Comment on If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, that means we've got an escape route
ultrahamster64@lemmy.world 2 days agoIntentions are all that matter!
No, not really. I can provide like a thousand examples, starting from dodo birds extinction and ending in wars and dictatorships, where the intentions were good, but incompetence, obliviousness, greed, stupidity or/and other factors made the results range from worst to catastrophic.
Also I’m pretty sure other cultures have some variation of it too. For example in slavic countries there is the saying “make a fool pray to good and he’s gonna hurt himself” which is highlighting similar issues
ArgumentativeMonotheist@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Greed is an “intention” though, and the dodo case is just an exception. People are competent enough to live and even “succeed” often despite their incompetence, as seen by history. Intentional wrongdoing, particularly while competent a la Henry Kissinger for instance, has always been the enemy, not incompetence benevolence. We’ve always been able to accommodate the latter, I think.
Regardless, I meant “all that matters” when it comes to living with oneself and facing God, but incompetence certainly makes things hard for us here.
seralth@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Greed isn’t an intention, it’s an attribute. You don’t really intend to go be greedy, you intend to go make money because of the greed. Sure a cartoon villain might intend to go be greedy because he’s Ebenezer Scrooge. But people aren’t generally speaking cartoons.
Attributes are the foundation that makes up the decision making that goes into willful intention.
But no one person is a singular thing, thus you literally cannot have an intention that is made up of only one attribute.
That desire to make money along with the greed of the person, is also going to be informed by things such as self preservation, hunger, thirst, desire for shelter, desire to help others, desire to hurt others, creativity, etc.
A person who makes wood cups enjoys the hobby, then sells the cups with the intention to make money to buy more wood. Then due to their greed that intention is compounded and they start a business and expand.
There is a reason the seven sins and virtues are as esoteric as they are. They are supposed to describe non-willful forces that drive people.