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Born evil?


henry d
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32 minutes ago, Winston72 said:

 maybe Evil is just a word 

It is just a word, and it's a word with a fairly innocuous history. 

The interesting thing about “evil” is that it wasn’t so bad when it was young. In fact, the root of “evil,” the Indo-European “upelo,” meant merely “exceeding proper bounds” or “uppity.” Even in Old English, “evil” was used as a fairly bland, general-purpose negative word, encompassing very nasty things or behavior but also applied where today we would probably just use “bad,” “defective” or “unpleasant.” The use of “evil” to mean exclusively “extreme moral depravity or wickedness” only arose in the 19th century.

To answer the original question nobody is born evil, in the same way nobody is born good. We are simply born. How we turn out is purely down to the environment we grow up in.

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2 minutes ago, poontang said:

It is just a word, and it's a word with a fairly innocuous history. 

The interesting thing about “evil” is that it wasn’t so bad when it was young. In fact, the root of “evil,” the Indo-European “upelo,” meant merely “exceeding proper bounds” or “uppity.” Even in Old English, “evil” was used as a fairly bland, general-purpose negative word, encompassing very nasty things or behavior but also applied where today we would probably just use “bad,” “defective” or “unpleasant.” The use of “evil” to mean exclusively “extreme moral depravity or wickedness” only arose in the 19th century.

To answer the original question nobody is born evil, in the same way nobody is born good. We are simply born. How we turn out is purely down to the environment we grow up in.

Not saying you are wrong, but take Sutcliffe one of many children to Kathleen & John, all brought up in the same environment but it was only Peter that got giddy with hookers and hammers?(not all his victims were prostitutes before somebody pipes up)

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4 minutes ago, poontang said:

It is just a word, and it's a word with a fairly innocuous history. 

The interesting thing about “evil” is that it wasn’t so bad when it was young. In fact, the root of “evil,” the Indo-European “upelo,” meant merely “exceeding proper bounds” or “uppity.” Even in Old English, “evil” was used as a fairly bland, general-purpose negative word, encompassing very nasty things or behavior but also applied where today we would probably just use “bad,” “defective” or “unpleasant.” The use of “evil” to mean exclusively “extreme moral depravity or wickedness” only arose in the 19th century.

To answer the original question nobody is born evil, in the same way nobody is born good. We are simply born. How we turn out is purely down to the environment we grow up in.

Fred West . I think his upbringing shaped him. Must have something to do with the way he turned out.

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2 hours ago, Winston72 said:

Not saying you are wrong, but take Sutcliffe one of many children to Kathleen & John, all brought up in the same environment but it was only Peter that got giddy with hookers and hammers?(not all his victims were prostitutes before somebody pipes up)

Not a dig at you, but even if a few children are brought up together, not all will get the same life experiences. As I said before my parents used each other as punchbags, but as I was the oldest (8-9yo) I remember them well, my brother was 3 years younger and has different memories and my sister 3 years younger than him doesn`t have any real memory of it. To assist with the divorce proceedings so my dad could have custody I had to go to a school 4-5miles across town from where we lived, so again I have different life experiences to my brother and sister and I would imagine most people would have slightly differing experiences and the subsequent outcomes from each other sibling.

Slight digression - I don`t know the full story of Sutcliffe or the West`s, so I couldn`t be sure about what lead them down their particular route, however I am sure the experience was a nasty one. I did see the recent TV programme "The Bulger Killers; was justice done"; one harrowing part was when JV was talking about the two of them throwing bricks at Jamie and shouting at him to "Stay down" and said that he didn`t stay down so they continued. To me this is not a ten year olds vocabulary in early 90`s NW of England and I believe it was something one of them had seen/heard. IIRC, JV was at a gig in a pub which his family were a part of the group playing that night, when the guitarist smashed the end of the guitar into the (female?) singers mouth for no clear reason. How much would that change a child`s worldview?

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this is something that ive been giving quite a lot of thought to over the last few weeks.

reading through the posts above , it seems that everyone is pretty much right , their are just so many variables , that you could never say yes or no that someone is born evil. from my own life experience , it seems that some people are more easily able to do evil things (things that i personally would consider evil).

reading the report on jv that henry d posted a couple of weeks ago , its no surprise that jv is totally messed up , but surely he must have some kind of evil inside to allow him to do the things that he does.

i often question myself about things , and i try to be brutally honest with myself. if someone were to do my children serious harm , i know that i wouldnt act in any civilised way , and i know only too well that the things i would do to the people that had hurt my children , would be considered evil by many . would i feel guilt or remorse ? , not for a second. would the fear of ,  the police, the courts , prison , stop me ?, not for a second, would it make me an evil person ? , i dont think so.

