Do you believe some people are genuinely bad?

Yes i do. You can diagnose a psychopath or sociopath and look for reasons why they are so bad.

I believe tat some people are just cūnts.

Some people are. You can see it in their faces.

Their features just appear 'bad' somehow....hard to explain.

I've only seen people like this very rarely, but I've never been wrong about them.

Yes, but thankfully they're in the minority, there's probably a bell curve of humanity ranging from bad to good.

Stained Class wrote: »

Some people are. You can see it in their faces.

Their features just appear 'bad' somehow....hard to explain.

I've only seen people like this very rarely, but I've never been wrong about them.

know what you're saying, however, if you saw a picture of say Ian Huntley or the Yorkshire Ripper without knowing about their crimes would there be anything markedly different about them to anybody else? I doubt it.

dd972 wrote: »

know what you're saying, however, if you saw a picture of say Ian Huntley or the Yorkshire Ripper without knowing about their crimes would there be anything markedly different about them to anybody else? I doubt it.

Just going by my own personal experiance really. A photo is not really the same as actually meeting a person face to face.

People tend to give out some kind of vibe that's not just based on their physical appearence.

You'll rarely find anyone who is just straight out evil, just for the sake of it; usually, people do or support 'evil' things, by fooling themselves into thinking that evil thing is right or justified.

It usually involves, in one way or another, being totally blind to the consequences of the actions in question; that's pretty much the hallmark of it, buckets of cognitive dissonance.

There are plenty of perfectly nice and normal people everywhere, who support things that can only be described as socio/psychopathic, but who just don't see it that way; if they looked at the problematic issue hard enough, and honestly enough, they would probably come around to the sane non-sociopathic conclusion, but there are innumerable ways people can tie their brain up in knots (or have propaganda do that for them), and come to believe utterly stupid things.


There are so many examples of this, where peoples views seem insane/sociopathic when contrasted with actual facts:
Much of the US populations views on the wars their country are engaging in (enormous numbers of people dead, yet loads of support for it).
Many peoples views on Israel/Palestine conflict, regarding civilian deaths.
Many peoples views on the economic crisis, justifying policies where the end result is lots of people dying and having their lives/future destroyed.
Many peoples views on abortion, and justifying policies that lead to needless deaths, ruined lives, dysfunctional families, etc..


I could go on (and offend a lot of people in the process through, essentially, challenging their beliefs), but it all roots back to fúcked up thinking, that is usually just plain wrong and ignores the end results of policies/actions.


The important thing is though: Almost everybody is susceptible to this kind of fúcked up thinking; sometimes entire populations can be fooled, into supporting totally 'evil' things.

If you don't want to be affected by it, use some critical thinking, and reject any/all bullshít when you see it, or you might start believing the bullshít yourself, if you hear it repeated often enough: "A Lie told often enough becomes the truth."

o1s1n wrote: »

No.

Either it had something to do with their upbringing or else their brain is messed up and they don't have empathy like normal people.

Either way, it can be explained without going back to archaic religious terms like 'evil'.

Odysseus wrote: »

I have encountered a lot of people who have done some very nasty things; however, I have not as yet encountered anyone that you could call evil. I think there are plenty of other ways of understanding why some people carry out the deeds that they do; without having to rely on medieval concepts that add little if anything to our understanding of the human condition.

This is tiresome.

The title says Bad, not Evil. Although the OP did mention evil - which has some religious connotations, but not not always - the title remains. Are people genuinely bad?

The evidence is yes. Some people are born psychopaths, and have no sense of human emotion, or normal empathy, or morality. Its not common, but far from being unknown - about 1 percent of the population. And a much higher percent of the "elites", i.e. CEOs, top politicians, bankers, BBC DJ's etc.

Even there the population of true psychos - though higher - is not more than five percent.

In fact psychopaths often seek positions of power, are charming, and famous. Hitler was definitely one. Saville was one. Common enough.

I don't know. I hate when people dismiss the "f'ucked up life or mental deficiency" reasoning rather than someone just being bad. Why the dismissal of it? Is it because that seems to be a way of excusing them? Because it isn't - it's just explaining, nothing more. People can namecheck Larry Murphy and Rose West all they like, but who's to say those people aren't mentally ill/messed up from their past, thus leading to their atrocities?

Then again though, I don't know for certain that there aren't people who are simply evil, but I'd doubt it - it seems unlikely there's nothing wrong with the brains of such people. No amount of "In my opinion there's evil" makes it a definite reality. We simply don't know. This one even eludes psychiatrists.