Does evil exist and, if so, are some people just plain evil?

[Katashi_itto]

You would have to be naïve to believe that evil exists, right? If you were asked to come up with examples of evil villains, you might think of the Emperor from Star Wars, Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter, or even Dr Evil from the Austen Powers films. Evil characters belong in horror movies, fantasy fiction and perhaps also in religious texts, but surely not in the real world.

This kind of skepticism about evil also crops up in serious disagreements over morality. When US President George W. Bush denounced the September 11 terrorists as evildoers, many people rolled their eyes and dismissed his claim as simple-minded and out-of-date. The philosopher Phillip Cole, the psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen and the historian Inga Clendinnen have suggested that we ought to drop the concept of evil.


These thinkers are not skeptical about morality as a whole. They are not suggesting “it is all relative”, or that morality is some kind of sham or illusion. Their skepticism is focused on the category of evil in particular. Are they right to say that there is no such thing as evil?

What do we mean by evil?

In answering this question we must survey the claims people make about evil, and ask what these people take evil to be. While it is true that the word “evil” can be used to refer to a malevolent supernatural force, many of us use “evil” without intending it to have any supernatural connotations.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/24/does-evil-exist-and-if-so-are-some-people-just-plain-evil/

[blkmusclmachine]

1. Case closed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush

[Katashi_itto]

2. Personally, I think Bush was an argument for the "Banality Of Evil". Himself not evil as Per se.

But the people around him certainly are.

[McCamy Taylor]

3. Evil is the act of attempting to remove something, esp. another person from existence

often out of a mistaken belief that the person in question is "evil." Witness the Holocaust or the Witch Hunts.

An action can be evil. A person is not evil.

[BainsBane]

4. Agree. I also think it's an effort to explain away

horrendous events and behavior that we have trouble understanding. Everyone believes what they do is justified, even Hitler, whom most would agree exemplifies the capacity to do evil.

[Fairgo]

6. Well said

The problem I have with the concept of evil is its capacity to cordoned off the most vile aspect of the human condition as "supernatural other". It is nearly impossible to comprehend and painful to accept, but that horrible capacity is a choice that dwells within us. We must face it down personally and atone for it as a species. Those who perpetrate evil acts should not be able to shade their guilt with satanic complicity. This boy was not the instrument of evil, he was a person who chose to reject his own humanity and proved himself unfit to be counted among our kind. He is not damned, but negated...he did it to himself.

My condolences to everyone with a heart today. My thoughts are with the families.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

12. That's not just false, it's blindingly obviously false.

Hitler may have believed that what he did was justified, but I very much doubt that most of Bundy, Dahmer, Ng, Ramirez, West, etc, etc did.

Many people do things that they know are morally wrong, because it will get them things they want.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

14. Nope. Those criminals put themselves above others and thus felt justified. nt

[Donald Ian Rankin]

15. Your blind faith in the face of evidence to the contrary is depressing.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

18. Oh, get off the personal podium and try a real discussion. nt

[McCamy Taylor]

43. The insane have no moral compass. So, they are not evil. They are chaotic.

Which is even scarier. Take a human, remove the part of the brain that gives us empathy---and you have a killing machine.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

17. You make a good point. Good versus evil often is just evil (if evil concept is useful)

Good versus evil often is just evil (if evil concept is useful, which is doubtful).

Many people supported the Iraq War and still do as the fight of good versus evil, feeling that their side attacking Iraq was good, even now when the suffering of Iraqis and vets and families of military dead is undeniable.

Too much focus on evil creates evil. (if evil is a useful concept)

[Nuclear Unicorn]

28. That is predicated on the assumption that the existence of a thing was first Good.

That means something outside of the thing itself gives it the quality of being Good.

[Drahthaardogs]

38. No way. There are people who are indeed "evil"

Ted Bundy comes to mind. Evil, evil, evil bastard. No regard for anyone other than himself. Killed for the sheer joy of it.

[Notafraidtoo]

5. To me evil is.

The destruction of innocent people for personal incentive. When you poison people for profit, When you use people in ways that they do not want to be used when they have done nothing wrong. Today most evil IMO is done by multinational corporations and their investors. They are the ones that buy democratic governments and give power to dictators in order to use and destroy people for profit.

[Unknown Beatle]

7. Evil is defined as

: morally bad

: causing harm or injury to someone

: marked by bad luck or bad events

by Merriam - Webster Dictionary.

If that's the case, then Dick Cheney is evil. He is morally bad and caused the deaths of untold hundreds of thousands of people. Soldiers that he sent to war on lies and innocent Iraqi and Afghan civilians butchered.

Cheney also condones torture.

