Thoughts on Evil

For the longest possible time (until I was 26) I didn’t believe in evil. I thought that all people were essentially good on the inside, and reasons for evil in the world were due to people reacting badly to their circumstances and making bad choices. Essentially I believed they could all be ‘helped’ and even ‘healed.’ After all, no body wants to grow up to be a child molester or serial killer… do they? *

In 2006 – out of nowhere, I somehow realized that evil exists in varying degrees within all of us. There was no single event that changed my perspective on this, just a gradual understanding that was quite shocking at the time, which is why I remember the year. Perhaps it was because I had also observed that sometimes people don’t change, no matter how hard they try. (Another devastating blow to my beliefs.) 

You cannot deny that to a certain extent we all have some hard wiring within us, and that some people are simply born with a large heart, a wicked streak or a sense of humour. That’s not to say that nurture doesn’t have any impact or that people can’t change. It definitely does, and they definitely do. But that year, I could no longer ignore the fact, that human beings are capable of being malicious – continually, despite their intentions and even despite other good actions.

I recently found this quote which illustrates my thoughts exactly:

How else can you explain the history of the world?

For an interesting read on this topic and the powers of ‘group think’, check out the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Scary - although not completely surprising.

I feel fortunate that I've had no direct reason to ever really believe in evil, and I hope this post is not a downer. I just think that by acknowledging human nature's true capabilities to myself, that I am better armed to make choices and to question decisions that will contribute to the future history of the world.

(Actually, in the case of pedophilia, Oprah has proven it’s a mental illness people suffer -which is why they will always re-offend, again and again and again.)