Yes, I understand the scope and degree of harmful actions is your criteria for evaluating evil.

If you consider the above perspective it illuminates your own deeply ingrained narcissism: implied is that your judgement depends on how it affects YOU or your COUNTRYMEN, not how stealth-evil affects people beyond your kin and concern.

For example, a sweet little old Korean ajima may be a completely amoral creature, but since she has no power to nuke an American city — you see a low degree of evil.

But, you could care less how she is abusively smothering and emotionally incesting her first born son, out of resentment and frustration from the emotional abandonement of her Korean husband who frequents the brothels.

You could care less the Korean son absorbs his mother’s ethic of amoral opportunism re-inforced throughout Korean society on a pandemic scale. You see no evil in the resulting mutual abuse, fraud, and exploitation rotting the core of Korean society.

It ain’t evil according to you, because you don’t see it, and doesn’t affect you — directly (Korean evil, however, does have its butterfly-effect on the world). This tolerance of yours is an example of your own intrinsic evil — indifference.

Western Christianity, however, reveals there is an impartial judge that sees the totality of evil — and does make judgement because of its ultimate offensiveness.

Your blinkered evaluation of what is evil or not — is essentially irrelevant because it is skewed by your own self-interested need to “not see”. Eg. you must “count” every ajima with extensive anthropological studies before making a positive judgement. May I respectfully call you –a weenie.

Now, Buddhism negates human “desire” as an attempt to provide a higher value desired by the human will — peace through stillness and resignation. This attempt to eliminate suffering, however, is still a subtle willfulness unsubmitted to a transcendent God-ideal. The result is an ersatz compassion based on human narcissism. The Buddhist is just as willful as the a Mafia gangster — just more subtle.

Neo-Confucianism will never be critiqued by academics because the post-modern project is exclusively dedicated to the eradication of human submission to a transcendent god-ideal. Western Christianity is the great obstacle to reconstructing a global religion to usher in global governance.

You will find Confucianism lionized in the future for its ethos of communitarianism which exalts the community over the individual — a necessary foundation for global socialism.

This is the religion GI is willing to fight for — apparently you too. Am I off base?

Just as my belief in the goodness of an individual is pointless since man is a communal animal, so is peering into the heart of the individual or the individual society — when what counts — what seperates the average grandmother from Hitler — are the scope of their actions?

Which is in the neighborhood of why I would not say South Korean society is on par with Haiti or some of the Muslim states of today.

On the idea of the mitigation of evil by Western Christian ethos you mentioned reminds me of one of the things I find somewhat annoying in Western acadmia’s look at Confucianism. Without a doubt, neo-Confucianism has some nice thoughts, and I’d point to them in response to your notes on shamanism as a foundation for Korea’s social aspects, but I keep wondering why Western higher education doesn’t seem inclined to point out the negative aspects of how neo-Confucianism was used at different times in far eastern social history —— why they don’t look for the negatives as they do with events in Christianity in western medieval history?

“Even Buddhism is an attempt to spiritually “empower” oneself to obtain the exclusive satisfaction of the human will.”

I thought the general idea in Buddhism was the negation of the human will as well as objective and subjective reality?

As for my narcissism in myself, I have no problem admitting it, but I would tend to push the coversation toward the idea of degree.

Whatever the collective reasons, I don’t see South Korean society as seeming so bad — not as bad as other nations I would point out - like Haiti or Pakistan or North Korea…

USinKorea,

I quote you: “I even extend this type of thought to basics in my own pseudo-intellectual way. Such as the reality of mathmatics —- down to simple counting — or the creation of single words. Like “tree”.

Yes, your style gridlocks your ability to make a generalized statement about anything complex (very convenient way to hide from reality): you apparently must count every raindrop before you feel confident to declare — it’s raining.

When I see the predominance of raindrops — I take a bold and reckless leap and say the obvious — it’s raining cats and dogs.

About Korea: Did you know evil comes in mediocre and even positive appearing forms? A sweet charming face can hide a heart of murder, and many sweet old grandmothers — if empowered — would make Hitler look like Mother Teresa. You must look behind the appearances to the quality of the human heart. You really must get more sophisticated in your world outlook.

You say the individual considered in isolation is innately good. Why make this statement when even you admit the point is irrelevant: man is a group-based primate — he is a social creature whose quality of morality must be part of the equation when considering human nature.

