Mans Inhumanity To Mankind

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prince regent

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thinking about recent programs on the history channel and other events

are people born evil or does society teach people to become evil

what for example would have happened if say hitler or stalin were born say 10 years later than they were would events that they started have happened 10 years later , never happened at all or would some one else stepped into their shoes and committed the same atrocities

is it society or by birth (genetics) that makes people jump at every oppotunity to enrich themselves or better themselves despite the suffering and crimes they commit against others
 
its the crowd or the mob which is "evil" i believe. The figureheads you mentioned were the catalysts (although they both operated in dfferent ways) and whilst they were probably both psychotic in their own rights, they had to have a large degree of support, whether silent or active

All societies are vulnerable to this. it is the exclusive tribal instinct and the driving force of divisive idealologies and dare i say, religions.... This generates a mass hysteria and much of mankind is (unfortunately) much happier with the certainities of following rather tahn the difficulties of questioning...

How we are formed in our early years is an important factor here. So yes, it is society

Maybe the best (and dare i say purest) example of this was Rwanda
 
Its a bit like the Stanley Millgram experiments in the 1960's - he asked members of the public to take part in an experiment in which involved them administering increasingly high electric shocks to another person when they gave the wrong answer to a question (the recipient was in fact an actor).
Even when the shocks got up to a lethal 450 volts and the actor was crying out in supposed pain, three quarters of the subjects carried on administering the shocks because an authority figure in a white coat was telling them to do it.

Obviously there are arguments against generalising this to the whole of mankind but it does show that ordinary people can commit 'evil' acts.

The concept of evil is culturally and historically specific so I guess it is easier to think in terms of whether a person is born with psychopathic tendencies or not?
 
Nice one Epona

That was the example i was scratching around for. It was very revealing.
 
I seem to think that there might have been a sub finding to that experiement too, (which has been airbrushed) concerning the, what I'll call 'background' of the group who were most prepared to administer the lethal doses :ph34r:
 
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