Some people on RfM don't like the word "evil." BoJ ranks foremost among those either because he argues so persuasively or because he argues so much--a question whose answer, dear reader, I leave up to you.

Take, for example. this declaration: "I have a problem with the term evil because it drags in too much religious baggage that really isn't necessary." He admittedly hedged a bit this time around with his allusion to Mike Meyers comedy. But make no mistake, in his grumpier stay-off-my-lawn moments BoJ can be downright stentorian in his denunciations of the word "evil."

To be clear, I am one who uses the word evil fairly frequently because I believe there are no other words that suffice to describe certain forms of misbehavior. Was Hitler "bad?" Was he "cruel? Was he "criminal?" Or, heaven forefend, was he "lacking in virtue?"

I propose that none of those formulations do Herr Hitler credit. And what of the man who is suspected of killing those women on Long Island? What of Ted Bundy? Charles Manson? Stalin? Pol Pot? Mr. Bean? What word besides "evil" adequately captures their character and accomplishments?

Don't get me wrong: I'm as agnostic as the next woman in the tanning salon. But may we not adopt the word "evil" simply because there is no adequate substitute? Cannot we treat the word like an old religious term--"holiday," for instance--that is now fully secularized?

I propose that we may and should insofar as that which is truly evil should not be confused with lesser forms of malicious, criminal, or immoral behavior. Either that, or we should come up with a new term that is up to the job.

BoJ, the floor is yours. What word do you prefer?

I agree with BoJ but I still use the word evil. I don't like that it has religious connotations.

How about Naughty or Injurious?

If we are making up a word, I think it should include of a form of scammy in some way. Maybe barscamaric. But hey, I don't spend a lot of time at the tanning salon.

Well, scamoriffic might work although. . . I was hoping to save that for this year's trunk-or-treat at the local ward house.

The word with religious connotations that I don't like is "sin." The word "evil" seems religiously neutral to me.

That makes sense to me.

I agree. The word sin is very entwined with religious belief

The word evil has more of a moral or ethical connotation that a religious one.

People who do evil are icky.

Don’t be icky.

"Don't be evil" -- some billionaire

Since the beginning of time, humans have done things selfishly that hurt others. At some point someone came up with a word for this. The original word probably wasn't evil but it is what we have to work with now.

Like what did people use to say instead of Goddammmmit before God was invented? Language is fun.

Treachery may be a good word. My guess is evil came along before religion and religion just found it useful to make the work "evil" their very own. I call this "Joseph Smithing"--another word for religious co-opting for the purpose of scamulous control of others.

I like evil for anything at all. I don't like word sin because it is strictly an insinuation that there really is a God, like for sure, and by accepting the word sin as legitimate you are agreeing.

Wicked. I like wicked. Still religious but still has some style. And in many circles nowadays wicked is a positive. Like Bad now means good. Semantics. Where would religion, and rap, be without it?

Done & Done Wrote:
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> I call this "Joseph Smithing"

Haha. Love it.


> ...in many circles nowadays
> wicked is a positive. Like Bad now means good.
> Semantics. Where would religion, and rap, be
> without it?

This too. It's fascinating to note how language evolves. I'm always left wondering, though, how come everybody else got the memo about the Big Change except me. Because it seems as though a new connotation or shade of meaning is born overnight and everybody else is instantly onboard except for me. Tending to be quite literal, I am often flummoxed by the seemingly sudden variation which crops up that everyone understands and I'm left with a furrowed brow trying to parse a comment that clangs to me (if taken literally, i.e. the "old way"). How did it get to be the old way is what I often puzzle over.

Who first decides that bad now = good and then how does everybody else get on the right train with it I always wonder. And sure enough, I'm always the one left on the platform haplessly running along behind, smoke blowing in my face.

You have to pay attention I find. But the mechanism of it still eludes me. It's fun though, observing the process and analyzing it. Switching to using it also takes me time, if ever. I'm not known for spouting rap lyrics in any case. (Big surprise eh?!)

The best compliment you can give something now is to say, "That is really sick!"

Just so you know . . .

Done & Done Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The best compliment you can give something now is
> to say, "That is really sick!"
>
> Just so you know . . .

Yeah, that one took me a long while to work out.

As a nurse, I could never comprehend it as a compliment and definitely can't adopt it.

Intriguing how a word can come to morph into its own complete opposite.

For those who prefer to freight the word evil with connotations of opposition to that which is “godly” may I suggest demonic.
Kinda like those who insist that marriage is of divine origin I suggest they use the term “holy matrimony” and leave the neutral term “marriage” for the rest of us.

