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

Einhard wrote: »

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 wrote: »

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

Giselle wrote: »

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

DexyDrain wrote: »

At first glance, maybe. However there is a very, very big difference between the two. Autism is characterised mostly by a profound social naivety as well as impairment in empathy. They just don't know how people 'work' inside their heads. Lower functioning, non-verbal autistic people see people as objects with no internal states. People with Asperger's syndrome do show an interest in discovering what these internal states might be, and often do want to be socially active, but find it very difficult to work out the intentions and emotions of others.

Psychopaths often are often extremely socially intelligent, they know exactly how to manipulate people and predict what they might do or respond to. This is the polar opposite of problem people with autism have. So while there is a problem with empathy in both groups, psychopaths or sociopaths seem to have fully functional modelling of other minds while those with autism do not.

I hope no one comes away from this discussion thinking people with autism are possibly dangerous and callous, that is very far from the real issue of callous manipulation and exploitative intent, which people with autism very rarely have.

flutterflye wrote: »

There is no good or bad, and certainly no evil.

It all just 'is'.

Tags are just added based on what your particular culture believes, or innate instinct perceives at this particular moment.

pragmatic1 wrote: »

Really dont like this "There is no good and bad" argument. There obviously is. Humans and society wouldnt have got this far if we couldnt differentiate between the two. While not universal, things like rape, murder and torture are seen as destructive and wrong by most people and cultures. On the other side, things like loyalty, kindness and mercy are seen as admirable qualities. And by the time a person reaches early childhood, most not only know, but can feel the difference between the two.

DexyDrain wrote: »

Completely disagree, human nature does feature in-built moral features that allow groups to organise spontaneously when required, in very predictable ways.

Morality is not learned, rules are learned and morality is adapted to the social and environmental world we live in. Before contraception and protection/treatment of disease sex was a moral issue for the entire community, now that these problems have been somewhat controlled sex is seen as an individual moral choice. I don't think this development could have come about if those factors were not at play. You can see this happening across the moral spectrum, sometimes less noticeably.

Often people cannot even explain to themselves why some things are 'immoral', say a brother and sister who have sex using a condom and feel they benefited from the shared experience but agree never to do it again and keep it a secret. Most people give several reasons why this is 'immoral' but each fails to hold water (ie. contraception prevents inbreeding, they are not emotionally damaged by it, as it is a secret it won't cause family problems etc.). Eventually people just hit a brick wall and say 'I don't know why it's wrong, it just is..'. That feeling is in-built and universal, across a whole range of issues. It emerges when children are pre-teens and continues to develop into adulthood.