Looking up philosophy in the Philosophy thread made me aware of a flaw/difficulty in my moral system.

A lot of people are evil, with variations in evilness ranging from the negligible (eg. shoplifting) to the extreme (eg. taking delight in seducing and torturing before killing).

I assume in this post that the presence and magnitude of all evil has been pre-determined accurately. Determining where evil is present is a whole separate topic.

In our society, the only two main ways of dealing with such people are prison and fines.
The imposition of fines is as old as civilisation. Prison is a recent invention, circa 1830.

In historical times, there were a much larger range of options in dealing with people who are inherently evil. Including:

• people who delight in killing employed as gladiators
• poisoners employed as food tasters
• exorcism to expel demons
• deportation of convicts
• private slave contacts for say seven years
• removal of body part
• sterilisation

There’s a limit to how far you can get by preventing the development of evil in people, nature vs nurture.

If I try to constrain all moral approaches to treatment of evil people, I end up with alternatives:

• Swift and painless capital punishment
• Isolation (eg. prison)
• Separation from temptation (eg. slavery, intervention order, dismissal)
• Therapy (eg. exorcism, hypnosis)
• Surveillance (eg. fame, eg. Chamberlain, Corby)
• Laissez faire (eg. ignore minor offences)
• Utilisation (eg. set a thief to catch a thief, eg. Mitnick)
• Put them in charge (Hoover, Napoleon, etc.)

What do you say about utilisation?

Have I missed an option? eg. how do shops deal with shoplifters that they catch?

mollwollfumble said:

Looking up philosophy in the Philosophy thread made me aware of a flaw/difficulty in my moral system.

A lot of people are evil, with variations in evilness ranging from the negligible (eg. shoplifting) to the extreme (eg. taking delight in seducing and torturing before killing).

I assume in this post that the presence and magnitude of all evil has been pre-determined accurately. Determining where evil is present is a whole separate topic.

In our society, the only two main ways of dealing with such people are prison and fines.
The imposition of fines is as old as civilisation. Prison is a recent invention, circa 1830.

In historical times, there were a much larger range of options in dealing with people who are inherently evil. Including:

• people who delight in killing employed as gladiators
• poisoners employed as food tasters
• exorcism to expel demons
• deportation of convicts
• private slave contacts for say seven years
• removal of body part
• sterilisation

There’s a limit to how far you can get by preventing the development of evil in people, nature vs nurture.

If I try to constrain all moral approaches to treatment of evil people, I end up with alternatives:

• Swift and painless capital punishment
• Isolation (eg. prison)
• Separation from temptation (eg. slavery, intervention order, dismissal)
• Therapy (eg. exorcism, hypnosis)
• Surveillance (eg. fame, eg. Chamberlain, Corby)
• Laissez faire (eg. ignore minor offences)
• Utilisation (eg. set a thief to catch a thief, eg. Mitnick)
• Put them in charge (Hoover, Napoleon, etc.)

What do you say about utilisation?

Have I missed an option? eg. how do shops deal with shoplifters that they catch?

Call the police, police charge them, they go to court and if found guilty or plead guilty, get a fine or a court order usually

mollwollfumble said:

Prison is a recent invention, circa 1830.

nope… The earliest records of prisons come from the 1st millennia BC, located on the areas of ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt.

It depends on what we think of as evil as well.
Those people who started WWII took part in evil acts (genocide) but many were just the average person off the street who may have not done anything else wrong in their entire lives.
Evil exists in all humans and might just need a way to come out were you won’t be punished.

It’s said snipers are a certain type of people, waiting for the sole purpose of killing someone.
I imagine the military wants some of it soldiers to be text book evil as they serve a purpose and do jobs most people wouldn’t.
Or perhaps soldiers are so broken from training and PTSD they kill with little thought the “enemy” are humans just like them

We also have community service as a way to repay society for damage you may have done.
In WA for example graffiti has to have an order with community work.

I doubt there’s any reliable test for evil but presumably some of the more killy individuals can be employed eradicating foxes and feral cats and so forth.

dv said:

I doubt there’s any reliable test for evil but presumably some of the more killy individuals can be employed eradicating foxes and feral cats and so forth.

There are signs.
Pulling wings off flies as a child is one.
Playing or wanting to own a six string banjo is another.

Peak Warming Man said:

dv said:

I doubt there’s any reliable test for evil but presumably some of the more killy individuals can be employed eradicating foxes and feral cats and so forth.

There are signs.
Pulling wings off flies as a child is one.
Playing or wanting to own a six string banjo is another.

No one is the villain in their own story.

Peak Warming Man said:

dv said:

I doubt there’s any reliable test for evil but presumably some of the more killy individuals can be employed eradicating foxes and feral cats and so forth.

There are signs.
Pulling wings off flies as a child is one.
Playing or wanting to own a six string banjo is another.

It’s just for fun, although I have recently done a duet with the cittern and a synthesised banjo, which sounded quite striking, so a banjo may be of real musical value under my command.

I of course would be playing it with the fingernails, not a plectrum, as the later limits the musical utility of such instruments.

Bubblecar said:

Peak Warming Man said:

dv said:

I doubt there’s any reliable test for evil but presumably some of the more killy individuals can be employed eradicating foxes and feral cats and so forth.

There are signs.
Pulling wings off flies as a child is one.
Playing or wanting to own a six string banjo is another.

It’s just for fun, although I have recently done a duet with the cittern and a synthesised banjo, which sounded quite striking, so a banjo may be of real musical value under my command.

I of course would be playing it with the fingernails, not a plectrum, as the later limits the musical utility of such instruments.

later = latter

dv said:

Peak Warming Man said:

dv said:

I doubt there’s any reliable test for evil but presumably some of the more killy individuals can be employed eradicating foxes and feral cats and so forth.

There are signs.
Pulling wings off flies as a child is one.
Playing or wanting to own a six string banjo is another.

No one is the villain in their own story.

Hmm, not necessarily. Some people are self-consciously bad and enjoy playing the villain.

Peak Warming Man said:

dv said:

I doubt there’s any reliable test for evil but presumably some of the more killy individuals can be employed eradicating foxes and feral cats and so forth.

There are signs.
Pulling wings off flies as a child is one.
Playing or wanting to own a six string banjo is another.

Surely these people are already working in HR?

why would evil stay or go where it is obvious, I think it likely to evolve and migrate to where it least likely to be recognized, in fact high chance it would turn up in something that looks quite opposite, because even if you had a hunch it was in an apparent good, hiding away, it would require a perverse effort to demonstrate it to be something other than it appears

transition said:

why would evil stay or go where it is obvious, I think it likely to evolve and migrate to where it least likely to be recognized, in fact high chance it would turn up in something that looks quite opposite, because even if you had a hunch it was in an apparent good, hiding away, it would require a perverse effort to demonstrate it to be something other than it appears

i’d suggest as a starter..

what can be absorbed and dissolved into a social oblivion, by way of shared oblivion

Some companies employ people who are prepared to get a deal done and the higher ups don’t care if the persons use ruthless tactics and therefore will employ people that they say are cut throat in their approach. The companies look at the results purely, rather than the overall approach, reputation this approach creates about their brand of being unsavoury with consumers and ultimately their undoing.

I want rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers and Methodists.