I was watching an episode of Bones, S01E19, and something very interesting was said in the episode. They were talking about voodoo, and the dark magic in it and such, and a character said "it's magic is more powerful than ours." After than, the father of the character said "Destruction is easier than Harmony, not more powerful", and I thought this was a very interesting point. We see good and bad fighting in all sorts of ways, especially in shows like Star Wars, Kingdom hearts of course, Yugioh, Legend of Zelda, Lord of the Rings, and more, and we always see that people who are on the evil side consider it the most powerful, but at the same time, we've seen that the good can always triumph. Heck, we even see it in normal life, whether it's just a person being nice to someone while another person is being a complete jerk, or something bigger, like trying to fight against groups that oppose the innocent and beat them down to take over. I find this phrase interesting, because it has a lot of truth to it. While many believe the evil path to be more powerful and better to use, we've seen that it's also a lot easier to fall into, instead of staying the course on a good path; as well as evil having a much easier time doing what they do, and the good have a lot of trouble, but they still manage in the end. I was wondering what your guy's view on this was. I found it quite interesting because it's just another thing from one of the many religions that relates to the real world no matter where you are or what religion you are.
I agree with that statement. It is a lot easier to get mad then it is to make peace. Even with small things like friends, if you get into a fight, it is easier to argue and destroy your friendship then it is to stand up and talk through the problem and mend it. I have been through this recently, almost lost a friendship because I found it difficult to talk to him and keep calm about it. As soon as you get irritated it is easy to say something you will regret, but even if the other party is insulting you , you have to remain calm in order to create harmony. It would be easier to cave to your anger. This applies with a lot if things, the easier thing to do doesn't tend to be the easiest . I don't know why that is, the Bible does explain it but not everyone is Christian so I am attempting to refrain from basing my enure point on it. But the devil dies make the wrong things so tempting and easy, if he didn't he would have no power. What would the attraction to sinning be if it was hard? No, he gets his power from people sinning. You may think that all sinning is hard, like robbing a bank isn't easy, but it starts from something that is easy like taking $5 from your moms purse. And if the evil things are easy, would it not be logical that the good things would be hard because they are the opposite. In the end that statement has a lot of truth no matter your religious view or how you chose to look at it.
I agree with that statement too. And I shamefully admit inn the past I have known a lot more distruction than harmony, mainly because all I used to do is destroy if things didn't to my way. Yeah I was a spoiled brat inn my younger days but what can I say? That is just me being human. This view may not be liked by most but it is my opinion so I hope you respect it. I believe we find destruction so easy because it is in our DNA. The bible may have existed for some time but it hasn't existed forever. Religion, God and the urge to be good, things I believe are foreign to our race. So to summerize what I mean all the violence, hate and destruction is what makes you a real human but quite frankly i'd rather be inhuman.
In a way, this is based off a concept of physics. Entropy. In layman's terms, a measure of disorder. The natural world prefers to move from a level of low entropy to a level of higher entropy. Normally, it is not possible to decrease entropy of a system, at least not without increasing entropy in another system. The universe prefers chaos. It will tend towards it. You can try to reverse it but ultimately you can't fight against physics. Of course, physics is not subjective like "good" and "bad". But I guess you'd get the idea.
Evil and good are different reactions to the same event. For example, a prison warden is ordered to kill a prisoner. His colleague watches on as he slits the man's throat. A man who reacts in disgust and sympathy for the prisoner and doesn't want to feel like this again, is a 'good' man, and wishes to change this event occuring again. Whilst a man who enjoys the sight of a prisoner dying away is a 'bad' man, who enjoys the control and the sight of blood gives them pleasure, and would incentivise and promote killing someone again. Fundamentally, creation is good and destruction is evil. But the world isn't as black and white as that, thinking it is means not taking the breadth of a situation and possiblities. You could kill a man going to kill another, is that evil? Not as simple as that. And does helping one person make you good and erase your bad? At the most basic, good and evil rely on each other, without one there is no opposite. I believe in harmony of the two, the best of both worlds if possible, though I promote more selfless good then selfish evil, because you learn less from being selfish and more from selflessness. The harder the challenge that you surpass, the more you learn from it, y'know.
I was going to say this! xD It's funny how science appears ordered and structures but the world prefers disorder. Anyway, I tend to see good and bad as being a tiny bit like muscles- the one you exercise more will be stronger (so the nicer you are, the easier it is to do positive things) of course this doesn't take into account how easy it is to slip up. Temptation can be strong and it wouldn't be temptation if it was easy to get over but the more you resist, the easier it'll be to resist in the future. For example, you want to go on a diet and it's gonig well until you see a slice of chocolate cake, you have two choices: either give in to temptation and eat the cake or resist and think about something else, if you chose the later then it'll be easier to say no the next time until the temptation practically vanishes. This does also relate to sin and we all slip up at times, some more than others, but we still all get caught up in the pleasure of evil. I do think that evil acts are pleasurable but for short bursts of time, good acts mean more investment but you benefit from them more and, as humans, we tend to go for the option of instant pleasure which is the former choice. I don't always find the evil choice the easiest because I am someone who likes to help out and it's actually more tempting to be kinder but not for every situation, I do get lazy and so does everyone.
The above sums up part of it in the context of a fundamental property of our universe. While human morality is too complicated to stratify into something so binary as "good" or "bad", a quote like the one in the original post serves well enough to something we can generally relate to in our every day life. The easiest path is typically not the one that always brings fruit to our human desires, really. To get and move forward we require immense amounts of effort. Whether it is practicing for a concert, writing a novel, working on your boxing punches, or what have you. Effort is a fight against the latent inability to do things and more than anything it is a conflict of apathy versus this determined effort. The entropy example quoted above makes sense to give you a general idea of how our perceptions can exist in terms of doing things, but the difference lies in our conscious ability to change perhaps not a universal inevitability but a human analogue that is completely a product of our own creation, just as pliable as anything else fundamentally human. What about good and bad in reality? There is no such thing. Human morality is extremely complicated -- though we can separate certain extremes onto both sides by all means, the vast majority of moral decisions lie in a unimodal grey hemisphere of varying "good"/"bad" levels. What is good and what is bad? Good typically falls under the ideas of cooperation and altruism while bad has historically been linked to selfish acts and a lack of clarity. Arguably, both of these base definitions exist in tandem to make humans what we are, and we would lose an integral part of ourselves -- whether it be our cooperative nature or our individualism, or both -- if we were to lose either of these. But are they good and are they bad? Again, those terms are highly binary for what in reality is something more than even a simple continuum of morality. Subjectivity plays a big part in our existence, and situations become the stage for all kinds of moral waltzes.