Every animal is wired with a survival instinct: this instinct when extended into human consciousness expresses itself as a desperate desire to justify itself as “the” object of primary value — what is called self-esteem or negatively — selfishness: this being the source of ambition, the craving for status, the motive behind Korean nationalism and anti-USFK sentiment, and the underlying true motive behind the supposed struggle for limited resources — creating the clashes of civilizations.

The natural ethos of the individual: self-advancement at the expense of others: some of us hide this ethos with extreme subtlety appearing like saints on the outside.

Western Christianity mitigates this necessary — but irrational — selfish instinct through idealism: promoting an otherworldly identification and loyalty to a God-ideal — thus, creating a morality motivated by love. This underlying orientation still haunts Western civilization — despite its gradual fading.

Asian cultures rely on a shamanistic manipulation of invisble powers to provide for their needs and desires: the Asian standard for life is the survival and gratification of the human will above all other values. Even Buddhism is an attempt to spiritually “empower” oneself to obtain the exclusive satisfaction of the human will. There is no “THY WILL BE DONE” in the Asian religions. A transcendent God-ideal is not submitted to, but manipulated as a divine force, in the same manner as South Korea opportunistically manipulates USFK and the US government.

The individual, without personal submission to an abstract God ideal — is a rogue regime — a failed state — a sinner in Protestant terms.

But, since you personally can’t see the exquisite and subtle narcissism within yourself — you just don’t get it.

Therefore, South Korea doesn’t seem so bad — because you don’t seem so bad in your own eyes.

You can admit to that, can’t you?

I have made a semi-joke about it this way. “The Fall didn’t happen because Eve was a woman. The same thing would happened if she’d ben an Evan.”

If Cain had been the only one around and just tended his own garden, he’d never have gotten jealous enough to kill the other person - his brother Abel.

An individual might have built into the psyche core factors that lead to the evil found in greater society, but left to his own devices, I believe an individual would be basically good.

But, no man is an island, lone and whole unto himself. Everyman is a part of the whole. And there the problem begins, in my way of thinking.

On Korean society specifically, whatever the root socio-developmental causes of certain evils in Korean society today, in my opinion, they do not dominate South Korean society to the point that I would label South Korean society as a whole — the net sum — a “global parasite”.

I’m not against creating those kinds of labels. I just do not view, as I said, Korean society as on the same level as Haiti, and I wouldn’t put them in the level of negative category I would put many of the Muslim societies in the Middle East where currents of thought are in full support of such things as the bombings we saw today in London.

I would also caution against letting “academic think” get the best of you, Sally.

In intellectual and psuedo-intellectual discourse, the tendancies is to create great overarching theories to explain the whole of history or the whole of a society and such.

But, I believe the reality of human society (and even individual man) does not allow for neat packages of logical arguments.

These theories help us understand what we encounter in the real world, but it seems to me when we start getting into digging into the specifics of individual cases or events or aspect X, the theory starts to fray.

I even extend this type of thought to basics in my own pseudo-intellectual way. Such as the reality of mathmatics —- down to simple counting — or the creation of single words. Like “tree”.

The word “tree” helps us greatly in dealing with the objective reality of those things we call trees. And numbers help us count them.

But, no two trees are exactly the same. Not even the two of the same species growing side by side in the same. When we go from 1 to 2, we have already accepted that we are destorying the objective reality of the siuation. We are not counting two idential trees in composition, space, or time. There are no two identical anythings whatsoever. There never was nor will be two of anything. So what should we do? Throw out all language and mathmatics?

No. They help us not only understand the world but manipulate it to our advantage.

The same is much less true, even if there is value in some/many of them, when it comes to social theories.

So, while I might find some value in following along with a discussion of shamanism and idealism and eventually to self-survival and mafia instinct —— when I step back an assess the whole of Korean society from my personal experience as well as what I’ve learned about it and what I’ve learned about social theories — I do not reach a conclusion that it is an evil nation compared to most others.

I am not arguing for social equivalancy. I am not saying all or most societies are morally equivalent.

I am saying that I don’t find South Korea to be among the worst in the world today.

Your writing doesn’t come across as combative: you write clear and concise with an outlook that “slightly” deviates from the progressive outlook. That is where the mild resistance comes from.

