Susan Neiman | Evil and Moral Clarity

From Hannah Arendt to The Sopranos, American moral philosopher and author, Susan Neiman, talks us about how to find moral clarity, how we can understand evil and why it is we need to grow up.
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Susan Neiman: Susan Neiman is an American moral philosopher, cultural commentator, and essayist. She has written extensively on the juncture between Enlightenment moral philosophy, metaphysics, and politics, both for scholarly audiences and the general public. She is the Director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam and author of many books, including Evil in Modern Thought, Why Grow Up and Learning from the Germans.
For more from Susan Neiman watch:
Error, Lies, and Adventure | Susan Neiman, David Owen, Don Paterson
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Freedom, Victims and Heroes | Susan Neiman
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[@SecretEyeSpot]

seeing that river in the background is just perfect for this complex convo

[@mareviea]

Brilliant! Thank you.

[@Midnight135791]

Great Interview and the Answers are very insightful. I could not believe how many trout were hitting at the water on the other side of the rocks during this interview. It reminded me of a similar (maybe TV event or some kind of documentary 30 years ago) commentary show on "What is True Evil" when evil is justified in defense of a greater good.

[@petervandenengel1208]

Moral is not just about the difference between good and evil/ but about understanding reality - hence realism as a denial of this does not stand for reality as the word suggests, but for some unknown not explained reality, because it lacks the intelligence to do so.

[@mattd8725]

In terms of the major television series that shows people struggling to do good then season one of True Detective was interesting. There was something of a disappointing regression to the mean after that.

[@janklaas6885]

📍27:20

[@margrietoregan828]

No especial difficulty attends the exercise of building a case for pan-moralism - for a pan-moralistic universe, that is to say one on which both ought and is are the same thing. Panpsychism is, fortunately, currently gaining ground again, as also can/must pan-morality. An only slightly more careful examination of reality shows that all material objects not only behave intelligently but also morally, if by morality is meant ‘in such ways as to discriminatively maintain and/or augment one’s own integrity of being’. Big budget, front page science is awfully fond of smashing things to bits to see what’s inside - fair enough, but if the things being smashed had no initial/internal integrity of being and in addition did not actively/powerfully and continually act each on its own behalf by way of maintaining its own individual integrity of being, then we wouldn’t have to build such powerful machines to tear them apart and smash them into smithereens. Recall that the power which is released in any atomic explosion or nuclear reaction comes from a release of the exploding atom’s or nucleus’ own internal ‘power of being’ - from the very forces that each is utilising as that by which each is holding itself together all-of-a-piece as a single coherent entity. Recall that all rocks and stones actively resist whatever threats to their integrity of being each experiences as it travels along its life’s pathway, doing so moreover rather strenuously as the blackened and stubbed toes of childhood attest. All material objects both animate and inanimate alike, severally actively, powerful and discriminately resist that which unresisted would compromise its integrity of being, and just as surely (and demonstrably) each also embraces that which embraced will augment, aggrandise and/or improve the robustness of its own personal integrity of being. These two phenomena are the two and two only activities in which all that which exists here in our universe engages. Ours is an existential universe in which all that exists, exists as some one or another of the many and various different material objects present here, and all that does not exist, does not exist. Up here at our own level of being we have gotten into the habit of calling the events and processes that tear things down and break them apart ‘evil’ and ‘bad’, and the other events and processes that enable things to build themselves up and to resist being torn apart, good and virtuous. Higher beings such as ourselves have evolved arrays of various different senses which enable us to apprehend the nature of many of the other things in our surrounds together with the consequences of any close encounters of the third kind we might have therewith. Along with the fact that we can not only sense these other things in our surrounds but also proactively move ourselves either away from or towards these other things, we are therefore able to act in such ways both proactively and also ‘at a distance’, doing so morally, that is to say all by way of defending, maintaining or augmenting our own personal integrity of being. Although they too act with perfectly religious moral integrity (resisting the bad, embracing the good) rocks and stones, along with all of the other inanimate objects here in our universe, have no option other than to sit and wait until whatever will either harm or help them bangs right into them. In other words although just as moral as are we in their apprehension and resistance of ‘evil’ and equally so in their apprehension and embracement of the good, lacking both ‘distance sensing’ and proactive motility thereby enabling them to move either away from danger or towards beneficence, again they have no option but to sit and wait until whatever is coming their way, good or bad, bangs right into them. At which point they then actively detect/discern the moral nature of the encounter and react accordingly - resisting evil, embracing the good. One of the several factors confounding morality here in our universe is sociality whereby personal integrity of being is inextricably integrated with the well being of several or many others - and vice versa. Another of the several factors confounding morality here in our universe is parasitism, wherein some existents have evolved the ability to aggrandise themselves at the expense of others. Predation, intraspecies competition and the everyday inanimate conditions of being/of life are also sources of evil. However unpalatable, it is not difficult to show that what we call maleness is the result of a particularly insidious parasite, namely SRY. SRY is that little bit of DNA which once inside the nucleus of an egg quite literally hijacks that egg’s entire developmental processes and turns what should have been a blessed, generative mother into a survival-and-replicatory machine - or male - who’s sole function is to first make more SRYs, and then help them reinfect other eggs with as many new SRYs as each male possibly can, doing so entirely at the expense of the initial egg. Whether you, dear reader (if you’ve made it this far !!) recognise it or not the simple easily demonstrated facts of the matter are the entire biosphere is gyno- or matricentric such that all that transpires within any sexual species prioritises everything that its females do, they being nothing less than goodness and generativeness incarnate... Except us. Putting SRY - or their host’s, that is males - in charge of anything - let alone everything as is the case in our own situation - is as certain a prescription for doom as is disallowing any life form access to sufficient or suitable subsistence resources. Paradoxically the arms race which occurs between SRY hosts (males) and the gyniatrixes of each sexual species has literally fuelled our ascent into becoming the highest life form presently existing on earth, as each and every time our females evolve a new and better way of triumphing over males’ new depredations, males counter by subverting it to their own parasitic existence on our females, only to fuel yet another new adaptation by which our mothers may leap frog again into the fore. Just saying .....