Now that's the definition of evil. A person that has absolutely no empathy. A person that is hollow where a soul should be. Evil incarnate.

[ananda]

8. Yes.

Monsanto and big oil are both pure evil, including the people behind them.

[Shandris]

9. I don't think evil is a tangible force per se, but I think a person would have to be naive to...

...think that evil as a concept doesn't exist.

I don't think there's much of the mustache-twirling "I think I want to be evil" (although there -is- some, typified by extreme mental deficiency usually); most of the truly evil don't think of themselves as such. That's the realm of evil that the Cheney's, the Monsanto executives, and their ilk all fall into. That doesn't make it any less evil, though.

[MillennialDem]

10. Evil is the willingness to make others suffer for one's own wants (and needs in some cases). The

thing is, most human beings are largely selfish. It's just that we understand it is wrong to say - steal, because while it gives us something we want it deprives someone else and makes them suffer.

Sociopaths and people with certain other mental illnesses and personality disorders lack that filter. They only refrain from harming others to get what they want out of fear of being caught and there are a lot of sociopaths out there. I think that there are far more cases and borderline cases than we could ever imagine, and it is frightening. Sociopaths look and act mostly like ordinary people. Some are nice. Some are jerks. Some are nerds. Some are bimbos. Really any personality and intelligence level. But they blend in and when the opportunity presents itself, they will take - life, property, autonomy, dignity, etc from others.

If you can call that evil, that's it. There is nothing else that qualifies.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

11. No-one is just plain evil; some people are plain evil.

When sentencing someone, we should remember that 1) they're a human being, not a monster but 2) they may be an evil human being.

There are almost always reasons why people do what they do, but that doesn't mean that sometimes it wasn't evil of them to do so.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

13. Then do you have to say everyone is more or less mentally ill?

Nobody is 100% purely good, so it is often said that people are more or less evil.

But if you drop the concept of "evil", which I think might be the right thing to do, what do you replace it with? Does that mean you have to say that everyone is more or less mentally ill?

There has to be some explanation, some motivating force or mechanism, for acts that are contrary to public safety or public good or family safety/good or personal safety/good.

On the other hand, what is good? Some people might see adding more testing to schools as a good thing and others might see it as a bad thing. Flip the coin and the same people would see removing some testing as a good thing and the first group would see it as a bad thing. Good versus evil?

Now instead of "adding testing in schools", consider "kidnapping girls to prevent western education". Good versus evil? The kidnappers see the prevention as good and the western education as evil. Mental illness?

Now consider "killing 26 innocent people at a school". Good versus evil? Mental illness?

Robert Heinlein wrote a short story "Coventry" about a society where all crimes were abolished and considered simply anti-social, even punching someone in the nose in anger. People were banished to a very large fenced in territory. I need to reread it for the details of how long they were expected to remain their or how they could get out.

Is there really only one crime/illness -- being anti-social?

[DeSwiss]

16. There seems to be a body of data and information.....

...developing on the subject:

Political Ponerology

WIKI: Ponerology

MSNBC: ‘Snakes in Suits’ in corporate offices

- These works ask a number of different questions and come from different perspectives on the issue of evil. Ultimately, from what I can gather the issue ''in a nutshell'' asks:

''If eye color is passed-on from one's ancestors, what about evil (sociopathy)?''

It's a fair question.

K&R

[hobbit709]

19. Evil per se does not exist but there are evil people.

[Recursion]

20. There's also Aquinas's argument that evil "doesn't exist" but is real

I know it sounds weird, but it kind of makes sense. To St. Thomas, evil did not exist per se, but was a name for a "lack of existence" or "lack of reality". It's sort of like light and darkness: light is a thing; darkness isn't, but it makes sense still to talk about "darkness". He suggested evil worked the same way. AFAIK that's still the Catholic Church's position on the matter.

Thomas (incidentally, "Aquinas" was not his last name, and he shouldn't be referred to simply as "Aquinas" even though I did that in the title) identified "being" and "reality" with God, which many of us decline to do, but I think even stripped of the Christian theology the underlying idea has some value. Evil does not have an identity of its own, but it's a shorthand way of referring to destructive rather than constructive beings and actions.

[Prophet 451]

21. Ys, it exists and yes, some people are just evil

However, why they are evil is up for debate. I'm about a year (of six) away from a degree in Forensic Psychology and I still couldn't tell you why.

[Vattel]

22. Of course evil exists. And some people are just plain evil.

[kelliekat44]

23. Yes, and yes! nt

[sofa king]

24. I think evil is real.

I think that most humans (as with most animals) have a biological inhibition against killing one another or causing one another severe harm.

That inhibition seems to be very closely related to empathy, the ability to recognize the emotions of other people (and some critters).

