Freedom and Badness
Is badness a mental disease?
A surprising thing about the pandemic caused social lockdown is that many many stores in my neighborhood have boarded up their windows. A beautiful thing about that is that dozens of artists have taken to creating original artwork on the blank panels. As you can see, there are many artist's visions being presented for free for the locked down city to enjoy as they go out once a day for exercise and groceries. One woman's work struck me in particular. She's an excellent draughtswoman who works in black and white, The first work I saw of hers was this panel showing beautiful portraits of dogs. See the whitish patches? I realize now that those are places where her work was vandalized and she had to redo it. Then, down the street closer to my home she did this. One day it had been replaced with this: I contacted the store owner and found out that she'd taken the work home because it was being vandalized so much she couldn't finish it.
Huh!
I've seen that kind of vandalism a lot. People steal cans of spray paint and feel they can just muck up anything they want. I've even met people who think like that (in the course of other work). They claim to see nothing wrong with what they are doing. I've met people who smirkingly tell me that they are improving things. These days, as a philosopher in this relativistic age, I find I can't refute them. What is 'good' and what is 'bad' these days?
Well - it's becoming clear to me that you can't say that the physical change of the vandalism is good or bad. Paint is just paint. The impression we get from an image is just an impression. Who is to say which impression is good or bad - on what basis would we say?
I'm thinking that the badness isn't in the physical picture - it's in the brain of the vandal.
For whatever reason, that brain thinks the vandalism is a good thing to do.
The Doors put it this way once: (at a time when I was hitch-hiking a lot).
"There's a killer on the road
His brain is squirmin' like a toad
Take a long holiday
Let your children play
If you give this man a ride, sweet family will die
Killer on the road"
I once actually picked up a guy with a brain like that; fortunately he got out without focussing on me. I know they exist though.
Why is their evil like that in the world?
It's a particular problem for religions that propose a god that is all powerful, all knowing, and all loving who created everything that exists.
Why would such a being create evil?
The standard answer to that is (paraphrasing here) that god didn't create evil. God created free will and free means you can do anything - including being bad.
And there is a more subtle aspect to that: that being good is meaningless unless there is bad to contrast it with.
The unsubtle aspect of that is that you can't be proud of being good without sneering at those who are bad.
I have never seen the necessity of that dichotomy. Life is hard and complicated enough with dealing with brains that are squirming like a toad. If we were all good people, and by far the most of us are, we will still face huge challenges in keeping ourselves together amidst the hurley burey of our society - but do we really need bad people thrown into that mix?
I know what our world is like.
I know that it can generate intolerable stress that causes lots of mental damage.
I also know that due to genetic variation people are born with brains with a very wide range of capabilities and attitudes.
But also as we learn more and more about ourselves we are learning that lots of our behavior is a product of very particular brain structures.
For instance, wikipedia tells me that the fusiform face area is the area of the brain that recognizes faces. If that area is damaged for whatever reason the capacity to recognize faces is lost. Another area of the brain is responsible for a feeling of familiarity If that area is damaged but the fusiform face area is intact, the patient recognizes the face but thinks it's an imposter. (That's called Capgras Syndrome)
So - we might not be far from a time when a brain scan could reveal the brain structure that makes people think it's a good idea to vandalize other people's work. Once we have that capacity we might be able to just change that area and the desire to vandalize would just vanish. Should we do that if we can? I sure don't recommend rushing into that. I've known people who are severely bipolar and their symptoms are relieved by Lithium. And while that alleviates their symptoms it has side effects like destroying the will and the ability to make pictures. And they struggle with which is worse.
The brain is a very complex and multi-dimensional system that has grown to it's present state. You can't just change one part (like changing a tire on a car) without cascading changes happening throughout the brain and body and even the set of social relations we are all involved in. But what if the time comes when we understand that system well enough to make those kinds of changes.
Should we or shouldn't we?
Why or why not?
What do you think?
I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life.
I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it.
Each week I write a short essay to set the topic.
I show a selection of them here.