Myers-Briggs

So I had this, shall I say, quite eventful conversation on the bus home from SUPERFUNHAPPYTUESDAY@macq, with none other than the great evil mastermind, Henry Su. Actually not a great evil mastermind, but an undetectible evil force Henry Su.

We were talking about the movie How To Train Your Dragon, and somehow it got to an argument that raged over the battlefields of such topics, starting with a discussion of what is considred good and what is bad.

Firstly, if Henry assassinated someone important, such as Einstein, would he have done a good thing? From a logical and Henry point of view he would have saved around 200,000 people from instant death or leukemia by eliminating the Nagasaki and Hiroshima devastation. However how many more people would he have condemned to death by removing the primary means of producing radioisotopes for use in medicine to detect cancers etc (yes, freaking POM chem lol), the nuclear reactor, by delaying scientific progress?

Then, to him, it would be to the benefit of mankind if we removed or did not bother about all the poverty-striken, the chronically or terminally sick, the disadvantaged. It would increase living standards for everyone else significantly. Genetic disorders would all but perish, millions gone into foreign aid and charity can be instead used to boost the healthy economies, corrupt and dysfunctional governments would collapse. He woud rather, in his words, "give a hundred dollars to one person than split it among a hundred people".  However in my view, the opportunity cost of that would be enormous- that is, what, at least 30% of the world's population gone. Take for example Nikola Tesla, who came from a Croatian (formerly Imperial Austrian) village with a population of around 400, who went on to change the world; or even e.g. Tsiolkovsky, without whose multi-stage rockets our understandign of space, gravity, etc. would be agreatly hindered (too much physics); or even Obama, whose peternal grandfather was even imprisoned and tortured - all of whom that would have been not given a chance to change the world if we simply ignored them and "lived and let die". Besides, it is just not right to not offer help. Humans are a social being,and this is, in my view, the main reason for our success as a species- we rely upon each other. But does not that priviledge also come with a responsibility to look after our fellow humans? It is just not a good thing to do.

Then what is a good thing? What makes a good person not a bad person? Henry argues that we are all bad people in that we either would help others, but only if we would not be compromised ourselves to a large extent, or we will simply ignore others - in essence, we are self-centered. All the "good" things, all the beneficial things to society (as we settled on our definition of a "good" thing), were done out of self-interest, for example to advance in one's career or to gain publicity. I disagree with that in that the world cannot be such a programmed, unfeeling, Matrix-style place that all actions are calculated - humans will certainly do things out of sympathy, go out of their way for love, self-sacrifice so that others may live happier lives. For ancient history people, Leonidas did not die for glory, his main motive was to buy time for the Greeks to assemble to meet the Persian army. For the modern historians, Mandela and Ghandi certainly endure their hardships so that they may have the chance to become famous. Even the fact that society is built such that, outside of crime, to advance an individual's standing in the world will require them to first advance society as a whole, whether it be through leadership, economics, science, or simply labour.

We both agree that no one is purely good - of course we all have "[our] own vampire, [our] own spirit let loose from the grave" in us, as Shelley (too much English!) points out, and the Bible reminds us. As Atwood says, we can almost use a grid, where there are those who do "good things for good reasons", "good things for bad reasons", "bad things for good reasons" and "bad things for bad reasons", and I agree with her in that the truly bad person is the lattermost of the four. While no one is perfect, the only "bad" people are those who do detrimental things to society (e.g. assassination, crime, enforce corrupt economic policies, cheat on partners), only out of selfishness, I believe is the only "bad" reason to do something.

Therefore while I cannot find logical faults with Henry's Malthusian perception of good and evil, I feel that it is often ethically and morally wrong, (and we Bladenstein/Frankenrunner people know all about moral responsibility, lol), but some of it does make sense.