person can be punished for all of these, which are essentially the killing of another human being. But… one of the punishments for 1st degree murder is… well? It’s the death penalty. I smell hypocrisy: we’re punishing somebody for murdering a human being by… well, murdering the convict in return. Is anbody else reminded of “an eye for an eye”?

My own ideology on good and evil is not quite so black and white as “this is good, this is evil”, and it doesn’t have many shades of gray such that “this evil is justifiable if it’s for the greater good, but this evil act isn’t”. In fact, my ideology on good and evil doesn’t even include the cosmic allegiances of good and evil at all? Here’s what it is:

In this world, there is nothing but power, choice, free will, intent, and what we do with it.

Let me explain.

Power: This is what allows us to make our decisions and influence our surroundings. Then again… it’s rather self-explanatory.

Choice: The options that we’re given when confronted with a situation. For example, if you see somebody cheating, you could cheat off them in return, make your own paper more easily able to be cheated off of while feeding them the wrong answers, turn the cheater in for cheating, or many other options.

Free Will: This is what allows us to make the choice that best suits us out of what options are available before us, such as choosing the right fork in the road to take. Each “choice” is a fork, and free will is what lets us pick our path.

Intent: This is the motivation behind the action, such as good intent or ill intent.

Right now, somebody is saying “Hah! But you said you don’t believe in good and evil!” Let me explain for a minute what I mean by intent and why it factors in here, because good and ill intent are not the same as good and evil (in my mind anyways):

Here’s an example of ill intent used for good purposes: imagine you’re a doctor in a hospital. You’ve just diagnosed your patient with a terminal illness for which there is no known cure and that will eventually kill your patient after several long, agonizing months of never-ending pain and, due to the nature of the disease, there is no way to ease this pain. You have two options: either let your patient die a long, agonizing death or give him the option to have himself die now so that he isn’t in agonizing suffering for long months before his body finally gives out; in effect, kill him out of mercy. This would be physician-assisted suicide. The ill intent is the killing of the patient, but the good purpose is keeping him from suffering endlessly for many months before finally giving out.

Now, here’s an example of good intent used for ill purposes. You’re an army medic, and your troupe has brought in a prisoner of war. They’ve decided to interrogate him for information by using decidedly less-than-legal methods, a.k.a torture. They’ve just finished torturing the prisoner for the day, but he hasn’t given them all of his information… or so they think. You’re told to keep him alive and tend to his wounds. In this case, the good intent is healing the wounded… but the ill purpose is that he’s being kept alive just enough so that he won’t die from the torture.

Morality is an endless question. There is no black and white. There are no shades of grey. In a question of morality, there is never a clear-cut answer that can be pointed at from a textbook. Everybody has to have his or her own set of morals in order to determine how they will act in a situation. I have mine. Do you have yours?