The Tipping Point of Evil

Jacob-B

The Tipping Point of Evil.

By which I mean the idea that the world might be destroyed when evil reaches a certain level.

Do any religious text supports this idea? The Bible does although in an inverted way.

In the book of Genesis God agrees not to destroy the wicked city of Sodom if among its population there exist fifty righteous individuals. After some haggling, God agrees to bring down the number to a mere ten. It is noteworthy that God’s criterion is righteousness rather than innocence, so presumably, children are not taken into account for this measure.
So, it seems that God’s guiding principle when judging the fate of humankind is not the amount of evil but the existence of a minimal quantity of righteousness which one might call it the quanta of righteousness. Incidentally, that idea took root in Jewish folkloristic tradition. It tells us that God would have destroyed humankind on many occasions but for the presence in every generation of thirty-six righteous individuals.

Reflecting on how the moral principle of not harming the civilian population even if it means sparing the wicked is enshrined in the UN definition of War Crimes which has wide implications to the conduct of wars. In this modern context, civilian replaced the biblical righteous. The equivalence is highly debatable. For instance, the Jihadi Brides were civilians, but could they be described as righteous, or even innocent?

In modern warfare, the combatants do destroy civilian population) in order to get at the ‘wicked’. It is referred by the euphemism of ‘collateral damage’. That is generally recognized as being wrong and condemned by moral purists. It stands in contrast to God’s strict criterion for the destruction of Sodom. Moral purists tend to condemn any action that results in harm to civilian, but could the defeat of Nazi Germany or ISIS had been archived wi without the killing of thousands of civilians?

It is encouraging that the moral need to do every possible to avoid casualties among non-combatants is taking root in public opinion of Western democracies and influencing their militaries. It is helped by modern technology. Precision bombing is still not precise enough to avoid civilian casualties but it is incomparably more discriminate than the carpet bombing by thousand bombers raids of WW2 If one needs a proof that such concern exists, it is amply provided by the terror groups who position their weapons among civilian population knowing that it would provide them with a human shield. It needs, however, to be pointed out that such concerns are unlikely to be shared by the likes of Assad Putin and Kim Ung.

In conclusion, it would appear that - at least in the Abrahamic faiths - the tipping point of evil does not exist because it is invariably counterweighted by a quanta righteousness. However, there could be another, a purely supernatural view of the question. Evil directly relates to agony, pain, and despair. Those are the emotions which are the source of traumas that in turn push neurons into overdrive level. Has this brain activity any effect on the physical world? Obviously not, unless one believes in the power of prayer, mind over matter etc..

Changeling

The Tipping Point of Evil. — Jacob-B

When I heard the Conservatives were in for five more years...

Jacob-B

↪Evil

But not all is lost! We still have the handfull of the righteous (the LibDem)
And, I would not count. on five years. History os in an overdrive.

Wayfarer

Moral purists tend to condemn any action that results in harm to civilian, but could the defeat of Nazi Germany or ISIS had been achieved without the killing of thousands of civilians? — Jacob-B

I can’t help but be reminded of the famous story of Winston Churchill not ordering the evacuation of (I think it was) Manchester prior to a major bombing raid, because it would have tipped off the Nazis that they had cracked the Enigma code, thereby nullifying the enormous strategic advantage provided by the code breakers. Many thousands died as a consequence.

Very difficult judgement, indeed.

Metaphysician Undercover

So, it seems that God’s guiding principle when judging the fate of humankind is not the amount of evil but the existence of a minimal quantity of righteousness which one might call it the quanta of righteousness. — Jacob-B

Life itself is essentially good, so to kill it off because the accidental, evil, has become overwhelming, is fundamentally irrational.

All that is required is one kernel of good, at any given time, because the good will take root and flourish, while the evil will die off in the future.

Deleted User

r

Moral purists tend to condemn any action that results in harm to civilian, but could the defeat of Nazi Germany or ISIS had been archived wi without the killing of thousands of civilians? — Jacob-B

This, to me hides an important distinction. There is collateral damage and there is intentional targeting of civilian populations, like say in Dresden. I don't think things like this shortened the war. And I don't think the German bombing of civilian London helped their cause and perhaps actually made the British more determined.