[@michaeljensen4650]

Your ideas are insane, immature, and deluded. Nothing but mess of hazy logic and magical thinking. You are confused and conflicted. Your irrational ideas contradict themselves and arrive with no conclusive or useful thesis.

[@michaeljensen4650]

Verbose and useless.

[@edwardrussell7168]

Evil is that which stunts the growth of our inner self. Good is which helps develop our self. Read the book The Human Self and Allah by G A Parwez.. both life and death addressed.. logically based on evidence

[@hilldoggydogg635]

Evil is Susan Neiman and her putrid tribe.

[@philip777777000]

The good man is the bad man teacher, and the bad man does a good man's job. He, Who talks does not know - he, who knows, does not talk. The thought of evil thought is evil and Purity of no thought is everything else.

[@michaeljensen4650]

Who will be paying for these reparations? The common man? Will I be paying more taxes because of something which happened generations ago which neither I nor my family profited from. This is a complex issue that needs serious attention and should not be used as a political weapon. Making broad statements that make us feel good and lull people into a false sense of superiority is delusional and divisive. In fact it only hold us back trapped in the past and arguing over things which cannot be undone. Are we prepared to perform a forensic historical analysis to find the descendants of slave owners and people who profited from the slave trade and slave labor. Why should innocent parties be made to pay for the crimes of others. Our economic system is predatory and reparations will do nothing to change that. Do people really want justice, or do they want power? How will having money for college help the disenfranchised when there is only enough room for a limited number of students at elite colleges. How will this help to lower the average cost of college which is outrageously expensive. How will this help with the lack of jobs due to outsourcing and a changing economy. How will having a limited amount of money help when you do not qualify for a loan, all the property and housing is monopolized and prices are grossly inflated. Lastly how will improving the fortune of minorities in western countries help with disparity abroad, the devastation to our natural resources and the planet's ecosystem. The economic system they are all clamoring to join is the very system which causes so much warfare, disparity and devastation around the world.

[@forthfarean]

The whole idea is preposterous. Another left wing spanner in the works.

[@Dan-ox7fy]

Reparations are about redistributing money to certain people who believe what the elite want and education is not about job preparation but about indoctrination