is there an eruption of evil in the US ?? is evil real ??

[itfitzme]

Itfitzme,
Instincts are not evil. If they were then predatory animals would be considered evil - they are not.
Predatory humans are considered evil. So predation is not evil in animals but it is in humans.
Evil has to be a human construct.

Besides, If a dingo eats a baby, I am fairly certain that the
mother is pretty likely to feel that nature, the forces of the universe, or whatever you want to call it, has perpetrated an evil act upon her and her child. I don't think she really cares if the dingo was just hungry. As far as she's concerned, her innocent baby was killed before his life even began, and that is pretty darned evil to her.

 

[itfitzme]

"Evil is always what the other guy did, not what I am doing"

Yeah, because when he does it hurts my feelings. When I do it, I have a good "reason".

Actor-observer effect.
Ingroup-outgroup thinking.
And any other psychological phenomena that are characterized by distinguishing between self and others based on the fact that awareness of self intrinsically includes distinctly different information than awaremess of others.

This is why characterizing evil according to the motivation of the perpetrator is inherently flawed. The perpetrator seldom, if at all, considers the act evil. If they have a moral perspectived, they wouldn't do it. If they don't have a moral compass, then they are a sociopath and don't consider it evil.

Or are we restricting the definition to a requirement that the individual means to be evil?

 

[PratchettFan]

"Evil is always what the other guy did, not what I am doing"

Yeah, because when he does it hurts my feelings. When I do it, I have a good "reason".

Actor-observer effect.
Ingroup-outgroup thinking.
And any other psychological phenomena that are characterized by distinguishing between self and others based on the fact that awareness of self intrinsically includes distinctly different information than awaremess of others.

This is why characterizing evil according to the motivation of the perpetrator is inherently flawed. The perpetrator seldom, if at all, considers the act evil. If they have a moral perspectived, they wouldn't do it. If they don't have a moral compass, then they are a sociopath and don't consider it evil.

Or are we restricting the definition to a requirement that the individual means to be evil?

I would say that the vast majority of things we might consider evil were done with the best of intentions. In fact, the more evil the more likely it was the intentions were good. Genocide is always committed with the highest of moral purposes. At least from the point of view of the doer. Evil is an entirely subjective concept. The very same action can be called evil by one person and good by another. Which one is correct? The answer is..., whichever one you are because it is always the other guy who is wrong.

 

[itfitzme]

"Evil is always what the other guy did, not what I am doing"

Yeah, because when he does it hurts my feelings. When I do it, I have a good "reason".

Actor-observer effect.
Ingroup-outgroup thinking.
And any other psychological phenomena that are characterized by distinguishing between self and others based on the fact that awareness of self intrinsically includes distinctly different information than awaremess of others.

This is why characterizing evil according to the motivation of the perpetrator is inherently flawed. The perpetrator seldom, if at all, considers the act evil. If they have a moral perspectived, they wouldn't do it. If they don't have a moral compass, then they are a sociopath and don't consider it evil.

Or are we restricting the definition to a requirement that the individual means to be evil?

I would say that the vast majority of things we might consider evil were done with the best of intentions. In fact, the more evil the more likely it was the intentions were good. Genocide is always committed with the highest of moral purposes. At least from the point of view of the doer. Evil is an entirely subjective concept. The very same action can be called evil by one person and good by another. Which one is correct? The answer is..., whichever one you are because it is always the other guy who is wrong.

Still, being subjective doesn't mean there is no object, no objective
component. Nor does it mean it cannot be meaaured or that there is no commonality between people.

Pain is subjective. A still, I can test 100 people by hitting their thumb with a hammer at progressive levels of force and ask them to rank their pain on a scale of one to ten. Or I could simply note when they first complained that it hurt. The amount of force is an objective measure. They report their subjective assesment. And, I am sure that a definable average and variance will be revealed. This has been done, in fact, bit using electric shock. And while pain threshold does vary between people, it isn't completely random.