There is a qualitative difference between hitting military targets and knowing that civilians in the area will likely be killed and deciding to mass kill civilian targets. And the Allies did both. I don't think one need be a moral purist in the pejorative sense I think you meant above to distinguish these two types of military actions and decide that the latter one is a bad idea. Here I argued from a consequentialist position, since generally those in favor are consequentialists. I think one could also come at it from a deontological standpoint and still not be a 'moral purist' in some negative sense.

And of course with ISIS we could have not made it easy for them to get weapons and not been so Machievellian in relation to our own interests in Syria while pretending to be outraged by the Syrian government. Then we would not have had to deal with ISIS, a phenomenon the West is very culpable in. But that's another type of issue.

BitconnectCarlos

↪Coben

This, to me hides an important distinction. There is collateral damage and there is intentional targeting of civilian populations, like say in Dresden. I don't think things like this shortened the war. And I don't think the German bombing of civilian London helped their cause and perhaps actually made the British more determined.

This is a good response to Jacob. I want to point out that the intentional bombing of civilians almost certainly DID help shorten the war; case in point Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I think the historical consensus is that had these bombs not been developed and dropped it would have meant for an invasion of mainland Japan which would have been extremely bloody for US troops and prolonged the war considerably.

Deleted User

I want to point out that the intentional bombing of civilians almost certainly DID help shorten the war; case in point Nagasaki and Hiroshima. — BitconnectCarlos

I think that's possible, though there are many who think that Nagasaki was in excess and was more of a message for the Russians that Hiroshima was no fluke. I do wonder if there could not have been some way to simply show the Japanese military command without taking down a city or two. And I am not will to simply concede on consequentialist grounds that these were ok civilian attacks, however I think an argument can be presented here because the weapons were utterly new and overwhelmingly powerful. Nothing about Dresden would have suprised the Nazis tecnologically or in the number of bombs, so I don't think it did anything.

god must be atheist

The Dresden bombing was ordered by President Eisenhower, because intelligence suggested there were weapons of mass distructions hidden there. (I'm bullsitting and I'm the first to admit it. I still think Prez Bush the younger should face a court for the crimes he had committed against humanity. Lest we forget.)

Deleted User

The Dresden bombing was ordered by President Eisenhower, because intelligence suggested there were weapons of mass distructions hidden there. — god must be atheist

I was scared you were serious. And since I've found much weirder stuff on the internet (who hasn't) I don't judge myself to harshly for that reaction.

Jacob-B

↪Coben

Nowdays, the

↪Coben

"This, to me hides an important distinction. There is collateral damage and there is intentional targeting of civilian populations, like say in Dresden. I don't think things like this shortened the war. And I don't think the German bombing of civilian London helped their cause and perhaps actually made the British more determined."

Nowadays the bombing of Dresden coming less there three months before the collapse of the Third Reich and killing many thousands would be considered as war crime comparable to The Russian bombing of Aleppo. However, the timeline context cannot be ignored. It came after many German the bombing of purely civilian targets starting with Guernica. Rotterdam was bombed after the Dutch surrendered jus for the sake of 'teaching a lesson'. And, the Red Army liberated Auschwitz a month
earlier thus revealing the enormity of the German Genocidal crimes. Whilst two wrongs do not make right, the bombing of Dresden has to be viewed in the general context of WW2.

TheYoungPhilosopher

In my beliefs, evil is evil. Sins have varying degrees of severity, but doing evil is still evil. As Jesus Christ once said “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon“ (Matt. 6:24 KJV). Jesus shows that man cannot be evil and righteous at the same time. We cannot serve Satan and God simultaneously. Either one will serve God or serve the Adversary. Thus, there is no turning point of evil. Either one does right or one does wrong.

Banno

↪Jacob-B

Juxtaposing evil and righteousness does nothing, because it tells us nothing about either.

Calling an act evil pushes it away from explanation. It denies the need for further discussion. Evil is what They do, not us. Hence it also denies that evil is commonplace, and ubiquitous.

The root of Righteousness is doing what is right - obeying the moral code. Hence the Righteous do not have to think about what they do in any ethical way. They just need obedience.

And the Bible is not as Good a book as its many proponents suppose.

Valentinus

↪Jacob-B

Various narratives and traditions address evil.
I don't see any value in judging in advance how one or another point of view will respond to it.
By their fruits, you shall know them.

