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Proud Heathen
The Out Campaign: Scarlet Letter of Atheism
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Re-re-reading
Tuesday. 2.12.13 6:39 pm
I am currently re-re-reading R Scott Bakker's books. Just finished Thousandfold Thought and moved on to Judging Eye. To this day, it's still probably the best fantasy series I've read. Yes, even better than Song of Ice and Fire. There's just so much about this series that makes it different but also interesting. It's far more brutal than Song of Ice and Fire, if you can believe that.


Both series aim to show the brutality and inherent wickedness of humanity, especially in the time-periods they represent, but Bakker shows some stuff that even Martin seems to gloss over. Also, Bakker has probably the most interesting and scary villains I've ever seen in a literary series. They're evil, and yet he manages to explain why they are the way they are, rather than just relying on "They're evil because evil".


Speaking of evil... I always hate it when people referencing things like 9/11, or serial killers or other horrific crimes try and refer to the perpetrator as evil. As an atheist, I don't believe in evil. I don't believe that there are people who do things bad for the sake of being bad. Human beings (normal human beings anyway) shy away from acts of brutality or murder because we have an inborn sense of empathy. People who can commits acts that we would falsely label as "evil", are broken human beings. They either don't possess a sense of empathy, or they have an illness so severe (like schizophrenia) that their mind allows them to justify their actions.


Then of course there are times when a human being can temporarily disable their sense of empathy. I'm not a psychologist by any means, but I'm guessing that for evolutionary purposes, our sense of loyalty to our tribe or in-group can sometimes allow us to override our sense of empathy to commit acts that we would otherwise consider horrible. This is how people can kill other people in times of war. We justify it by saying "Well, I'm fighting for my country".


Okay, enough rambling about psychology.
2 Comments.


psychology
I'm with you to an the nature of human beings not necessarily being innately evil.. but that said, I don't go as far as saying folks are naturally empathetic that leads us to nto commit brutality / murder. i think society in general has done many evil things throughout history, whether it's sanction or perpetuate apartheid, institute and implement racist ideology, condone the slaughter of innocents in genocide, etc.. adn the same folks who are partaking in the evil doings can still be good people in other realms of life. in other words, i'm sure that many of the folks who promoted the south african apartheid or who argued in favor of miscegenation laws in the deep south that led to the lynchings of many innocent black men had a lot of good character traits.. but.. you know.. they still did some shit
» undisputed on 2013-02-12 09:48:26

I don't think it's a matter of people "disabling" their empathy necessarily... but we have a tendency to view groups of people with less empathy than individuals. Our minds can't really visualize numbers larger than a certain point, so there is a point where "people" no longer equates to "persons"... Empathy is limited because we don't view them as persons anymore, not because it's turned off. (There's a good reason commercials for charities often focus on individuals instead of just saying "such and such huge number needs your help...")
» randomjunk on 2013-02-12 10:19:01

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