Evil is not going to be any different. It it is definable, can be characterized, and measured. There will be individual variations. There will be objectively measurable objects.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

is there an eruption of evil in the US ??

No.

is evil real ??

Not as you ‘understand’ it, no.

 

[itfitzme]

So a prerequisite to evil is that it is from the perspevtive of the individual that the act has been perpetrated upon. It is an action. The perpetrator and the perpetrators intentmis irrelevant. It will vary between people.

It is like humor. Humor or funny exists. In fact, people pay others just to be funny. What is funny to one person is not funny to everyone. Still, there are characteristics to what makes something funny that can be identified, a number of things.

 

[Circe]

So a prerequisite to evil is that it is from the perspevtive of the individual that the act has been perpetrated upon. It is an action. The perpetrator and the perpetrators intentmis irrelevant. It will vary between people.

It is like humor. Humor or funny exists. In fact, people pay others just to be funny. What is funny to one person is not funny to everyone. Still, there are characteristics to what makes something funny that can be identified, a number of things.

Speaking of humor, my personal definition of evil for years has been people who laugh while they hurt other people or living things.

And I think that is a common definition: villains in movies are often shown laughing while they torment others.

 

[tipofthespear]

Murder is a legal term, which simply means to kill someone illegally. If I kill someone legally, then it is not murder. A man with a high powered rifle sitting on top of a building shooting someone may be commiting murder or may not be, depending upon the circumstances. But those circumstances are entirely subjective.

I think you really came the closest to an accurate description of evil at the end of the post. Evil is disagreeing with you. That is as universal a definition of evil I have seen to date.

That last part is actually funny............seriously......I did smile reading it. Now as for the first part of your comment, you did not discount the fact that I laid out various things/situations that were inherently good or evil, which you said I could not do.

So you dodge the fact that I DID [ doubt you can point to any particular act which could not be called evil and good, ] point to particular acts which COULD BE called GOOD, and acts which COULD BE called EVIL..........without regard for one's opinion.

Thanks for the humor though...........

I wasn't trying to be funny. I was using the universal "you" rather than the specific. IOW, evil is always what the other guy is doing that I don't like. It is never what I am doing. Using the universal "I", just to be clear.

As to your examples, you are wrong. Neither of those examples were absolute, as I pointed out to you. They were all dependent upon the circumstances and the perceptions of others. So while you may well think you did it, you did not. Give me one specific act (such as killing children) that is evil and I will give you a circumstance in which it is not.

As to my examples, it is you who are wrong.......Murder is a specific act separate from the taking of a life for other reasons. The act of murder is in and of itself evil and there is no way to spin it to have a connotation of good. Now, if you are simply speaking of homicide then you have an argument, but murder is evil, so my example stands as Truth.

Charity in and of itself is good, there is no way to spin charity to make it evil in intent or in effect. So that example stands as Truth as well.

You want to justify your position with hypothesis rather than reality. God, good, does not deal in "what ifs," rather in "what is." If you come to understand this, then you will be far better off when discussing good and evil and their existence separate from man. Evil is the same.......it is "what is," and not "what ifs."

Don't know why you are so infatuated with discussing the "killing of children," seems odd to me, but whatever........and I find it hard to believe that anyone would even bother to try and justify such an act. Takes a special kind of person to justify killing a child in my opinion only I suppose.

 

[Sunshine]

Good and evil are but two sides of the same coin. To be sure there are a lot of good things in the universe, but I recall a college prof remarking that the forces that rule the universe are obnoxious, so indeed there is evil. Evil is hard to classify. The children's story in the link below shows that:

That's Good! That's Bad! | Written by Margery Cuyler; Illustrated by David Catrow | Macmillan

Something that may be evil turns out to be good instead.

Rosicrucianism which is founded on hermetic principles teaches 'alchemy' - the alchemy of taking an evil thing that has happed to you and turning it into a good thing, something for your betterment. The poet from TN Pek Gunn has a poem called Divine Alchemy in which he proffers that there is a force in the universe that takes evil and turns it to good. Couldn't find a link, and I have so many books, I'm not looking for it.