Brett

Mary Midgley wrote a very interesting book called ‘Wickedness’. In it she said;

“We need to grasp clearly how appallingly human beings sometimes behave. And we must see that we cannot always shift responsibility for that behaviour off onto an abstraction called ‘culture’ ... There have to be natural motives present in humans which make cruelty and related vices possible.”

Brett

↪Jacob-B

Moral purists tend to condemn any action that results in harm to civilian, but could the defeat of Nazi Germany or ISIS had been archived wi without the killing of thousands of civilians? — Jacob-B

I can’t help but be reminded of the famous story of Winston Churchill not ordering the evacuation of (I think it was) Manchester prior to a major bombing raid, because it would have tipped off the Nazis that they had cracked the Enigma code, thereby nullifying the enormous strategic advantage provided by the code breakers. Many thousands died as a consequence. — Wayfarer

I agree, @Wayfarer that it was a very difficult judgement he made, and in terms of the war, necessary. And probably the right decision, too. But it would still be an evil act to knowingly allow citizens to die in those circumstances. The fact that Churchill made the decision, and others supported it, indicates how we can act evilly by choice, anytime.

Edit: in fact what he did was to allow an evil act to take place by not acting.

Banno

Coventry, not Manchester; and possibly apocryphal.

https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/myths/churchill-let-coventry-burn/

Wayfarer

↪Brett

I think he would have said that the decision was made to avoid a greater evil.

↪Banno

Interesting, and thanks for the correction, but even as a hypothetical it illustrates the point at issue.

Brett

↪Wayfarer

I think he would have said that the decision was made to avoid a greater evil. — Wayfarer

Which would be true.

Instead I would look at the bombing of Dresden by British and American forces. In this case they actually committed the act, whereas in Coventry they allowed it, if true.

They knew what would happen, but they withheld part of themselves to enable themselves to commit to the act, which was evil. It may have been justified but it as still a conscious act that would kill many people, civilians. So that tipping point is reached by withholding the morality we apply to ourselves.

Wayfarer

Instead I would look at the bombing of Dresden by British and American forces. — Brett

I’m inclined to viewing that as a war crime.

The great difficulty is dealing with ‘degrees of evil’. It would seem to me the only way to avoid participating in war would be to be an ascetic renunciate with nothing to defend. That was how Indian Buddhists responded to the Mughal invasion of medieval India - which resulted in the destruction of Buddhist India.

Brett

↪Wayfarer

I’m inclined to viewing that as a war crime. — Wayfarer

Is that because it’s an act of evil? If not what could it be?

Brett

↪Metaphysician Undercover

All that is required is one kernel of good, at any given time, because the good will take root and flourish, while the evil will die off in the future. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don’t think evil will ever “ die off”, because it’s inherent in all of us.

Wayfarer

I’m inclined to viewing that [firebombing of Dresden] as a war crime.
— Wayfarer

Is that because it’s an act of evil? If not what could it be? — Brett

I've never read up on it. A quick glance at the Wikipedia article shows that the assault was retrospectively justified by the Allied forces on the grounds of it being a major centre of the war effort. But on the other hand, it also had high cultural significance, and of course huge numbers of civilians were killed in presumably ghastly circumstances. It is, I think, one of those episodes that is emblematic of the evils of modern warfare.

The broader point is: can there be a 'just war'? I'm inclined to think there has to be, but that it's always going to be a very vexed argument, and should be. But my immediate forbears served in WW1 and II, and had I been alive, I probably would have served also. I do think the Nazi war effort was an evil cause and that fighting it was an unfortunate necessity.

Brett

↪Wayfarer

The broader point is: can there be a 'just war'? I — Wayfarer

I think the efforts of the allied forces of WW11 could be called a ‘just war’. But there were certainly acts carried out that could be called evil. Decisions were made by individuals at all levels that called for decisions and acts they would not normally carry out and that would have put them in prison in peace time. My point is that the their morality was put on pause so that they could do what was required.

What is PTSD but the living with what you have done or seen that you know is evil? At the time you coped, but later the truth of things comes to bear on you.

Wayfarer

I think the efforts of the allied forces of WW11 could be called a ‘just war’. But there were certainly acts carried out that could be called evil. — Brett

Perfectly agree. War brings out both the most noble and the most evil in people.

