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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6737724" data-attributes="member: 4937">See my previous post.  I'm at a bit of a disadvantage here, in that I have to describe both the fantasy world of D&D and also address various claims about morality in the real world.  This later is particularly hard because not only are those various claims often rooted in real world controversies that I neither have an inclination to discuss with the poster nor the ability to do so while abiding by board rules.You don't think vanity causes harm?  Did you read my essay on evil?  Wikipedia describes vanity as, "Vanity is the excessive belief in one's own abilities or attractiveness to others."  I basically defined evil as an impulse to misjudge a things worth.  Vanity is the original word used by the medieval to describe the chief of the seven deadly sins which is now more frequently translated as Pride.  If you don't think vanity is a destructive quality, I'm at a loss.  In my essay on evil, I didn't once mention murder or anything of the source.  Murder is just one of evils fouler fruits.  The things roots and nature are of a more ordinary and familiar form.That's not an unusual observation either.  I famous teacher of morality once said, and here I paraphrase a bit, "You think you are good because you don't murder people.  But I tell you that if you've ever slandered anyone or spoken angrily to them, that you are guilty like a murderer."If you prefer a less mystical and more scientific approach to the problem of human evil, then narcissism is considered one of the three indicators of a psychopathic personality.I don't think that is in the slightest bit obvious.  I'm inclined to think most philosophies that believe that there is such a thing as evil would reject that statement to at least some degree.  I would say that stealing to feed the poor is not necessarily, depending on the context, a very depraved act in that the person who did it would not appear to be very ruined by evil.   But most philosophies would still account it an evil act, but one which may have been the person's best choice if all other possibilities had been removed and you were given a choice between the evil of theft and the evil of letting another starve.  Only to affirm something as valuable as a human life could the evils of a theft be endured and excused.  I'm pretty sure that that's fairly well in line with what a Jewish Rabbi would say, but you'd have to ask one to be sure.  As for say Buddhism, the action would need to clear all eight hurdles of the noble eight-fold path, which means that at the very least the person would have to be correct that this was the only possible recourse, that it would have to been undertaken with only pure intentions, and that the person would have had to taken every pain to ensure that they had no other recourse.   I can imagine situations where the generosity, valor, and compassion of a theft far outshines its perfidy, but in the vast majority of cases I'd be inclined to think stealing the feed the poor is actually an evil act worthy of reproof.</blockquote>

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