Sylph-DS wrote:Is there such a thing as good and bad/evil?
I would argue yes! But:
And if there is, what would their definitions be?
That's the problem, isn't it?
I think the book The Science of Good & Evil is a pretty excellent primer on the subject. It examines the concept of morality as an evolved response to the very real problems of building a functioning social group. From a pure-ish evolutionary model, "good" is something you do that successfully spreads your genes and "evil" is something that someone else does to you that stops you from doing so. As the prologue to Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (WARNING: Pretentious yet flippant literary reference not suitable for small children.) puts it, "That's the quarrel." We're all built to form in-groups for mutual cooperation and to fight against out-groups to ensure your group's supremacy.
That's what all this is really about. Christian versus Muslim, Empire versus Empire, Everyone versus Fascism, Communist versus Capitalist, Christian versus Muslim mk. II (a.k.a. the "War on Terror"); all of these are about in-groups and out-groups. Peace is only achieved within a group. Europe and the US have vast cultural and political differences, really, yet they allied for 60 years because they were more similar to each other than to those dastardly Reds out on the Steppes. With that enemy gone, disagreements of some kind were bound to pop up eventually.
In this case, what's really going on is that Europe and the international community are objecting to the US' unilateralism more than to any particular policy. The past six years have been the US administration showing again and again that it sees the US as a self-sufficient island and wants less and less to do with anybody else unless they're useful for our own goals. That is to say, we're in a world now where the US is shrinking its in-group, which means it will inevitably come into greater conflict with others.
Europe, in particular, feels betrayed, because we used to be best buddies and now the US is dismissing all their reservations and going alone whenever we get a chance. That triggers completely natural and necessary resentment. Necessary because that's how we keep ourselves and each other honest. Anger is a way to avoid "fool me twice" scenarios. Anger makes it possible for reasonable, peaceful people to punish cheaters to keep them from cheating again. So when a perceived alliance is broken, we (or Europe) have to feel anger about it.
World Peace is really just a matter of including as many people as possible in our in-groups. Which is, of course, far easier said than done. There will always psychopathic individuals and groups who refuse to consider anyone else within their group and exploit others for selfish gains. And building the connections between disparate groups in the first place is already a difficult problem. But there's definitely a wrong way to do it. And selfishness and psychopathic rejection of cooperation will equally definitely get punished.
