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Do you believe the universe has to balance out of good and evil? By that I mean when you do a lot of good do you sometimes feel that bad things happen for no reason? Is there such a thing as good people and bad people?
I posed this question to a few coworkers, do you think that natural disasters happen because of an imbalanced equation of good happening?
I have been thinking a lot lately about my life and realized that it seems the harder I try to do good, the more bad things that seem to happen to me. And the times I do bad stuff(morally not illegally) the better I feel. Is that weird to want to be a bad person because that is when I have felt the best in life?
What are your thoughts/experiences/feelings on this subject?
I don't believe in evil, but I believe in bad. I also believe in moderation.
But I also believe the goal of human behavior needs to err on the side of good and not bad. Bad should be something that needs to be avoided/learned from/turned into good. Doing bad should not be the end goal in itself.
This is all pragmatically speaking. If you do bad and it feels good inside, there will be, by virtue of a bad act, be outside consequences that will ultimately harm you. These ultimate outside harming feelings will (and should) be greater than the "good" you felt when you did bad.
Metaphysically, no, hurricanes and tornadoes don't happen because there's a disproportionate "good" (or bad) out there. Mother nature/God/whatever isn't punishing us for doing good or bad. It is what it is. We do good to experience an overall net positive for society. We do good because it is how we, as humans, want to be treated most of the time.
And in the end there is the human realm and the extended world. Not dualistic, but rather experiential, we exist and we try to get along. We are in control of our behaviors and others are in control of theirs. The wind will blow or not blow, regardless of our experience. Regardless of our not being here.
Though it sounds like the OP is currently suffering from just bad decision making and this isn't really a struggle of good/bad at all.
There is excellent explanation on this in Thinking and Destiny, by HW Percival. In a very very short statement, it's the deeds of few good that make universe still go round with their good deeds. You should not be much concerned with the way the world turns. You liable for yours. They - for theirs. Just life, moment by moment, without any attachment to the results of your actions and always acting upon the voice of your conscience, and you'l be fine. Eventually.
I would say that good and evil are subjective human concepts that do not directly impact the evolution of physical systems, and therefore I would be very surprised if there is some natural law implying the need for a balance between good and evil. There are, however, natural laws affecting order and disorder, so if there happens to be some sort of correlation between, say, order/disorder and human subjective feelings of good/evil then, in effect, it could feel as if there are laws regarding good and evil. I don’t really think that this is the case, but I can see how it might work.
The big question I've been asking in another thread is whether we can come up with a theory that relates (maybe in a way that could be mathematically modeled?) the phenomenological sensations and feelings of being alive with the particles and principles of physics. If we had a theory like that, then maybe we could understand how certain "laws of phenomenology" might mirror the laws of physics. When all is said and done, I think that the qualitative nature of our experiences do have physical meaning, and therefore our "feelings" do, in fact, play a role in guiding the evolution of physical reality. But even given this rather mystical view, I still don't think that good and evil need to be balanced. Pleasure and pain might need to be in some sort of balance, but pain is not always evil and pleasure is not always good, so strictly speaking this would not imply a good/evil balance.
Overall I think that there probably are some aspects of reality that "seek balance," but I don't think that good and evil are among these aspects. There could be a statistical average, or a "chaotic attractor" that gives us the impression of a balance between good and evil, but if this is the case, then in principle this attractor could shift if the elements change the nature of their interconnections. In other words, it might be possible to shift the attractor toward a stable point that is "more pleasurable" or "more loving" overall than it is now. This is what something like a change in "global consciousness" might achieve, without necessarily having to "pay for it" by greater suffering somewhere else. I believe that, overall, there can be a net decrease in suffering, and I think this possibility provides the foundation for morality.
First of all, the Universe doesn't care about good and evil. Like, if a planet of a star in a distant galaxy blows up, is that good or bad? Massive glaciers killed everything in sight, but formed the lakes in the upper midwest: Good or bad?
Second, good and evil are relative concepts, and are defined by the midpoint from which each one diverges, according to the interests of the sentient beings that define good and evil.
Third, good and evil are not always discernible at the time of the event, without knowing the ultimate consequences of the event. So even humans do not know, through observation, whether a human-arena occurrence is dominated by good or evil.
Do you believe the universe has to balance out of good and evil? By that I mean when you do a lot of good do you sometimes feel that bad things happen for no reason? Is there such a thing as good people and bad people?
I posed this question to a few coworkers, do you think that natural disasters happen because of an imbalanced equation of good happening?
I have been thinking a lot lately about my life and realized that it seems the harder I try to do good, the more bad things that seem to happen to me. And the times I do bad stuff(morally not illegally) the better I feel. Is that weird to want to be a bad person because that is when I have felt the best in life?
What are your thoughts/experiences/feelings on this subject?
I think that since we live in the world of relatives, the world of contrast, the bad exists as the other side of the coin.
There are always two sides of the coin. If someone finds something, that usually means someone else has lost it. If someone is happy, that usually means that someone else is unhappy (about this event).
For example, if someone has gotten a job, that means someone else did not. If someone has married a girl, someone else (who wanted her), did not. If someone has found money on the street, someone else has lost it. If a child is happy that he got into college, the parent is unhappy because now the child is leaving him/her and he will be missing the child.
On the subject of bad behavior:
Usually, when people feel good when they do bad things, it's because they are trying to lessen some sort of pain. Whatever bad thing they do lessens the pain they feel (caused by something else). And this break from pain, like a release, feels good.
It's not a good happy feeling in itself. It's just in contrast to pain it feels good (or better than pain).
It could be pain of loneliness, pain of emptiness, pain of boredom, pain of being insignificant, pain of depression, or other different kinds.
So what such people are doing is - trying to find a way to lessen their pain. Is that really bad? To try to lessen your pain?
It's not helpful to others, true. It's most of the time hurtful to others. So because of this, it's considered "bad".
But don't most people try to do things to make themselves happy and to lessen their pain? Isn't that the right of the person?
The better of us try to live in pain while allowing others to be happy. The weaker of us try to lessen our own pain while letting others live in theirs.
The unlucky ones, who keep getting into trouble by doing good things, have to start releasing themselves from pain by doing bad things. It's bad to hurt others. But sometimes I think that I wouldn't blame them because if I was in the same shoes, would I be so noble as to bear the pain and allow others to be happy? Or would I choose to lessen my own pain and thus cause others to be unhappy?
Third, good and evil are not always discernible at the time of the event, without knowing the ultimate consequences of the event.
I really like that thought.
Sometimes you fall in love and feel so lucky and so happy when the other agrees to marry you. Only to find out that this person is going to be abusive and it was the worst decision of your life. So in this case, it would have been better if this person refused to marry you. (But of course you wouldn't see that as good at the time when it happens)
I have experienced more evil than good in my life. It's sad, but honestly, being a good, generous person has never served me well.
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