So that's evil to me: the willingness to do deliberate harm to people for inadequate reasons. In order to be that way, one has to lack empathy for others most or all of the time (one can also be mechanically trained to do so, which is how most modern soldiers are trained; but the overwhelming majority of those folks do not commit acts of evil in civilized society, as Republican politicians do).

Some of us, like Dick Cheney, have little to no empathy for most others, except of course his own offspring, which is why Cheney's one progressive opinion (in favor of gay marriage) happens to be the one that would benefit his own child. Cheney doesn't give a fuck about any of the rest of us; we're as insignificant to him as the tens of thousands he had tortured, murdered, and dumped in the streets of Iraq.

Dick Cheney has publicly displayed virtually all of the criteria needed for a psychologist to make a diagnosis of anti-social personality disorder--as close as it gets to the Hollywood villain in real life:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder

Cheney's ignorant pawn, George W. Bush, also lacks empathy most of the time. This permitted Bush to okay stealing elections, lying to start a war, torture, murder, frequently dropping his dog onto pavement, and so on. But Bush seems to have publicly displayed most of the criteria needed to make a different diagnosis, of Narcissistic Personality Disorder:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder

The interesting thing about narcissists is that while they also are capable of acting with malice, sooner or later their beat-down Jiminy Cricket of a conscience turns into a locust, and rips the self esteem of the subject to shreds. The narcissist is prone to "moments of clarity" and subsequent deep depression, in part out of regret for their own actions.

That is probably the answer to the question, "why did George W. take two years of vacation during his tenure as President?" My guess is that a team of psychologists and family members were desperately working behind the scenes to re-inflate the ego of this broken and incompetent person, who can only function when he believes the lies he tells about himself.

It's almost certainly why Bush paints now, because unlike Dick Cheney, Shrub is not immune to the scratches of the Furies who will pursue him to his much-deserved grave. Look at this picture again, knowing Bush is a narcissist who has done unspeakable evil, and cannot forget it:



Here's a guy who can't look at himself full in the face in a painting of a reflection in a fucking mirror. Because he hates himself for the evil he has done and it gnaws at his very soul. That's hardly punishment for what he has done, but it's nice to know that W, at least, cannot escape himself.

So there's two evil people and how they excuse themselves for it (Cheney: easily; Bush, never). It's possible to be co-morbid with both APD and NPD. I think Mitt Romney was one of those rare birds; fortunately, his evil was easier for most to see.

[redruddyred]

29. wow, that was a fabulous analysis.

thanks for the excellent read.

[phil89]

31. I doubt Bush thinks he did anything wrong.

He seems oblivious.

[sofa king]

32. Yes, usually.

But from time to time, he realizes that he's being treated as political poison, that even his friends have publicly placed as much distance as possible between themselves and him, that his years are treated as a catastrophic low-mark for everything economic, diplomatic, moral, and political in the history of the U.S.... and when that gets too overwhelming, well, I'm gonna guess that the guy yearns for the safety one can easily find in the bottom of a bottle of bourbon.

Or, he paints. I hope that this Onion piece is as close to true as it can be:

http://www.theonion.com/video/george-w-bush-debuts-new-paintings-of-dogs-friends,35799/

[Katashi_itto]

33. Wonderful reading, although Bush may simply not have the mental capacity to realize "Chance The

Gardner" He strikes me as totally self-absorbed.

[dawg]

25. evil = selfishness

And it's in all of us to varying degrees.

People who snap and go on killing sprees are mentally ill.

People who allow thousands to die because it's economically beneficial to them personally are evil.

Ayn Rand was literally a person who glorified evil.

[Shankapotomus]

26. To me,

a competitive mind set is the root of all evil. You can't want to do ill to someone if you're not competing with them.

[Inkfreak]

30. That's an interesting theory.

I was ready to dismiss it offhand, but I found myself thinking of it. And motivations. I dunno if it could be used in the case of a serial killer. But yes, I like that thought. It's something to read up on.

[arely staircase]

27. as a noun or an adjective? nt

[cheyanne]

34. The exact definition of evil is not as important as being aware of how we use the word.

If we call all conservatives evil, are we any different than conservatives who call all Muslims evil?

All humans are alike: no one group has a monopoly of evil or good.

Some individuals may be evil in that they break the social bonds from personal desire for power, etc. but not a whole group of people.

These conservatives are our neighbors, friends and family who are scared; they are fearful of losing what they had and that their kids will never have.

Fear can make humans do anything, because they feel that they are combating a danger to themselves and others.

Many of these people had relied on the republican fantasy of the world, and that world left America a long time ago. They did all the “right” things and when they see their world crumbling (financial collapse) they react in the most human way: anger, blame, circling the wagons (otherwise known as demonizing the other).

