Evil: Is it learned or are some people naturaly born evil?

SparkyTech · 08-06-2011 09:23PM #1

What are your thoughts on evil and how it comes across in a person. Is evil learned by our surroundings/parent/family influences etc? Or is evil something some people are inherently born with (IE disposed to elements of a sadistic/demonic personality)?. If tales like Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm and all the Wars around this earth over centuries past are anything to go by, I think everyone has the potential for some evil within them, but (thankfully!

) most people will never become fully blown evil in their lifetime. :cool:

kfallon · 08-06-2011 09:24PM

Everybody has done something evil in their life, whether it's just tripping up a friend when a child or something of Hitler proportions!

Guill · 08-06-2011 09:26PM

Evil is caused by something missing in a person.

Agricola · 08-06-2011 09:28PM

Guill wrote: »

Evil is caused by something missing in a person.

Yeah, God. That's where we're goin wrong I tells ya. Theres no good God fearin folk left no more.

AhSureTisGrand · 08-06-2011 09:29PM

Nobody is born evil just as nobody is born good. Some people are born with a greater tendency to develop into what we would call evil

Mark200 · 08-06-2011 09:30PM

It can be both something you're born with and in what environment you're brought up in. Different sizes of the different parts of your brain etc.

Tipsy McSwagger · 08-06-2011 09:30PM

Either,
1. Not enough love from their mother.
2. Too much love from their mother.

SeaFields · 08-06-2011 09:33PM

Wasnt there talk of an evil gene by scientists? They reckon people like ted bundy and the likes possessed it. Born evil.

B_Fanatic · 08-06-2011 09:33PM

Like most things the answers are not in the poll. If someone displays psychopathic behaviour I believe that there is something wrong with them mentally and they were born that way. Otherwise, if someone is just an evil asshole I think they developed that way during their childhood.

easyeason3 · 08-06-2011 09:35PM

I think people are born evil. Plenty of people have had a crap start in life & turned out to be sucessful, normal humans. Circumstances play a part alright but it's like there's a chemical imbalance in an evil person to make them what they are.

prinz · 08-06-2011 09:38PM

Mostly learned/caused by other people and environment, but sometimes it's the result of chemical imbalances etc you are born with.

Kold · 08-06-2011 09:39PM

No such thing as absolute evil, just circumstance.

TheZohanS · 08-06-2011 09:39PM

SeaFields wrote: »

Wasnt there talk of an evil gene by scientists? They reckon people like ted bundy and the likes possessed it. Born evil.

Ted Bundy had serious momma issues, he grew up believing his grandparents were his parents and that his mother was his sister. It's alleged that his grandfather was actually his father.

Hitler had a similar messed up upbringing.

sonic85 · 08-06-2011 09:41PM

this is how evil is truely formed:

The details of my life are quite inconsequential ... Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a 15-year-old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet.

My father would womanize; he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes, he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament ...

My childhood was typical: summers in Rangoon ... luge lessons ... In the spring, we'd make meat helmets ... When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds — pretty standard, really.

At the age of 12, I received my first scribe. At the age of 14, a Zoroastrian named Vilmer ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum — it's breathtaking ... I suggest you try it.

the result?

:pac:

Kya1976 · 08-06-2011 09:42PM

I voted, can I have some apple pie now please?

ArseLtd · 08-06-2011 09:42PM

It's the ol' nature vs nurture. I would say more nature than nurture

flutterflye · 08-06-2011 09:43PM

My thoughts on evil = "Evil" doesn't exist.

People just like to simplify and compartmentalise everything into "good" and "bad" to reaffirm their world view, and live in the happy knowledge that if you do 'this', you are bad, and if you do 'that', you are good, thus restoring some sort of warped, yet comforting balance to the world as you like to see it from inside your head.

Why is that answer not in your poll?

cesc77 · 08-06-2011 09:45PM

sonic85 wrote: »

this is how evil is truely formed:

The details of my life are quite inconsequential ... Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a 15-year-old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet.

My father would womanize; he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes, he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament ...

My childhood was typical: summers in Rangoon ... luge lessons ... In the spring, we'd make meat helmets ... When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds — pretty standard, really.

At the age of 12, I received my first scribe. At the age of 14, a Zoroastrian named Vilmer ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum — it's breathtaking ... I suggest you try it.

the result?

:pac:

Going to see crap blue links in my sleep now.Cheers:mad:

Danny Dwyer · 08-06-2011 09:49PM

No one is born evil yet it exists. I see it as a virus of the mind. As poeple go along they pick up doses of it. The vast, vast, vast majority keep shrugging the evil virus off, but the odd one becomes engulfed by it. You can even get clusters of it - for example 'head-the-balls' running around spewing their dogma looking to suck others into their vortex. On a personal level I try to avoid catching it at all costs.

sonic85 · 08-06-2011 09:53PM

cesc77 wrote: »

Going to see crap blue links in my sleep now.Cheers:mad:

fixed! dont cry........

Einhard · 08-06-2011 09:57PM

I don't think there is such a thing as evil. Rather, it's a social construct, re-enforced by religion, and designed to characterise things that we have traditionally failed to understand, or just failed to want to understand. It's far more simple, for example, to state that Hitler was evil. It's more likely that he had seriously mental issues; that he suffered some form of sociopathy- that kind of thing. We love placing things that cause us difficulties into neat little boxes, and then forgetting about them, and the concept of evil is just one such box. Thus, Hitler is evil. End of. Nothing to see here folks. Indeed, to suggest that he wasn't evil, that he suffered from some form of malady, is to raise the ire of many, who would accuse one of portraying Hitler as a form of victim.

