| | Topics for Socrates Café - 8 - 14 - 06
Does evil exist?
Yes, unfortunately, I believe it does. Why is a whole other
question and I have no answer to that. I suppose many things
contribute to a person being evil, from nature to nurture, and the
reasons for a person to become evil are probably as varied as people
themselves. I don't, however, believe in an evil being, as in
Satan/the devil. I wonder what creates an evil person, such as
Jeffrey Dahmer, but I don't think such a person is possessed of a
demon.
I am assuming that evil is a human failing because most animals, while
behaving in ways we think are bad, do not deliberately do evil
things. Even a fox in a henhouse, killing more than it needs, is
still following its inborn instinct. There are several books out
on the subject of evil people, one of which is "People of the Lie" by
M. Scott Peck. I read part of it but couldn't finish it.
But it is very illuminating, if you can get through it. I am in
some ways a little superstitious, and I avoid all expressions of evil
in literature, movies, art work, etc.
Also, I don't consider catastrophes, such as the hurricane, Katrina, or
the tsunami that hit Indonesia and the other countries nearby was
evil. Earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, and all such events are
of nature. It is possible that by changing the climate of the
world by some of our collective actions, we have made it possible for
more natural catastrophes to descend on us, but, again, not evil, as in
the devil causing such events
Guess that about covers it for me. I read the other posts and
they seem to have done a more in-depth discussion of this.
What is time?
This is such an interesting topic, and others have discussions that are
more logical and scientific than mine, but here is what came up while I
was thinking about spending my time here discussing this:
Time is mostly a construct of mankind. True, there are elements
of time that are part of the natural world, such as the various
seasons, the changing star patterns in the sky during certain parts of
the year. A day is divided into daytime, and night time, and can
even be divided further into forenoon and afternoon, by the climbing of
the sun in the sky to its apex, then descending to the other horizon.
Still, clocks were developed to help monks and priests tell when to
pray or sing a worship service. Eventually, although man
developed ways of breaking the day into hours to help make life easier
for him, time has taken over and made man its slave. Sometimes I
try to imagine a day, week, month, year, without keeping track of the
time, and it just boggles my mind. Since I am retired, I am not
so tied to the clock, but, still, it is hard to imagine living without
all the measurements of the hours of the day, etc.
Imagine being a Native American several hundred years ago. They
got up when the sun came up (or when it got light, if it was cloudy),
went about their lives - hunting for the men or the usual housekeeping
stuff for the women - and went to sleep when the sun went down. I
heard someone say that for all our "civilization," we have lost
something - our society as a whole, works more and has less leisure
than the Native Americans did all those years ago. The same can
be said of other, so-called primitive people. They know how to
enjoy life - do we?
This has been fun, but - time to go.
Peace.
P.S. This may be sneaky ( I truly don't mean to be) but I'd like it if
whoever reads this post would also read the one I posted yesterday -
I'd like to have some comments on it. Annie
|
| | Posted 8/14/2006 10:45 PM - 20 views - 9 comments
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