Is evil a force? Is there a Cosmic Force that permeates the Universe? If so, then evil has to be one side of that Force. The other side of it allows one to take evil and turn evil to good and in some icases it even turns evil t

​

o good for us.

 

[Circe]

the alchemy of taking an evil thing that has happed to you and turning it into a good thing, something for your betterment.

There's a neat exercise I like in which one looks at something unlikeable about oneself and then considers what is good about it.

After all, it's happening for a reason; what is that reason? There is a surprising amount of good to "faults," looked at that way.

 

[PratchettFan]

"Evil is always what the other guy did, not what I am doing"

Yeah, because when he does it hurts my feelings. When I do it, I have a good "reason".

Actor-observer effect.
Ingroup-outgroup thinking.
And any other psychological phenomena that are characterized by distinguishing between self and others based on the fact that awareness of self intrinsically includes distinctly different information than awaremess of others.

This is why characterizing evil according to the motivation of the perpetrator is inherently flawed. The perpetrator seldom, if at all, considers the act evil. If they have a moral perspectived, they wouldn't do it. If they don't have a moral compass, then they are a sociopath and don't consider it evil.

Or are we restricting the definition to a requirement that the individual means to be evil?

I would say that the vast majority of things we might consider evil were done with the best of intentions. In fact, the more evil the more likely it was the intentions were good. Genocide is always committed with the highest of moral purposes. At least from the point of view of the doer. Evil is an entirely subjective concept. The very same action can be called evil by one person and good by another. Which one is correct? The answer is..., whichever one you are because it is always the other guy who is wrong.

Still, being subjective doesn't mean there is no object, no objective
component. Nor does it mean it cannot be meaaured or that there is no commonality between people.

Pain is subjective. A still, I can test 100 people by hitting their thumb with a hammer at progressive levels of force and ask them to rank their pain on a scale of one to ten. Or I could simply note when they first complained that it hurt. The amount of force is an objective measure. They report their subjective assesment. And, I am sure that a definable average and variance will be revealed. This has been done, in fact, bit using electric shock. And while pain threshold does vary between people, it isn't completely random.

Evil is not going to be any different. It it is definable, can be characterized, and measured. There will be individual variations. There will be objectively measurable objects.

For your example to apply you would have to show that a significant percentage of the people you hit with the hammer experienced pleasure rather than pain, not just varying degrees of pain. Evil can certainly be defined, but it will always be defined differently by different people. When a city is bombed, whether it is good or evil depends upon whether you are dropping the bomb or the bomb is dropping on you.

 

[PratchettFan]

That last part is actually funny............seriously......I did smile reading it. Now as for the first part of your comment, you did not discount the fact that I laid out various things/situations that were inherently good or evil, which you said I could not do.

So you dodge the fact that I DID [ doubt you can point to any particular act which could not be called evil and good, ] point to particular acts which COULD BE called GOOD, and acts which COULD BE called EVIL..........without regard for one's opinion.

Thanks for the humor though...........

I wasn't trying to be funny. I was using the universal "you" rather than the specific. IOW, evil is always what the other guy is doing that I don't like. It is never what I am doing. Using the universal "I", just to be clear.

As to your examples, you are wrong. Neither of those examples were absolute, as I pointed out to you. They were all dependent upon the circumstances and the perceptions of others. So while you may well think you did it, you did not. Give me one specific act (such as killing children) that is evil and I will give you a circumstance in which it is not.

As to my examples, it is you who are wrong.......Murder is a specific act separate from the taking of a life for other reasons. The act of murder is in and of itself evil and there is no way to spin it to have a connotation of good. Now, if you are simply speaking of homicide then you have an argument, but murder is evil, so my example stands as Truth.

Charity in and of itself is good, there is no way to spin charity to make it evil in intent or in effect. So that example stands as Truth as well.