Furthermore, your ability to question your own opinions indicates a lack of treacherous cunning only interested in preserving self-pride. A trait deserving the attribute: guiless.

Let me point out an inconsistancey, however, in your presuppositions. You say the collective is inherently prone towards an evil oppressiveness against the individual — yet, the individual is inherently good. I would like to point out to you that the collective is merely a sum of individuals: if each individual is inherently good — then the collective should also be prone to express this innate goodness. But, it doesn’t — and if you look behind the pretensions, you will see the intrinsic narcissism that pervades the human heart.

About the undertow of evil in Korean society: shamanism vitiates noble idealism that mitigates human narcissism, and reduces society to a cult of self-interested pragmatism with this guiding ethos: the survival and gratification of the in-group above all other principles.

The above ethos is that of the La Cosa Nostra — the Mafia. Any society exclusively guided by this principle is inherently evil — a sum of individual gangsters idealized as the Korean Minjok. Korea is a global parasite interested only in itself at the expense of others — not a good citizen of the world. You will find this pattern operates pandemically in individuals throughout the society of Korea.

GI looks at the giant tape worm and declares: “Yes, but the tape worm allows us to eat all we want — and stay thin!” GI is a “positive person”. I bet he likes to tell others he is a “people person”.

Something womanish about GI — probably a logistic or support soldier — maybe, a flute player in the Army band.

I liken our current government’s attitude toward defending the ROK to a patient husband who good-naturedly continues working and providing for his family despite being hen-pecked by a selfish and emasculating wife.

From what has been written so far, I would probably agree a good bit of the way on the more “academic” points about the nature of society in general, the state of man, the state of higher education in Western society and beyond, but I would still not be as far to an extreme.

When we get down to more specific things like GI Korea or GI Korea’s type, we part company more. I can see somethings like the multi-cultural need to extend and rationalize as a trend, but not a debilitating illness like the plague.

I also don’t agree with a thought like South Korean society is the same as Haiti.

I might conclude the US-SK geopolitical security relationship is fundamentally flawed and unfixable given the dynamics of South Korean society, but I would never call that society “evil” regardless of what I see as its fundamnetal anti-US nature. I don’t see South Korean society as any more evil than most others in the world.

Which is about where I am philosophically — I believe individual man is good but society is inherently evil and must be continually watched over, questioned, and refined to keep from degenerating.

And I would agree one the main foundations of much global anti-American thought is an unstated, implied idea that the most of the rest of the world is inherently good….

This was very much in evidence from the 1930s to the collapse of communism in the 1980s, but it has gotten more covert since the reality of Stalin and even other “people’s revolutions” in places like Central and South America have lost the luster influencial people in higher education and pop culture tried to fix on them.

As for me not having guile, I figure I probably come off sometimes on the net as a little combative and too critical, but I am just as critical of myself and my own opinions. I rake over my own thoughts periodically all the time and too often kick myself for misguided thought.

That is one reason why if you (the generic you) knew me better, you would know that I don’t often come out and say “I know without a doubt I am right about subject X” like I did this week on the subject of anti-US culture in South Korea.

And lastly, if we were sitting around a table talking about all this stuff, the way I say things, people wouldn’t consider the kind of language I use combative or too highly critical as they might sometimes come off in print on the net.

In Korean society you’ll generally find nihilism, pragmatism, materialism, mimicry, narcissism, deception, pretense, opportunism, parasitism, haughty conceit and decadence all in abundance. You will find no honor in Korea.

The above are social effects of a society undergirded by shamanism. A parallel society is Haiti. Haiti is a physical and spiritual pest-hole rightly called an “evil” society regardless of the many nice folks over there.

GI, you resist the premise of evil infecting the very fabric of a society — because you don’t believe in evil.

Also I do not agree with redistribution of wealth. The Live 8 concert was a joke. You could give a bunco of money to Africa and it won’t change anything. It will just increase corruption and put more money in the hands of dictators and warlords to fund more fighting.

Also Korea does not need time and education to mature as a society. What Korea needs is to provide their own defense. Once this happens a lot of issues USFK gets blamed for like keeping the country divided could not be blamed on USFK after we leave and nothing changes. I can guarantee you that nothing would change with USFK gone.

So you are definitely making some false generalizations and I just want to set the record straight.