Maybe we could just spell evil backwards and that would do the trick. Makes perfect sense to someone, but not necessarily me.

Now you sound like EOD. Psychotherapy would be appropriate.

I think psychoplasty might do me better.

Or do you mean psychotherapy like physical therapy? You know, where they help learn how to be psycho again after losing the ability? That just might work!

Stentorian? I have no idea what a stentor even is, though the ‘or’ makes me think it is probably Latin-based.

I don’t care for the term evil, but yeah, I can’t think of a better term for Hitler. Murderous megalomaniac sociopath is in the ballpark too, but ‘evil’ is a lot shorter and more effective.

Evil tends to be so over-the-top that it gets mocked, as in Dr Evil, and the Google motto, which is a bit tongue in cheek. Partisan hacks like to throw the term around when discussing their opposition.

Not a fan of ‘sin’ for the same reason other people have given. Unethical, immoral, criminal are all more focused substitutes IMO, though they are more trouble to type.

Also not a fan of abomination, though I make an exception for pineapple pizza, which is edible enough, but it is no longer pizza. There are rules, dammit.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/17/2023 04:23PM by Brother Of Jerry.

>> Also not a fan of abomination, though I make an exception for pineapple pizza <<

Depends on where you're from. Don't even get me started on green olives on pizza!

Now as for pineapple? I think that falls into the "Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively" category as spoken by the Dalai Lama.

And who named that fruit? It doesn't grow on a pine tree and it isn't an apple! Talk about breaking rules!

Notice BoJ didn't deny the hookers and doing blow off'n their tummies?

I noticed that. Plausible deniability perhaps?

Agreed.

"Sin" and "abomination" are excessively religious. Does nature "abominate" anything other perhaps than an especially minacious snowman?

But "evil" has its place for the sole reason that there is in English, and in the other languages with which I am familiar, no word that conveys the extreme depravity of some actions. "Atrocity" may come close but "atrocious" sounds too much like something my grandmother would have said about a bad desert.

As for pineapple pizza--or, for that matter, hookers 'n blow--I have no choice but to defer to the greater experience and judgment of Jesus and Roy.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> something my grandmother would have said about a
> bad desert.

What is the difference between a good desert and a bad one I wonder. Too much water in the latter? :P


> As for pineapple pizza--or, for that matter,
> hookers 'n blow--I have no choice but to defer to
> the greater experience and judgment of Jesus and
> Roy.

What is the sudden problem people are expressing re pineapple pizza? It's my favourite kind. Naturally. Love those crunchy little pineapple bites.

> What is the difference between a good desert and a
> bad one I wonder. Too much water in the latter?

Close. Lemme fix your spelling.

> What is the difference between a good desert and a
> bad one I wonder. Too much water in the latte?

Yes, that would definitely make desert less desirable.


------------------
> What is the sudden problem people are expressing
> re pineapple pizza? It's my favourite kind.

I would not turn up my nose at a slice of Maui Wowie but what would I know? My ancestors didn't come from Italy like those of the not-entirely-evil BoJ.

I do, however, like croutons in my Caesar Salad as I may have admitted on one or two earlier occasions.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
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> I do, however, like croutons in my Caesar Salad

I detest croutons, though love the salad.

I note that restaurants these days are overloading the plate with croutons to save money on ??lettuce?? And I have to get out my magnifying glass to find the Parmesan.

Damn Covid. Nothing's been the same since.

Whether by accident, choice or necessity.

OK, several points not really related to the thread:

Pineapple is a weird name. Grapefruit is even worse.

The Portuguese word for pineapple is abacaxi (ah-bak'-a-shi) and also serves the same purpose as the word lemon does in English to describe a piece-of-junk product.

I grew up in a town that was about a third Italian, maybe more, and recent arrivals at that - most of my friends grandparents had been in the US 30 to 40 years when I was young. Nearly everybody I went to school with was second generation American.

There was even a pizza place called "Moroni's Pizza". The i had an "ee" sound, but the Mormon kids (both of us) still made jokes.

But, more to the point of my story, there were precisely three types of pizza - cheese, which had tomato sauce underneath, and is now called Margarita pizza and they throw a basil leaf on top now. Woo Hoo. That was far and away the most common pizza.

Pepperoni pizza existed, but I don't recall it as being a big seller.

On Friday nights only, some places did "white pizza", cheese and olive oil only, no tomato sauce. I have no idea why they only did it on Fridays, and they only did so much, so usually before the end of the night they ran out.