TheMadFool

By which I mean the idea that the world might be destroyed when evil reaches a certain level. — Jacob-B

Do any religious text supports this idea? The Bible does although in an inverted way. — Jacob-B

Well, if you're going at this from a religious point of view you may want to consider what I think is a coincdence that maybe both the source of and "evidence" for such beliefs.

You've framed the issue in terms of an imbalance between the forces of good and evil; thus we have a "a tipping point" at which evil overcomes good and you know the rest. The question that naturally arises is why haven't we reached that threshold as of yet? Put otherwise, why is the good in the world today sufficient to balance the evil that no one can deny is present? After all isn't the tipping point just the case when the good join the ranks of the evil hordes? Personally, I think we haven't reached that threshold when evil overwhelms the good because there is just the right amount of resources (food, water, etc.) that can sustain a counterbalancing population of good people. IF there's enough for everybody, goodness exists and is sustainable.

As resources are finite and the population seems to be growing exponentially there will be a time when there won't be enough resources to go around for everybody. When this point is reached, goodness will be like a fish out of water; people will need to adapt if they're to survive and the only way to do that will be to become evil. Thus resources, their finite nature, and population, its exponential growth, will be the decidng factor for the tipping point of evil.

Of course there are other ways things can go downhill. For instance, a virulent ideology may give birth and affect the balance between good and evil. Nazism is a good example. Imperialism might resurrect itself, etc. In short there are many ways things can go bad and upset the equilibrium between good and bad but none of them have the certainty of spawning evil by the multitude as a scarcity of resources.

Now when does or when will resources run out or when will the population reach such a size that it would be indistinguishable from a resource scarcity? No one can put an exact figure on the time frame but we all know it'll be after a long time. The Earth can support a lot of people and population growth, even exponentially, takes time.

I mentioned coincidence as being the source of such beliefs; beliefs that the world gets destroyed when evil reaches a certain limit. In what sense is coincidence important for such beliefs? Well, there's another thing that occurs after a long time - disasters at a global scale. We've all heard of world-destroying asteroids, floods, pandemics, etc. These are rare events because they require, in my opinion, an improbable conjunction of necessary conditions.

So, here we have a situation where the tipping point for evil is reached after a long time and global disasters also occurring on a similar time frame. There's a likelihood then that the two will coincide and it's this coincidence that people interpret as divine judgment for the evils of men.

Brett

↪TheMadFool

You've framed the issue in terms of an imbalance between the forces of good and evil; thus we have a "a tipping point" at which evil overcomes good and you know the rest. — TheMadFool

What exactly are these forces of good and evil?

TheMadFool

What exactly are these forces of good and evil? — Brett

Ask the OP.

TheMadFool

What exactly are these forces of good and evil? — Brett

Good would be the people who follow some moral principle. Bad would be people who don't.

Metaphysician Undercover

I don’t think evil will ever “ die off”, because it’s inherent in all of us. — Brett

I agree, we will never reach the ideal of complete and total good, in the absolute sense. But what I really meant was, that the particular evil will die off. As particular things come and go, so will particular evils..

Deleted User

Whilst two wrongs do not make right, the bombing of Dresden has to be viewed in the general context of WW2. — Jacob-B

To me the first part of the sentence outweighs the second. I could deal with some illegal shooting of the entire Nazi command. IOW if the 'revenge' actually hit the people responsible or at least people potentially responsible for other war crimes, or aware and in their silence complicit, or some such. But the bombing of civilians is just hurting other innocent people. I know the context. I understand that it was in a context where the Germans were now know to have done other terrible things. If someone beats up my brothers and I meet someone of the bully's nationality on the street or heck, even the bully's second cousin, on the street and beat him up, I don't have much moral ground to stand on. I don't think we should muddy the water. I am not calling for any potential survivors to be put in front of some tribunal. I would hope that in future wars, people no longer think that one atrocity

in

any

way

makes it more undertandable to commit a counter one.

'Understandible' hovering ambiguously between,...yeah sometimes humans react like that
and
'morally justificable'

I see no reason to be afraid to call the Allies out on something like Dresden. it's not unfair. And it should be in the air, for any future such decision makers, that history could and hopefully will look unkindly on such a choice. Further that they might think differently when weighing options.

The Tipping Point of Evil

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