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I had a friend who had three fantastic children and all of them eventually did very well in life. We commented to their mother what super kids they were and her reply was simple and I believe fits this discussion ..."Monkey see, monkey do".  In other words they reflected how she lived and treated others.  I saw many many kids who never stood a chance of doing good in life because their parents where absolute rubbish and probably their parents before them. Nothing to do with standard of living or 'how they were born' but who they were born too.

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1 hour ago, islandgun said:

born for me, some people are just predisposed to be evil !

I go with that, some people for whatever reason are predisposed to be evil.

I do think there are other factors at play, but to my mind undoubtably some folk are wired up in a way from birth that means they are capable of things that most others are not.

To follow that theme, and take things off at a tangent, and challenge the thinking a little was J Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atomic bomb) evil?

Undoubtably born with the right makeup to facilitate genius, but that genius opened a pandoras box that could yet be the mechanism of the end of humanity. Surely no bigger evil could be imagined.

It is much more of a philosophical question and not a literal one.

Edited by grrclark
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3 minutes ago, Winston72 said:

Maybe he thought it would be enough of a deterrent to establish peace? based on nothing other than a thought

I believe that he had a major crisis of conscience afterwards.

The reason for asking the question is that we mostly tend to have a relatavistic view on the world, but is that right?

What may be considered genius in a given context could very conceivably be evil in another.

Contentious statement, but in many respects Hitler was a genius.  A genius in understanding social desire, a genius in sociobehavioural manipulation, an orator of incredible talent, yet he was an evil little ******* capable of immense inhumanity.

His genious however corrupted so many into carrying out acts of astonishing cruelty and unquestionable evil.

To my mind Hitler was born with the right wiring that enabled him to become the creature he was.

Did he have megolamaniacal tendencies from infancy? no, because that is a contrived construct, but the man was born preconditioned such he could behave as he did.

If he was on the winning side would we still say the same thing?

So back to Oppenheimer, born with the right wiring for science genius  or a lack of humanity such that he could invent the most destructive and indiscriminatory  weapon ever conceived?

 

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I still believe some are just born evil , what they experience in life may help shape them but whether it makes them what they are i am still out on that.  

Heres a question is ADHD an affliction caused by a persons upbringing or were they born that way ?

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17 minutes ago, figgy said:

I still believe some are just born evil , what they experience in life may help shape them but whether it makes them what they are i am still out on that.  

Heres a question is ADHD an affliction caused by a persons upbringing or were they born that way ?

Born that way. For some reason it seems autism and ADHD is more common with older parents. 

Some boys are born with YYY chromosomes which make them more aggressive. I think that you’ve got to have that ‘evil’ in you to start with. 

Hormones etc play a big part.

Edited by winnie&bezza
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12 minutes ago, figgy said:

So could  the age of the parents have some link to how a persons mind works ?  I am sure there will have been lots of studies done in the past trying to understand it.

God knows mate. All I understand is that when men are and women are older, their sperm and eggs aren’t as strong as they were which is why autism, ADHD etc are more common.

The brain is a complex thing and We will most likely never know. Interesting but all a bit sciencey. I’ll stick to my decking ?

Edited by winnie&bezza
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9 hours ago, grrclark said:

I go with that, some people for whatever reason are predisposed to be evil.

I do think there are other factors at play, but to my mind undoubtably some folk are wired up in a way from birth that means they are capable of things that most others are not.

To follow that theme, and take things off at a tangent, and challenge the thinking a little was J Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atomic bomb) evil?

Undoubtably born with the right makeup to facilitate genius, but that genius opened a pandoras box that could yet be the mechanism of the end of humanity. Surely no bigger evil could be imagined.

It is much more of a philosophical question and not a literal one.

I don't mean to pick on your post but due to many of the exchanges we've had on other recent threads, genuine question, if you beleive people are born evil why are you so much in favour (mentioned in the other threads) of rehabilitation of serious offenders? Surely if people are born evil they can't be changed and if they've committed evil acts, I.e Venables, they should never be released for public safety? 

Just a genuine interest of your thought process as this is something I've been heavily involved with over the years.

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