I like your site. I found it through Blogcatalog. I have a debate site that encourages people to express their thoughts and opinions towards controversial topics. I feel as if this is a way where we can have our thoughts and opinions heard.

I would be honored to hear some of your insight. Also, maybe we can do a link exchange. If you would like to do one, feel free to email me and let me know. If not, your insight on some issues would be appreciated.

This goes for all visitors to this site as well, everyone’s opinion counts!

Sincerely,
Jason

So,it seems to me that you’re trying to abstract away the difficulties presented by relativism here by describing evil in vague terms as a one-sided description of a dynamic that most people will concede to be repellant (evil takes delight in the suffering of others) instead of grounding it in the narrative(s) you view (I think rightly) as necessary. Even in the abstract, though, it is difficult to sustain your position without some sense of an absolute. Why is it evil to take delight in the suffering of others?

Of course, the fact that there are no satisfying answers to that question doesn’t make the traditional answers to the theodicy problem (which it sort of reflects, in an odd way) any more satisfying. But that’s a separate issue. Not.

It’s not impossible to make ethical judgments – even now. I’d like to get to a place where narratives are part of the process again, so that the stories can be told and heard.

I think I’ve been affected by thinking and writing about viruses and how agency has sometimes been projected onto them, even in scientific/medical discourse.

I don’t know that I can speak to motivations, but I think I see more of the background details that would create a person who is value-neutral pathological – or just broken, twisted and sometimes even remade.

I will say that I won’t back off the will to evil as a specific form of will to power. Intention to harm is present, and lack of any accountability, or even remorse. Effects are all that can really count, but suffering is intensified by intent. Or gloating within a newly-constructed frame.

And yet, it’s all just adjectives to describe it, much as with the holy. It’s a coincidence that has been observed in many cultures.