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| Originally Posted by magprob Starman, haven't you or do you now know of someone that is really evil or wicked or greedy but still trick themselves into thinking that they are one of the best Christian folk walking this planet ? How can people lie to themselves and justify their negative traits into being ok? . |
I associated with that kind of people for a many years and was without an answer for a long time. But after three courses in psychology and three in philosophy I found that the following explanation answers the question to my satisfaction. It is based on the hedonistic school of philosophical thought which attributes most normal animal and human behavior to the seeking of tactile, gustatory, visual, auditory, or olfactory pleasure and avoidance of pain in the same areas. Looked at from that perspective the explanation is as follows:
Feeling bad with oneself causes psychological pain and all organisms flee from pain or try in one way or another to alleviate it. We burn ourselves we remove the hand. Eat sweets because it brings pleasure. Fleeing is one way. Destroying the source of the pain is another.
It works the same way with psychological or emotional pain. Lying to oneself or convincing oneself of being right via fallacious reasoning is one way. For example, a person feels psych pain because his neighbor is rich and he isn't and foresees pleasure possession of that land. Since taking land by force makes one a thief and generally causes cause psych pain trhe theft must be either given another name or else justified as a necessary good. Once the justification is found then no painful
condemnatory thoughts will interfere with the stealing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonism
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