[ExI] Worst ever

Stuart LaForge avant at sollegro.com
Thu Aug 13 20:57:24 UTC 2020


Quoting John Clark:

On Thu, Aug 13, 2020 at 3:11 PM Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat  
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>> whenever someone is called "evil" these days, it is almost always  
>> politically-motivated hyperbole.

> If you believe the word "evil" can never be properly used in the  
> sentence, as it appears you do, does that mean you think the word  
> should be abolished from the English language as Orwell abolished  
> words in Newspeak in 1984? Newspeak dictionaries got smaller each  
> year, should the same thing happen for English dictionaries?

No, I don't think the word "evil" should be abolished. It serves a  
distinct purpose. I don't mean it is an improper word so much as it  
should be understood in the relative context of who is using to  
describe whom or what. Other similarly relative terms are the words  
good and bad. All these words are evaluated relative to the self and  
any coalitions and ideologies one may adhere to. Ergo what is good for  
the wolves is often bad for the sheep. And what is good for you is  
about whether you prefer the wolves or the sheep.

At the end of the day, it is all just a conflict of interests in a  
multidimensional space of values and any direction on any axis can be  
called evil if politically convenient for the speaker at the time.

Stuart LaForge





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