The problem though, is that we can't deal with the terrible deeds committed by people unless we know what motivates them, where there capacity for terrible crimes stems from. Unless we study and come to grips with these things, we can never hope to remedy them.

Einhard · 08-06-2011 10:00PM

easyeason3 wrote: »

I think people are born evil. Plenty of people have had a crap start in life & turned out to be sucessful, normal humans. Circumstances play a part alright but it's like there's a chemical imbalance in an evil person to make them what they are.

If that's the case though, can an "evil" person be blamed for their "evil" deeds, anymore than a blue eyed person can be censured for their eyes?

pragmatic1 · 08-06-2011 10:10PM

I'd say a tiny minority are born without empathy. Depending on circumstance, this can lead them to commit acts that can only be described as evil.

easyeason3 · 08-06-2011 10:10PM

Einhard wrote: »

If that's the case though, can an "evil" person be blamed for their "evil" deeds, anymore than a blue eyed person can be censured for their eyes?

Yes they can be blamed because an evil person does evil things. The colour of their eyes has nothing to do with it.

FUNKY LOVER · 08-06-2011 10:11PM

Einhard wrote: »

If that's the case though, can an "evil" person be blamed for their "evil" deeds, anymore than a blue eyed person can be censured for their eyes?

I always wondered this,can a person be blamed for their evil deeds if its the way they were born?

Giselle · 08-06-2011 10:29PM

An article on Baron Cohen, and his attempt to have evil redefined as a lack of empathy. Interesting stuff.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/why-a-lack-of-empathy-is-the-root-of-all-evil-2262371.html

Empathy, like height, is a continuous variable, but for convenience, Baron-Cohen splits the continuum into six degrees – seven if you count zero empathy. Answering the empathy quotient (EQ) questionnaire, developed by Baron-Cohen and colleagues, will put you somewhere on the empathy bell curve. People with zero degrees of empathy will be at one end of the bell curve and those with six degrees of empathy at the other end.

Baron-Cohen provides vignettes of what a typical person with x-degrees of empathy would be like. We're told, for example, that a person with level two empathy (quite low) "blunders through life, saying all the wrong things (eg, 'You've put on weight!') or doing the wrong things (eg, invading another person's 'personal space')."

Being at the far ends of the bell curve (extremely high or extremely low empathy scores) is not necessarily pathological. It is possible to have zero degrees of empathy and not be a murderer, torturer or rapist, although you're unlikely to be any of these things if you are at the other end of the empathy spectrum – level six empathy.

"You could imagine someone who has low empathy yet somehow carves out a lifestyle for themselves where it doesn't impact on other people and it doesn't interfere with their everyday life," says Baron-Cohen.

Einhard · 08-06-2011 10:29PM

easyeason3 wrote: »

Yes they can be blamed because an evil person does evil things. The colour of their eyes has nothing to do with it.

If they are born evil, and therefore pre-destined to do evil things, how can they be blamed for it? They'd have no more control over that side of their being, as you or I have over the colour of our eyes.

Einhard · 08-06-2011 10:31PM

Giselle wrote: »

An article on Baron Cohen, and his attempt to have evil redefined as a lack of empathy. Interesting stuff.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/why-a-lack-of-empathy-is-the-root-of-all-evil-2262371.html

Damn, for a moment there, I thought it was gonna be Borat's perspective on evil!:pac:

Giselle · 08-06-2011 10:37PM

Einhard wrote: »

Damn, for a moment there, I thought it was gonna be Borat's perspective on evil!:pac:

I think its his uncle or cousin actually.:)

God... · 08-06-2011 10:37PM

Agricola wrote: »

Yeah, God. That's where we're goin wrong I tells ya. Theres no good God fearin folk left no more.

Leave me out of this!!!

DexyDrain · 08-06-2011 10:42PM

People are born evil. That includes all of us. Most of us are evil to flies and spiders, ants and the like. The question isn't really 'are we evil?', the real question is who or what do we regard as having interests and rights equivalent to our own?

A nazi death squad leader may be a warm and loving father, very moral and altruistic in the community and a lover of the arts. Those outside his circle of empathy are just pestilence, be it human, animal, plant or insect.

Peter Singer wrote a great book called 'The Expanding Circle' and describes humans as having an adjustable 'slider' of empathy that allows us, through positive interaction or changing social norms, to expand our circle of empathy outside the universal default of family and friends. First it was the band or village, then the tribe, the state, trading partners of the state and eventually to all of mankind, closely related and vulnerable species of the animal kingdom etc.

On the other hand, some people are born seemingly with no capacity for empathy at all. This does not automatically make people evil, many on the autistic spectrum do not feel what would technically be called empathy, but are usually highly moral and loyal all the same. They may not have the feel for empathy, but they can figure out the sentiment.

Then there are others who are born lacking not only empathy, but also any sense of loyalty or morality. They can be evil and dangerous, but sometimes they are just pitifully self destructive, causing more harm to themselves than others.

I think the last category can be like the wolves among the sheep, manipulating the variable scale of empathy in the community to exclude disfavoured groups. Then it becomes hard to tell who is born evil and who has become enmeshed in the idea that certain people are subhuman. It's frighteningly common for this to happen all to easily when communities are under stress or fear.

Evil: Is it learned or are some people naturaly born evil?

Evvvvvilllnessss..... 104 votes

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