By demonizing our opponents we fail in the understanding/empathy that is the hallmark of humanism.

[Zorra]

35. Evil may be relative to individual beliefs and social constructs, and, who knows? Maybe even

Last edited Sun May 25, 2014, 07:17 PM - Edit history (2)

natural/universal law, with respect to human beings, and possibly other beings who have the innate, conscious abilities to be empathic and altruistic. I don't know;, does anyone really know?

I have my own personal beliefs, my own morality/code of ethics, which I rearrange as personal "truth" is gathered. So far, what I have come up with in my journey is to consciously do my best to treat others like I want to be treated, and try to never consciously do harm, to the best of my (obviously) limited abilities, while trying to analyze the motivations behind my thoughts and behavior in order to try to not bullshit myself.

It appears to me that many genuine, sincere progressives/liberals have, to some degree, a similar view of existence, and, in this spirit, we determine, through reason, individually and collectively, what appears to us to be "evil". Based on this evolving determination of our collective value system, we join together, and take measures to prevent those who demonstrably do not share our collective beliefs from harming others, within the most liberal sphere of non-destructive individual action possible.

It appears to me that all human behavior is driven by the desire for some type of reward. If our primary value is the most satisfactory existence for ourselves and everyone else, we work toward manifesting this type of world for ourselves.

What we value most will generally be what we sincerely desire and pursue in our lives; and attaining this reward will most often be our primary focus.

Just my 2 cents worth, based on very limited information.

[TBF]

36. Categorizing someone as "evil" dehumanizes them

and also turns them into an individual case. That keeps people from looking at the society at large and how it may be (badly) functioning. It also makes it easier to justify punishments like the death penalty.

If we are to be a society in which we band together as a community and care for each other we take responsibility in the society for the behaviors we are encouraging. I would argue that in our current society here in the US we have placed so much importance on the individual because it reinforces our notions and ideals about rising up in a capitalist society. If you don't rise up you individually are at fault. If you hurt someone you individually are at fault. It makes it very easy to shift blame and not take responsibility as a society. It even happens when we call someone like GWBush or David Koch evil. Are they really evil? Or are they simply the result of a very sick society?

[adirondacker]

45. Or is the sick society a result of a few GWBush's and Kochs that sell the system?

I think you raise some great points.

[TBF]

46. Personally I would answer that it is not

a few bad actors - it is the system itself that is inherently unequal. That is just my opinion and I know many others on DU are not that far to the left.

[adirondacker]

47. I think you are correct on both accounts and appreciate your post. nt

[Android3.14]

37. If no one is evil, then no one is good.

I have run across both, though rarely, over the years. There are good people out there, and there are evil people. On one occasion I've seen people who made me shudder, persons towards whom I felt a repulsion at a visceral level that drove me to create distance until I could no longer see the persons and they could no longer see me. There was the convict (I later learned) and his family that stayed at my apartment for two nights when my roommate gave them a place to sleep. The family, with whom I barely interacted, so unnerved me that I left for the weekend and then moved out two months later because my old roommate was an idiot.
On slightly more occasions, five times in 50 years, I've run across good people who generated an attractive buzz in my internal landscape. They were as follows - an old philosopher living in servants quarters behind a house we rented, a woman teaching spirituality classes at a UU church, a priest who taught me how to say The Rosary, my first grade teacher, and a nursing professor at a rural university.
You can dress it up or deconstruct it all you want.
Experience shows truly evil people exist, just as truly good people also exist.

[Ghost in the Machine]

39. In response to your title... Yes, and Yes.... N/T

[Jamaal510]

40. I don't think there

is such thing as good and evil; it's more of a matter of different points of view, and what people see as good or evil.

[bpollen]

41. Evil is just Live spelled backwards!

"Attachment disorder is a broad term intended to describe disorders of mood, behavior, and social relationships arising from a failure to form normal attachments to primary care giving figures in early childhood, resulting in problematic social expectations and behaviors"

Some of those who could be described by attachment disorder can perform acts that many (maybe even me) might call evil, but are they evil or just horribly damaged? There are a number of families confronted with that question when they adopted from some Eastern European orphanages. If those children are evil, then neglect manufactures evil.

I met a guy once, kinda creeped me out. Later, he raped a ~80 year old woman. Then still later, he killed five people in a spree killing. I always thought that he had a whole bucket of screws loose, never once thought that he was evil.

So, for me, the concept of evil just attempts to place responsibility for the horrible things people can do on some outside source.

[L0oniX]

42. Honey Boo Boo is the essence of pure evil!

[Katashi_itto]

44. True...True