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The concept of "right action" is not so easy for me to parse or understand. I believe it is non-obvious what the eventual repercussions of a person's actions will be in the distant future. Most of the time this isn't important- we eat when we are hungry, sleep when tired, and go to work because we need to pay rent.
But I haven't been working for over a decade, and my time has been spent on a philosophical "quest" to understand the nature of Evil in nearly complete isolation since my father was murdered in Costa Rica. I have a rather radical or extremist view on the topic now- I believe that natural language helps perpetuate the ingroup / outgroup identities that divide us, but it is the concept of Evil and Evildoers that is the main source of evil. Extreme greed, usually based in fear of not having enough, is a major contributor, as are various forms of exceptionalism- like nationalism, or religious notions of being among a group chosen by God. But the core notion that there are Evil people out there that need to be hunted and killed in order to protect the innocent is why Hitler, Stalin, bin Laden , etc. did really horrible things. Believe it or not, they all had good intentions- to protect the ones they loved against their notions of Evil People.
We are in an interesting time. I have major qualms with many of the strategies employed by both the right and left wing political participants in various arenas. I see censorship in almost every case as misguided attempt to make the world a better place. In rare cases it is necesssary- for instance to prevent the plans of how to build a nuclear bomb from spreading, or the infamous "shouting FIRE in a movie theater", or threatening a specific person with violence physically. But thats about it. When you silence hate speech, for instance, you drive it underground and make an already upset person more resentful. It is in isolation that their anger turns to what they perceive as righteous rage. And underground they will meet up with other likeminded people; sometimes making plans to strike at those who muzzled them. Allowing a fool to speak and spew their bile is important because it will show them for the unwise or cowardly people they are. It takes a certain amount of stoicism (especially for me, since I can be quite reactive naturally) to sit and wait for a person to finish their invective hate speech and calmly counter with a different, less fearful and entitled narrative of my own.
There are limits to this wisdom. The ever-present hypothentical "but if you had a chance to kill Hitler back in the day- you couldn't because you are a pacifist!" Yes, of course I would kill him. In general though, I don't perceive the Nazis as uniformly Evil or sadistic people. (I don't view sadism as inherently bad, either- but I'll stay within scope of my narrative and save that for another day.) Nazis were deluded, afraid of their leader and other Nazis, afraid of the scapegoats they singled out and killed, filled with religious fervor, and quite vulnerable to authoritative figures. That is all that is necesssary for great evil to take place. We should learn from that if at all possible. For one thing, this shows the limitations of language because pacifism is presented as a binary attribute. Mental attributes are very rarely binary; just as a person isn't 100.00% straight or gay, it would be unreasonable to assume a person is 100.00% pacifist or war-monger. We can only measure temperature in a relative manner to properly use the words hot or cold. If we say its cold outside, we mean its cold relative to some other thing- perhaps the average temperature over the past month, or what it is inside. Various types of intelligence are the same way, and the scale we use (linear, log, inverse squared, or whatever) along with our choice of measuring stick can make night day or day night.
Unfortunately, it seems humankind isn't ready for this amount of nuance. The loudest person in the room is still the de-facto leader most of the time. Thats okay- even though groups I typically identify as heinously intollerant and unwise will outbreed all other groups and gain "control" of the world stage, they too will evolve into a more rational way of thinking over time. At least, if my trend analysis of the last 10,0000 years is correct. Evolionary systems are quite fickle in the short term though, so I'm not holding my breath.
But I haven't been working for over a decade, and my time has been spent on a philosophical "quest" to understand the nature of Evil in nearly complete isolation since my father was murdered in Costa Rica. I have a rather radical or extremist view on the topic now- I believe that natural language helps perpetuate the ingroup / outgroup identities that divide us, but it is the concept of Evil and Evildoers that is the main source of evil. Extreme greed, usually based in fear of not having enough, is a major contributor, as are various forms of exceptionalism- like nationalism, or religious notions of being among a group chosen by God. But the core notion that there are Evil people out there that need to be hunted and killed in order to protect the innocent is why Hitler, Stalin, bin Laden , etc. did really horrible things. Believe it or not, they all had good intentions- to protect the ones they loved against their notions of Evil People.
We are in an interesting time. I have major qualms with many of the strategies employed by both the right and left wing political participants in various arenas. I see censorship in almost every case as misguided attempt to make the world a better place. In rare cases it is necesssary- for instance to prevent the plans of how to build a nuclear bomb from spreading, or the infamous "shouting FIRE in a movie theater", or threatening a specific person with violence physically. But thats about it. When you silence hate speech, for instance, you drive it underground and make an already upset person more resentful. It is in isolation that their anger turns to what they perceive as righteous rage. And underground they will meet up with other likeminded people; sometimes making plans to strike at those who muzzled them. Allowing a fool to speak and spew their bile is important because it will show them for the unwise or cowardly people they are. It takes a certain amount of stoicism (especially for me, since I can be quite reactive naturally) to sit and wait for a person to finish their invective hate speech and calmly counter with a different, less fearful and entitled narrative of my own.
There are limits to this wisdom. The ever-present hypothentical "but if you had a chance to kill Hitler back in the day- you couldn't because you are a pacifist!" Yes, of course I would kill him. In general though, I don't perceive the Nazis as uniformly Evil or sadistic people. (I don't view sadism as inherently bad, either- but I'll stay within scope of my narrative and save that for another day.) Nazis were deluded, afraid of their leader and other Nazis, afraid of the scapegoats they singled out and killed, filled with religious fervor, and quite vulnerable to authoritative figures. That is all that is necesssary for great evil to take place. We should learn from that if at all possible. For one thing, this shows the limitations of language because pacifism is presented as a binary attribute. Mental attributes are very rarely binary; just as a person isn't 100.00% straight or gay, it would be unreasonable to assume a person is 100.00% pacifist or war-monger. We can only measure temperature in a relative manner to properly use the words hot or cold. If we say its cold outside, we mean its cold relative to some other thing- perhaps the average temperature over the past month, or what it is inside. Various types of intelligence are the same way, and the scale we use (linear, log, inverse squared, or whatever) along with our choice of measuring stick can make night day or day night.
Unfortunately, it seems humankind isn't ready for this amount of nuance. The loudest person in the room is still the de-facto leader most of the time. Thats okay- even though groups I typically identify as heinously intollerant and unwise will outbreed all other groups and gain "control" of the world stage, they too will evolve into a more rational way of thinking over time. At least, if my trend analysis of the last 10,0000 years is correct. Evolionary systems are quite fickle in the short term though, so I'm not holding my breath.
