Good And Evil
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The molecules in matter are always moving around. When we slow the movement down to the point where they are hardly moving at all, we call that matter "supercooled". When we agitate those molecules to a very intense frenzy, we call it "superheated" matter. Somewhere between these two extremes is the narrow range of temperatures that we humans are used to experiencing here on Earth with our bodies, and somewhere in the middle of that small range is where we humans set the division that defines what we consider warm and what we consider cool. Temperature is a scale we apply to the degree of agitation happening within matter. Hot and cold are value judgments that we humans apply to that scale relative to how our bodies feel when we are in contact with the agitation of matter.
Likewise, brightness is a scale we humans apply to the number and behavior of photons emitted from a given source. There are degrees of brightness that are very extreme, and there is a much narrower scale of degree of brightness that we are used to seeing here on Earth, and somewhere in this narrow scale there is a division made relative to our own physical bodies as to what we call bright and what we call dark. Light and dark are value judgments that we humans apply to the behavior of photons relative to how they effect our bodies.
The universe encompasses distances that are so vast as to defy our ability to even comprehend them. Distance is the scale we humans apply to how near or far the relationship between two things is. Because the scale of distance can be so extreme, we employ several sets of degrees to deal with them. Vast distances are measured in light years. Shorter distances are measured in kilometers or miles. Shorter still and we change to inches and centimeters. Then down to very small distances measured in microns. Again, there are the extreme distances that we measure scientifically, and there is a much narrower range of distance that we are used to experiencing here on Earth, and somewhere in that narrow range of distance that we experience here on Earth is where we place the dividing line between what we consider a short distance and a long distance. Near and Far are value judgments that we make relative to how our bodies experience distance in the narrow scale of distances here on Earth.
What's important to understand, here, is that there is a difference between a phenomena and the scale we use to quantify that phenomena, and another difference between the scale we use to measure the phenomena and the value judgments we make about the phenomena we are measuring. That the molecules in matter exist in an agitated state is a phenomena. We humans measure that phenomena by applying a scale of degrees to the amount of agitation. We call this degree of agitation temperature. Temperature is not a phenomena itself, it's only a scale we humans impose on a phenomena so that we can quantify it. And lastly, hot and cold are not degrees of temperature, they are quality judgments that we make about degrees of temperature. So when we humans encounter and interact with a phenomena, there are layers of understanding and definition involved in this interaction. To understand the interaction clearly we need to understand these layers of definition and that they are being applied by us to the phenomena that we are experiencing.
Good and evil are quality judgments, just like hot and cold, light and dark, and near and far are quality judgments. Quality judgments are evaluations that we humans make relative to our own experience as human beings. Hot is what is hot to us. Far is what is far to us. Good is what is good to us. Evil is what is bad to us. Good and evil are quality judgments that we make relative to ourselves and our experiences here on Earth. But if good and evil are quality judgments, what's the quantity being judged? And what's the phenomena being quantified?
At a glance I would say that the quantity that good and evil qualify is morality. Good and evil are moral evaluations, so morality is the scale being used to quantify the phenomena. And if morality is a scale we are using to quantify a phenomena, then the phenomena would by definition be human behavior, as morality applies only to human behavior. Or to view it from the other way round, there is a perceived phenomena that we define as human behavior. We measure the range of that behavior using morality as our scale, and we qualify this range of morality as being good or evil depending upon how it effects us experientially. So essentially, then, good and evil are quality judgments passed by ourselves, relative to ourselves, about ourselves.
Some of us are really not going to like this idea: that good and evil are quality judgments passed by us, on us, about how our own behavior effects us. They aren't going to like it because the concept of God is being left out the event. For some reason, human beings don't wish to admit that when we judge our own behavior as good or evil, that it's really we who are doing the judging. We want to imagine instead, that some divine power outside of ourselves has defined good and evil, and we are simply applying that divine judgment. I wonder why?
Perhaps we really don't want to acknowledge that what is good for us may not be good for someone else. In fact, what is good for us may well be considered evil to someone else. We don't like the idea that we can reasonably be judged as evil from another's perspective. We want some greater authority to negate that judgment. And likewise, when we judge someone else as being evil, we want our judgment ratified by a higher authority so that the one we have judged can't simply claim relativity as a way of dismissing our judgment of them. Yet this still leaves me puzzled because we don't have this same insistence upon divine authority when we make quality judgments about temperature, or brightness, or distance or so many other phenomena that we experience.
I guess the answer is that we are so insistent upon divine authority when judging human behavior precisely because it is our behavior that we're judging. The behavior of molecules and photons does not threaten the ideas we have of who we are and what our value in this world is. They don't effect out egos. But judgments upon our own behavior do effect the images we have our ourselves, they do effect our ego. And I suspect this is why we have this need for a higher authority to dismiss the negative judgments of others, toward us, and to reinforce our judgments of others. It's not logical, reasonable, or even fair, but when human ego is involved, things seldom are.
Peace,
Dave