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Pale Criminal: the Story of a Notorious Abomination Therefore, it will not be odd or perverse to add another paradox to a tradition in which paradoxes play a prominent role. Shifting our attention from a problem of evil to a paradox of evil will not diminish the suffering of humanity nor play Metaphysical games with reality. Nor will the approach I propose result in “perverse” and “fallacious” arguments or results. When those who are suffering ask us why they suffer, we can be silent and hold them and be present with them. We need not strain for some explanation or try to espouse some theodicy or defense. Our quest here involves exploring those questions but from the opposite direction by asking why is there good Thus in our focus on the good , we are not asking why is a screwdriver a good tool, or why does a hybrid car achieve good gas mileage, or why does cotton make a good fabric. Those are functional and utilitarian senses of good , not good in the sense of uplifting the human spirit, or fulfilling human goals, or advancing the human intellect. Here we aim to juxtapose our angst over the horror of evil , with an equally weighty consideration of why there is good If man is the creator of his own reality through choice, then all that is created must be accepted. In denial, one would in fact deny existence. To deny self is to deny existence. Therefore, to choose, one must have existence and that existence must be reality, even if it exists only in the moment of thought. Man must accept the reality which he creates, and to deny that reality or the outcome of that reality fife loses all meaning. What results then is man's categories of good and evil based upon the premise that it is one's choice that creates the existence of this polarity. This form of pacifism is self-defeating in some respects. If by definition Good people are so pacifistic, and everyone else is Evil by the nature of non-pacifistic choices and acts, the consequence is that Evil people inherit the Earth. Even so, this is consistent with the self-determination principle of Metaphysical moral caution by prohibiting behavior that interferes with others' moral self-determination. From a practical perspective, however, metaphysical moral caution itself suggests that anyone who does not truly believe a pacifistic metaphysical moral view should be free to act in some way to protect Good from Evil. There is still another aspect that I haven’t yet included that is quite important. This is time Until now, the judgements I have considered stretch across an undefined range of time. There is a problem in attempting to ascribe unchanging labels to ever-changing individuals. Answer (D) allows more flexibility when taking this into account. If individuals are both good and evil, the way we measure morality can now be measured in the form of a scale. Instead of a mere binary understanding of good or evil, we can ask how good and how evil individuals are. read more
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