just wait and see

Early in Plato’s symposium it is suggested that a specific action in itself is neither good nor evil. But the context and intentions are what makes the action good or bad.

The interesting thing was that the action they were talking about, within today’s context, is always assumed to be evil.. an older man “loving” a young boy.

I guess this example shows a major cultural difference, but it did get me thinking.

What if every action shares this characteristic? What if no action in our world is inherently good or evil, but it is only when considered within a specific context that it becomes so.

So I thought through some of the things that are labelled as evil and tried to think of a context within which that they could be acceptable. To this I found it was particularly easy. Murder is acceptable for a soldier, there are wierd fetishes involving rape, robin hood was a hero for stealing…

I have heard somewhere with enough assumptions any action can be justified.

It is a wierd concept, that everything is dependent on the where and why aspects, and that universal truths don’t exist.

This is actually one of the reasons I hate watching the news. They strip the context out of every story to make it more entertaining.

Its just one of the reasons why you need to be careful about critiquing a situation using the “default” assumptions (Because these assumptions change a lot in different environments).