does it matter whether or not we actually perform acts of evil or just really want to?

who is worse, the man who lives out his twisted dreams or he who hordes it because it would mean his destruction?

i have thought the same things as well......if you live out your evils, then you are at least alive (i think existentialism might fit here).....if you only fantasize, then you are restricking your life, damaging your life, in fact, you are killing it.....however, where is the line between fantasy and reality? for example, person A never dreamt of hurting anyone in his life, but ends up killing his wife....person B has always dreamt of hurting people, vividly (such as myself) but has done nothing of the sort, nor ever will.....person C dreams of nothing but kills everything and anything.....person D fantasizes evils and acts them out.......itz kind of hard to decifer who is what

It certainly matters to the people those acts would affect.

guy who lives it out

...what kinda logic are you usin there?

The line between fantasy and reality is between what actually happens and what doesn't. You're example doesn't conflict with that.

i said what logic i was using......

i wasn't addressing conflict......i was merely asking which is which.....erran asked which was worse....i don't know.....you say that the difference between fantasy and reality is what happens and what doesn't......thatz fine....but what i'm asking, is like erran, which is worse.......where does the evil lie? someone who fantasizes about evil might be worse than someone who kills someone....then again he might not.....how do we evaluate which is worse?

I don't think I agree with your logic then.

I'd say evil lies in the action. Imagining pain and experiencing it are two different things.

you don't have to agree with my logic....and isn't my logic....i was merely refering to existensialism......are you familiar with this concept? accordingly, it would seem to me, not acting out your desires (or, not following fate) is doing a dis-service to "your humanity"................evil doesn't necessarily lie in action.......we can understand and interpret evil without acting on it......if evil necessarily lies in action, then only those who act on these evils (which are themselves, thoughts and imagery before the physical action) know of evil.....the rest of us know nothing of it, and hence are not right to judge those who do act out.......

I'll agree with that. However, if it's a 'which is worse' scenario we're talking about, clearly the most profound evil lies in action.

does it? on who? the evil in action would be an evil amongs another.....but the evil in fanatsy, and the man who does so desperately wish to do evil, yet doesn't, is obviously just as damaging......maybe more so? he damages himself, does evil to himself.......the other does damage to others, evil to others.......then again, the other also is doing evil to himself.....but the man who does evil to himself suffers from a death much like suicide.....except it's a suicide of his own humanity, his own existence......

Come on, no one really wants to be evil. Evil people are rare lunatics and fiction. Most people want to be moral, most people want to do what is right. And by most, I mean all but little bitty margin. Those people are not innately bad, either, just tricked by poor circumstance into believing that there is no good.

i want to be evil.....i do, seriously.....i wish, and fear, that i might kill a dozen or so people.......some do wish to be evil.....but then again, what is evil?

The fact that you're afraid of it and that you haven't yet done it shows that you are inclined towards good more than evil. Humans are the moral creature. Birds fly, wolves hunt, humans are moral. Even though we don't all have good sense or good reason to make moral decisions, we all innately want to.

true......but i still gotta agree with nietzsche that morality is a) nothing more than what we say, it changes periodically, whatz moral today won't be moral tomorrow; and b) morality takes away our basic humanistic/animal freedoms, our ability to just be, and weighs us down, keeping us captive in a society (societies) which is nothing more than another name for "ownership".....there truly is no thing called society and nor should there be......like thoreau tells us, we should strip ourselves from our "free" security and return to the woods, naked and hungry for life

Bullshit.

It's like Ghandi said, that individuals tend to be good and groups tend to be evil. You know what is right and wrong. You know. Think for two minutes and a dozen things will pop into your mind. Your whole life, you've been looking for ways to be good, opportunities to make the right decision. Evil comes into play when we get tricked. Tricked by our friends, by society, by people Nietzsche would call slaves. And God only knows how long this world of deception goes back, but it is that we are tricked into believing that things we once knew to be right are not.

okay, so fine, individuals are inherently good and society is bad........but does that still mean that no individual desires evil? or a society for that matter?

Every individual desires evil, but the desire for good outweighs it. "Society" is the collective waste dump tool for satisfying our evil wants.

okay........so you are saying that desiring evil is nothing really, has no reprecussions whatsoever.....the man who creates evils is, however, a very distraught fellow.....thatz your argument then?

Everyone will do a few evil things now and then. The man who desires to always do evil things is rare and absolutely nuts.

that sounds iffy... and how did you arrive at this conclusion?

Which part of it?