The pizzas weren't even round. They were baked in half size rectangular sheet pans. When the local high school kids descended on a pizza place after a football or basketball game, we ordered four or five trays to start, and 20 cokes.

Anyway, that was pizza and anything else would get mocked the same way Harley riders mock Japanese motorcycles. I'm not even sure pineapple pizza would even get mocked. Eggsy Catalano might actually smack somebody who asked for that. It wasn't even a concept back then.

Hey, Lot's Wife - which "desert" did your grandmother consider atrocious? The Sahara? The Mojave? The Kolahari?

Now if she was actually speaking about a "dessert", may I suggest the one made from lime jello and cream cheese?

D’oh!

I never noticed before, but evil spelled backwards is live.

I sometimes use the word evil. Just the other day I referred to someone as an evil bitch.

The word evil has kind of a medieval ring to it, which I like. Same with the word wicked. A Grimm's fairy tale wouldn't be a Grimm's fairy tale without evil, wicked stepmothers and witches.

. . . makes everything taste better.

Have you ever noticed that the best English words come from Germanic languages? Salient here would be a reference to "f**k," which is much rougher, even saltier, than those airy-fairy derivatives of French and Latin. Short, monosyllabic, begun and ended with consonants, guttural: aye, that's the stuff!

"Evil" too fits the Germanic pattern. An Anglo-Saxon term, clipped, brutal, unambiguous. It turns out, furthermore, that in old English there wasn't much religion to it. The word meant "extreme moral wickedness." Isn't that the usage for which we have been searching with regard to Hitler and others like him? Somehow the religious overlay came later; it is a modern perversion, like EOD's hookers and coke although arguably more philosophical.

An interesting detour arises when one discovers that "evil" goes even farther back, past Christianity and those quaint Germans to proto-Indo-European, showing up along the way in various guises in early Farsi, Sanskrit, and Hittite. This is bad news for your correspondent's theory that all the good English words come from German and not the Latinate languages, for are not those two categories sisters (if you are Germanic) or fraternal (if you are French)? And does that not mean the origins of the two lexicons are similar if not identical?

The answer, I venture, is that the basic words, roots, sources, were shared across the Indo-European ecumene but that they later diverged under the influence of the intervening cultures. So the Latinate words gradually assumed a gentler and more amorous tone--the language of the boudoir, if you will--while the Germanic peoples favored a rougher set of terms more appropriate to a barroom brawl. If that is so, perhaps we can judge a person's character by the relative frequency of Germanic and Latinate words in his or her active vocabulary--a sort of linguistic Briggs-Meyers test.

Speaking of which, where is Soft Machine, Germanic by birth but French by choice?

Anyone know if he's okay?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/18/2023 04:01AM by Lot's Wife.

It’s August which is holiday month in France, so he is probably gallivanting around southern France.

I had the idea that SM was British by birth?

Whichever it is, yeah, he's very likely lollygagging as we speak.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/18/2023 01:49PM by Nightingale.

Yes, he is British.

I was characterizing him by the fact that, English, his native language is Germanic--most closely related to Saxon and Frisian--with an overlay of Latinate vocabulary.

Oh. Whoosh. Thanks for explaining for those in the cheap seats. :P

I enjoyed your discussion above. I love dissecting language and origins although am sadly unversed in the intricate details.

My analysis tends to be more superficial these days, such as would someone PLEASE tell me why suddenly the entire world is saying "I don't know whether or not you understand me, or not." The second 'or not' is completely redundant and yet the most learned of people have picked up this bad habit that is seriously bugging me. And yes, I know how privileged I am that this is my pet beef du jour. Meanwhile, as we speak, tragedy descends all over the globe in various unfortunate places.

Including here in Canada where people in The Northwest Territories (in the capital city of Yellowknife at Great Slave Lake) are being evac'd due to wildfires.

So I'll shut up about whether or not, or not, at least for today.

Yes. The annoying thing is, is when people add superfluous words, or not!

Kelowna, full of well-to-do tourists, is also being evacuated.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/18/2023 06:19PM by Brother Of Jerry.

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Kelowna, full of well-to-do tourists, is also
> being evacuated.

Yes, I've been checking news every hour. I have friends up country. We've been mostly talking about the excessive heat this summer but lately it's turned into more and more frequent mentions of smoke and wildfires. We've lost four firefighters this season so far. One news outlet has called this year's blazes "violent and seemingly untamable".

