Are some people simply born evil??

[Billo_Really]

No one is born evil.

That is programmed into them by the republican right.

 

[PrometheusBound]

Like hitmen.

You could never pay me enough/any money to take another human life.

Except in self-defense or as a soldier in a war.

All criminals are enemies of the human race and must be exterminated even before they kill anybody. We have no moral obligation to give them a second chance. That usually means a second chance to harm more people, so we are abetting crime with that attitude.

This includes the mentally defective who commit crime. Letting them off because "it's not their fault" is also ignoring their victims. We should not let them live, because life is a right that has to be earned.

The ruling class turns loose criminals to distract us from our duty to overthrow a ruling class that would do that.

 

[Esmeralda]

It depends ... it's a nature versus nurture debate.

If the child was abused and didn't know what love was ... that will help in him or her becoming a criminal.

People have negative genes in them when they are born... and if they grow up in an atmosphere conductive to crime ... yes .... they will become serial murders probably.

I don't think so. I think babies are born with an empty slate, their upbringing and circumstances pretty much determine their personality by the time they're 10 years old. I do think people can change after that, but it ain't easy.

I know from first hand experience, that people can be born of the same parents, raised together all of their childhoods by the same parents in the same environment, and be very different people, including one being very messed up, very bad (a social misfit, sociopathic behavior, end up in prison for violent crimes, etc.) and the other children in the family lead very normal lives with no sociopathic behavior or violence. What accounts for this? It isn't down to abuse, and the child, the 'bad seed,' had the same home life and parenting as his/her siblings.

I think it has to do with a weakness of character that the child is born with. It's a roulette roll basically, what we end up with genetically. I don't think any child is born bad, but everyone is born with certain weaknesses, and in some people those weaknesses lead to very bad choices which snowball or accumulate into more bad choices and more bad choices until pathology develops and they become a sociopath or psychopath.

I agree with the idea that you can often see that this process has begun and implanted itself in the person by the time they are ten years old.

However, there is also true mental illness, like schizophrenia, which is most likely somewhere in the genes but hidden until the person reaches young adulthood and then it develops. I think people with untreated schizophrenia do very evil things but they are mentally ill and having true delusions. We hear stories of such people, like the guy who did the massacre in the theater in Arizona. By all accounts he was a normal person until a year or so before the massacre. If he indeed has schizophrenia, it means he went insane with it and was controlled by the illness and the delusions of the illness. (I'm not trying to excuse his behavior or even say with certainty he has schizophrenia; I'm saying if he does.)

It may also be that people can make themselves appear normal, but be harboring very bad (I don't like the word evil as it has religious connotations), sociopathic behavior, inside and their actions are restrained until a time when they lose control and the sociopathic behavior emerges in full force, like the Craig's List killer.

But, for the most part, in my opinion, people are born with personality characteristics that develop as we develop and weaknesses or strengths develop due to a combination of those characteristics and personal choices.

 

[Politico]

Holy resurrection Batman!

And hitmen are not automatically evil.

 

[HUGGY]

Like hitmen.

You could never pay me enough/any money to take another human life.

Except in self-defense or as a soldier in a war.

Everyone in the armed forces is capable of being a murderer in theory. A hitman is just a soldier for hire. He gets his orders just like a private in a land war that is ordered to kill an "enemy" without remorse or any investigation as to whether his victim is guilty of anything.

At least a hitman is usually well aquainted with his assigned target.

A CIA type killer is also usually well informed of his enemy. It's not like TV. It's not like in the movies. CIA assassins ferret out spies and other enemy assassins and kill them and dispose of the corpses.

I knew such a man. He was a good man and a hero to our country in my eyes. I liked him and respected him. He was one of my dads best friends. They knew each other in college before the man was recruited by the government to do this kind of work.

Yes some people are evil. It depends on who you care about protecting that decides who is evil sometimes.

 

[Esmeralda]

Like hitmen.

You could never pay me enough/any money to take another human life.

Except in self-defense or as a soldier in a war.

Everyone in the armed forces is capable of being a murderer in theory. A hitman is just a soldier for hire. He gets his orders just like a private in a land war that is ordered to kill an "enemy" without remorse or any investigation as to whether his victim is guilty of anything.

At least a hitman is usually well aquainted with his assigned target.

A CIA type killer is also usually well informed of his enemy. It's not like TV. It's not like in the movies. CIA assassins ferret out spies and other enemy assassins and kill them and dispose of the corpses.

I knew such a man. He was a good man and a hero to our country in my eyes. I liked him and respected him. He was one of my dads best friends. They knew each other in college before the man was recruited by the government to do this kind of work.

Yes some people are evil. It depends on who you care about protecting that decides who is evil sometimes.

What about this guy?

 

[HUGGY]

Like hitmen.

You could never pay me enough/any money to take another human life.

Except in self-defense or as a soldier in a war.

Everyone in the armed forces is capable of being a murderer in theory. A hitman is just a soldier for hire. He gets his orders just like a private in a land war that is ordered to kill an "enemy" without remorse or any investigation as to whether his victim is guilty of anything.

At least a hitman is usually well aquainted with his assigned target.

A CIA type killer is also usually well informed of his enemy. It's not like TV. It's not like in the movies. CIA assassins ferret out spies and other enemy assassins and kill them and dispose of the corpses.

I knew such a man. He was a good man and a hero to our country in my eyes. I liked him and respected him. He was one of my dads best friends. They knew each other in college before the man was recruited by the government to do this kind of work.

Yes some people are evil. It depends on who you care about protecting that decides who is evil sometimes.

What about this guy? [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vn7Hz2PK7s]Serial Killer / Hitman - Richard Kuklinski (The Iceman) - Documentary - YouTube[/ame]

I don't know him. I was merely offering an example of someone that killed people that I did not consider evil.

I'm sure there are evil people. I've met several. Usually they are so disoriented and out of control that they are obvious to all but the natural born victim. I am more fascinated that someone would hire a killer and not do it themselves. It seems that if someone needs eliminating it would be less complicated to involve as few people as possible.

Let's say someone raped your sister or mother. You gained knowledge of who that person was and how to locate him. Do you call the police and risk an unfavorable verdict? Do you waste taxpayers money by housing the piece of shit? Sex offenders can't be cured or rehabilitated so what happens when he gets out of prison? Do you hire a "hitman" to do the job? If you do you are forever linked to the crime of murder. Do you have the guts and intelligence to make the person dissappear on your own in such a way that there is no evidence? Are you evil for even thinking about this revenge?

These days with the wiretaps and such it is stupid to hire a hitman. One hears every day almost about some dumbass getting caught by the police trying to hire a killer. Sometimes it is impossible to figure out what evil is.

 

[editec]

The real question for me, is what is evil?

Thank you for saving me the trouble of asking the same question.

But if we define evil in that most pedestrian way that pretty much everybody can agree to?

I think the answer is YES, some people are born damaged such that they are VERY MUCH prone to antisocial behaviors.


I add "very much" because most of us have SOME inclination to anti-social behavior.

 

[Unkotare]

Everyone in the armed forces is capable of being a murderer in theory. .

Only to the extent that every human being is so capable, and no further.

 

[Unkotare]

It's not a matter of being "born evil." We are all born with the capacity to exercise free will to the extent that the circumstances we are born into permit. "Evil" exists in the world, and some people - the weak, the defective, those conditioned a certain way - all too often choose to embrace it rather than what they know is right.