• Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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    10 days ago

    No. Life is not a Marvel movie. Instead, the world is driven by material conditions, and the continuous effect these conditions have in guiding future conditions. The capitalists overtook the fuedal lords not because they were more moral, but because of the steam engine and the expansion in industrial production. The Statesian north didn’t free the slaves of the south out of any moral reason, but to gain access to more wage laborers better fit for industrial production. Socialism is overtaking capitalism because imperialism is dying, and rates of profit are falling.

    There’s no idealist “good vs evil.” If you’d like, I wrote an intro Marxist-Leninist reading guide that might help!

  • Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml
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    10 days ago

    The more I learn, the more I realize that a lot of political leaders who do horrible do what they do for a reason, with some exceptions. This isn’t an endorsement of their actions or their reasons, but Putin, Netanyahu, and (kinda) Biden/Obama/Bush all have reasons for what they do. The rare exceptions are the super corrupt ones. Boris Yeltsin, Viktor Orban, Trump, the office of US president generally, Scott Morrison, etc.

    In other words it’s not so much good vs. evil as corruption vs integrity.

      • Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml
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        9 days ago

        Netanyahu is super corrupt, but in his position as leader of Israel he does things for a reason. The Israeli people have a persecution complex due to … history, and so many want an ethnostate. On top of that Israel like America has made a lot of enemies, through their various war crimes, so the threats to Israel’s national security are real.

        None of this is an endorsement of Israel’s past, present, or future. There are better ways to survive and they seem be going out of their way to cross lines that I wouldn’t even if it’d kill me. There seems to be some “religious zionism” mixed in with their efforts to build an ethnostate that makes sure they needlessly commit every war crime in the book. Furthermore Israel’s reckless actions and it’s impunity have been fomenting antisemitism around the world (from the right, this isn’t meant to equivocate pro-Palestine activistism with antisemitism).

      • Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml
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        10 days ago

        Corrupt people are always evil, but evil people are not always corrupt. That said the evil people with integrity are usually just racist so maybe my entire assessment is wrong.

        • fort_burp@feddit.nlOP
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          9 days ago

          evil people with integrity are usually just racist

          lmao spot on. You can have integrity and shitty principles (evil) or integrity and good principles (good), so I don’t really see it as corruption vs. integrity.

  • VoxAliorum@lemmy.ml
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    8 days ago

    No. While there are many opinions by no means are all really intellegent once binary. See Hanna Arendt “The banality of evil” or Friedrich Nietzsche “Beyond good and evil” (result is debatable but smart mad)

  • mrl1@jlai.lu
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    11 days ago

    I am more and more learning about how personal interests often conflict with societal interests (as simple as it may sound). We are globally going to understand soon enough that democracy isn’t worth shit as long as feedback loops that allow personal interests to creep in are “meta”.

    Loads of people have lots of ideas on how to run countries and communities, but ideology and doctrines are not really proven concepts.

    And the other big problem is that to declare new forces within existing infrastructure (creating counter power to prevent positive feedback mechanisms), societal interest must still be powerful enough to not require a revolution to be enacted in a sensible and effective way.

    A lot of countries have already in my mind gone way over that threshold, it’s recognisable when actual societal interests, long term initiatives and big questions about the future are not asked anymore because the political power is working at consolidating their position and redistributing favours they owe to the soon to be oligarchy.

    But you can’t really allow anyone to be a defeatist because cynism is the last nail in the coffin, staying awake and fight hoping that enough will join soon enough is the only way to keep existing.

  • Valentian@lemmy.ml
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    10 days ago

    Good, as in “service to others” and evil as in “service to self”. Evil in this sense is unstable and ego drives Entropy by its nature by the same laws as cancer. Good is harder since decisions are also subject to entropy, requiring free will as the outside energy source. That’s just my perspective <3

    • fort_burp@feddit.nlOP
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      9 days ago

      Great points, I like it. Someone else pointed out that perhaps there’s no objective morality, but perhaps another explanation is that there are no individuals, that’s why it seems like that.

  • Tracaine@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    Yes. There is good, there is evil and if it requires many words to try and sway your opinion, that is manipulative - evil.

    An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.