Before I begin, please note that this is all purely speculative... Nothing better than mental gymnastics in the morning (especially when you can hardly move physically)

Here goes:

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke, Irish orator, philosopher, & politician (1729 - 1797)

An interesting statement to say the least. I believe that this quote has been used over and over by an international organization in the area (could it be UNICEF? I think I saw it on a friend's professional mail the other day). The question that comes to my mind when I hear this quote is "how can you tell what is good from what is evil?"

Is this a silly question? Well, let's consider the following: 'good' is conforming to the natural, as well as to the morals dictated by God (whether it be Jehovah, Allah, Ganesh...) One must also factor balance in the equation, because sometimes what is considered as 'good' goes against our nature and sometimes morally sound actions can be 'bad' when taken too far. Nature, morality, balance. Three pillars that hold up a potential candidate for a 'Moral System'. Consider the moral system as a table with extensible legs: the table can be functional even though the legs aren't quite the same length, but the closer the legs are to being the same length, the better it is.

Let's now test the system using a the following example.


Killing involves one or several entities which cause death, to themselves or to other entities. Manslaughter, survival, suicide, murder, war, you name it. How do you differentiate? To some, it's all the same because the end result is the same; to others, each of the different death-inducing categories are unique because the purpose and context of each is different. For argument's sake, let's define the situation to be considered as "X kills Y deliberately, for the purpose of Z". X can be a human or animal or plant; Y is a different human, animal or plant (yes, a plant. Haven't you heard of carnivorous plants before?); Z is a purpose, honorable or not, selfish or selfless.

a) A human kills a plant for food -> good, because it's natural, moral, and non-excessive. ==> good
b) A human kills an entire crop for money -> could be considered as natural to the human species(you make money so that you can provide for your family), moral, non-excessive. ==> good
c) A human hunting and killing a single animal at this day an age -> natural, less moral, non excessive ==> good

This last one proves difficult; it is natural for predators to hunt their prey, and humans are no exception. Though we strive to rise above other species using our superior intellect, we are nonetheless bound to the needs of all mammals, namely: eat, sleep, reproduction. Our bodies and minds are designed according to these needs; this is reflected in our predisposition to sleep at night, our sexual drive, our appetite, but also our predisposition to hunt. Domestic animals hunt, though they clearly do not need to. Though we consider ourselves smarter than the animals we chose as our companions, I believe we are still governed by that urge to hunt, which one can only consider as natural. There is, on the other hand, a balance to be struck here: a fundamental difference is to be noted between hunting by tracking prey and bringing it down alone using little more than a single implement, and hunting in packs of men and dogs, on horseback, to kill an animal which isn't eaten in the end. The former is hunting, the latter is plain old sadistic, cruel slaughter because there is absolutely nothing natural about any of it.

So there you have it: a moral system which, at first hand, seems to hold up... Though one could hardly affirm this to be the truth based on a single example. To be certain that this system holds up, you'd have to test a few hundred controversial examples with the determination of breaking the system... But I'm not going to do that. Besides, it's well after lunch time and I need to get my day going.

Ta!