Are Some People Born Evil?

[jimmydasaint]

Just a thought here. By evil, I mean are there people who are born with a complete lack of empathy towards other individuals and therefore are completely selfish and self-serving? If so, the concern is that can we blame these people for their subsequent actions or do we contextualise their evil with their particular genomic profile?

In short if you are born with the genetic profile of a murderer and then go on to murder people. can you claim that your genetic predisposition can provide suitable extenuating circumstances?

[iNow]

Yes. Sounds like sociopathy and psychopathy.

[Appolinaria]

I'm not sure if genes play a single role.

 

Genes might predispose someone to psychopathy, but I think childhood really shapes it.

[iNow]

More here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18327824

[Lala]

Just a thought here. By evil, I mean are there people who are born with a complete lack of empathy towards other individuals and therefore are completely selfish and self-serving? If so, the concern is that can we blame these people for their subsequent actions or do we contextualise their evil with their particular genomic profile?

In short if you are born with the genetic profile of a murderer and then go on to murder people. can you claim that your genetic predisposition can provide suitable extenuating circumstances?

 

i think evil or good can be killed within

everyone has a voice inside

and everyone must pick one at some point in their life to kill

 

 

A shade of light must fall

 

speak their name

 

who will be your tainted light

 

you wish to survive

 

the evil pounding on the walls of your mind

 

speak their name

 

who will be your tainted light

 

can you serve up a willing sacrifice

 

for the depths of your rage

 

shall soon wash over you in a wave

 

speak their name who will be your tainted light

 

and will the sacrificed seek vengeance

 

or will the fallen be given a soul

 

who shall be your tainted light

 

speak their name

 

for he who has many

 

has arrived

 

and the prison in your mind

 

has become shattered

 

but not broken

 

speak their name

 

who will be your tainted light

 

and will this offering blind the best that lay

 

within your own reflection

 

or serve you up to be consumed by its truth

 

speak their name

 

one must die

 

who shall be your tainted lamb

 

By Olala ^.^)/

Edited March 19, 2012 by Lala

[jimmydasaint]

Well, I have some poetic and some interesting answers. However, is it possible that we are talking about psycopathy as a lack of empathy towards an individual and we can then classify this as being evil. I take that it is not easy to distinguish evil people from those that have empathy, by conversation or by a questionnaire of some sort, otherwise it would be easy to disengage socially from these people. I have a professionally qualified friend who quite openly wishes to take a baseball bat to his managers and has said that he has, in his head, rehearsed a routine where he can 'bash these people to death'. He also has problems with explosive anger. Are these signs of psycopathy or evil. He is also a committed Christian, which implies to me that the environment can control or ameliorate the natural feelings to get even and to kill others that wrong you.

 

Any thoughts?

 

 

 

And death shall have no dominion.

Dead men naked they shall be one

With the man in the wind and the west moon;

When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,

They shall have stars at elbow and foot;

Though they go mad they shall be sane,

Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;

Though lovers be lost love shall not;

And death shall have no dominion.

 

Dylan Thomas

[ydoaPs]

"Once you know what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart."-Andrew Wiggin

[jeskill]

I have a professionally qualified friend who quite openly wishes to take a baseball bat to his managers and has said that he has, in his head, rehearsed a routine where he can 'bash these people to death'. He also has problems with explosive anger. Are these signs of psycopathy or evil. He is also a committed Christian, which implies to me that the environment can control or ameliorate the natural feelings to get even and to kill others that wrong you.

 

 

I don't know if they're a sign that he's evil, or a psychopath, or a sociopath, but they may be a sign that he's mentally unstable and could benefit from professional help.

 

To answer the OP, I don't think there's such as thing as "an evil person". Perhaps the closest to this would be a sociopath or psychopath, but many people who commit "evil" crimes aren't actually "evil". Rather, they seem to have a history that basically pushes them into that life. For example, people who are abused as children are more likely to commit crimes as adults. Under-education, poverty and a feeling of powerless may make child murders by mothers more likely. And of course, we've all heard about the effects of untreated post-tramautic stress disorder on soldiers ...

 

Isn't it true that when people are under a lot of pressure, they tend to do things that they perhaps wouldn't have done in a more relaxed environment?

[questionposter]

People I don't think are born "evil", but rather born with under-developed brains that don't completely mature. To me there doesn't seem to be much difference between that type of emotional comprehension between a psychopath and that of an animal like a tiger. Tigers aren't evil, they just don't naturally care about humans the way way most people do and don't usually have a good reason to with all the hunting going on, and this is why they can be smart but still serial killers. They don't "have" to be born as a serial killer, but they more easily can be because they do not find compelling reasons to not kill people.

There's a movie that's related to this that I think is called "The bad seed", from the mid-20th century, it's black and white.

 

There's also the matter of environment being able to shape people. If people grow up in a violent environment, they will generally be more violent because they get into a habit of acting or thinking to be violent in order to survive they way they want.

Edited March 22, 2012 by questionposter