Today the West Kelowna fire chief said during a briefing about the McDougall Creek fire: "Somebody described it to me, in the heat of the battle, like 100 years of firefighting all at once in one night. I really think that it was true.”

Imagine everybody fleeing but because of your job you're staying behind.

Their major efforts and dedication were rewarded as many homes as well as "...critical infrastructure in the Rose Valley neighborhood" were saved.

"That includes the fire hall, the school, the dam, and most significantly, the new Rose Valley Water Treatment Plant, a $75 million asset that is about to be turned on".

When the chief is on the line with you, you know you've got a blaze going.

BoJ, you no doubt know that southern Manitoba is under extreme threat.

So too are the NW Territories, particularly the capital Yellowknife. There's only one road out of that city and there are fires burning on both sides of it. They started their evac process well ahead yet some people have let the deadline to leave come and go and still they stay put. Now they're beginning to understand they better get out.

Many First Nations groups have lost their precious land and much more is threatened.

Armed Forces are providing flights out of various areas.

The UBC Okanagan campus is being evac'd now.

They've just announced that the Premier of BC is likely going to announce a state of emergency province-wide tonight. I don't know if I've ever heard of that before in my life.

One evacuee just said on the news that "we sat in our cars last night and watched our neighbourhood burn". He said it was only 20 minutes from the time they noticed the fire encroaching until they had to scramble to get out.

Just the massively scary word 'wildfire' evokes much fear - I'm terribly afraid of fire. It's easy to feel safe here in the big city by a huge body of water but this world certainly teaches us to never be surprised by the unprecedented.


Sorry for the wide diversion on your thread, Lot's Wife. Sometimes something in life comes along and consumes everything. In this case, so unfortunately, literally.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/18/2023 08:22PM by Nightingale.

I'm watching too. I hope everyone can get flights out.
These fires are absolutely heartbreaking.

Hey, no worries at all.

If I cared enough, I'd start a second page. But you should never worry about derailing an inveterate derailer's thread.

On your topic, I can't imagine how horrible it is for people who by dint of geography and climate never had to worry about wildfires suddenly to experience the phenomenon. There's no way their dwellings, yards, and property are prepared for these serial holocausts.

So. . . yeah.

I've got family in Rutland, north Kelowna...they were still ok mid afternoon...hope they're ok now. Lots of offers online for Yellowknife evacuees.

The fire crisis in BC and NWT popped up pretty suddenly. I was not aware Manitoba was also in a dangerous situation. I am planning to drive there in five weeks. Yikes.


And in other news, hurricane Hilary off the coast of west Mexico is a strong category 4 storm, over 80 degree water. It is expected to weaken significantly as it approaches the 70 degree water off the California coast.

I bring this up because I don’t believe there has been a major Gulf of Mexico hurricane yet this year, and the water there is 90+ degrees. That’s enough heat to generate a really ferocious storm. I said earlier in the year that Florida is one major storm away from a collapse of the real estate insurance industry. All the ducks are in a row for just such a storm.

There may not be a hurricane there, and it may not hit Florida if there is a storm, but I’d be nervous if I lived there.

Yeah, aren’t I just a <bleeping> ray of sunshine.

I mentioned that there has not been a storm in the Gulf because hurricanes draw a huge amount of heat out of the water. It takes a lot of energy to evaporate a few hundred billion tons of water and throw it 30,000 feet into the air. That bleeds down the energy for the next storm.

Very little has been bleeding down the energy in the Gulf of Mexico.

"Who are the Zapatistas?"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/19/2023 06:25PM by Lot's Wife.

I'm sorry, I've been on holiday, in Brittany and then in the UK, and using RfM on my phone is... tiresome. Hope you're all well ;-)

You went on holiday without forewarning us? Curses!

I hope your conscience didn't bother you.

;-)

I didn't even get a post card! Hmph.

Neither did I, gosh darn it!

I would, however, be mollified if I were to get a T-shirt.

You can have my new T-shirt which reads:

"I think, therefore I am
(not a Brexit supporter"

I LOVE THAT!

I can think of a North American equivalent but wearing it might get me shot.

So Brexit it is!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/20/2023 04:12AM by Lot's Wife.

It depends on whether one uses the term "evil" as descriptive or defining.

Descriptive.
"Putting pineapple on a pizza is evil".
"She gave him the evil eye."
"That was an evil thing to do."
No religious connotation.

Defining.
"Satan introduced evil."
"The evil forces are at work in today's world."
"I felt the presence of evil in that room."
Clear Religious connotation.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/19/2023 08:59AM by Twinker.