You want to justify your position with hypothesis rather than reality. God, good, does not deal in "what ifs," rather in "what is." If you come to understand this, then you will be far better off when discussing good and evil and their existence separate from man. Evil is the same.......it is "what is," and not "what ifs."

Don't know why you are so infatuated with discussing the "killing of children," seems odd to me, but whatever........and I find it hard to believe that anyone would even bother to try and justify such an act. Takes a special kind of person to justify killing a child in my opinion only I suppose.

Fine. So you are saying the men who flew bombing missions during WWII were evil.

 

[itfitzme]

Evil is a behavior or action is combination with an effect. Otherwise good people do present evil behaviors and outcomes.

90,000 to 166,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the bombing of Hiroshima. The total for Hiroshima and Nagasaki is estimated to be at half a million. Regardless of the intent, some half of that number died slowly over the days and weeks that followed, not immediately.

What level of death and suffering does it take to get that the evil is in the action, effect and the suffering FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE VICTIM, not based of the reason and intentions of the actor.

 

[PMZ]

Evil is culturally defined. Cultures evolve in order to adapt to environmental changes. Grandma may think some woman dressed according to modern fashion has evil intent while the woman is just feeling fashionable.

Mayan priests pulled beating hearts from sacrificial humans to demonstrate their love for their gods. Inquisition priests felt that burning at the stake was an act of cleansing.

Probably the closest universal statement of good is the golden rule.

 

[PMZ]

Evil has been studied scientifically. *The two landmark studies are the Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment. Both, due to their nature, have not been performed in the same way since the original studies. *The experiments were so dramatic as to be psychologically traumatic to the subjects and do not meet ethical standards today.

The Milgram Experiment was devised by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University in 1961. *A description of the Milgram Experiment can be found at*
Milgram experiment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Stanford Prison Experiment was devised by Stanford psychologist Phillip Zimbardo in 1971. A description may be found here
Stanford prison experiment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Interestingly,*Zimbardo and Milgram were high school classmates, growing up in New York City *Zimbardo graduated from Yale, eventually teaching at Stanford. *Milgram graduated from Harvard, eventually teaching at Yale.

Zimbardo spent much of his career studying evil. He has since*changed his focus to studying amd teaching heroism. *He*founded the Heroic Imagination Project

Phil Zimbardo, Ph.D. | Heroic Imagination Project

I had the opportunity to meet Zimbardo, in 2010, when he was lecturing on the Lucifer Effect, Abu Ghraib, and his newest work on heroism.

What I found quite interesting was his more detailed accounting of the effect that his Stanford Prison Experiment had on himself as an objective observer. *

The experiment was set up to mimic a prison, with guards and prisoners. *Other than the subject being assigned the roles of prisoners and guards, and provided with the suitable uniforms for their roles, no detailed instructions were provided. *Zimbardo, being the observer, also presented his role as the prison warden. *

As the experiment played out, the "guards" became increasingly more authoritarian and sadistic on their treatment of the prisoners.*

Now, Zimbardo was dating another psychologist, Christina Maslach, who met him at the prison and observed the experiment. *This was on the fifth day. *She was appalled by the experiment, the behavior of the guards, and the treatment of the prisoners. *She told Zimbardo that if he didn't end the experiment then he was not the man she thought he was and would nomlomger date him.*

By the time the experiment dragged out into it's sixth day, the prisoners had begun to plan an escape. The guards, having gotten wind of it, prepared themselves for the prison break and informed the "warden". *Zimbardo, himself began preperations for the upcoming escape. *In a monent of claritymand objectivity, he remembered that it was an experiment and he wasn't really the warden.

On the seventh day, a week before it was planned to end, he pulled the plug on the experiment.

"Evil is a slippery slope", Zimbardo explained, "Each day is a platform for the abuses of the next day. Each day in only slightly use to the next day."

Maverick academic Philip Zimbardo says we are all capable of evil. Is he right? - Profiles - People - The Independent

Evil is a behavior or action is combination with an effect. Otherwise good people do present evil behaviors and outcomes.

90,000 to 166,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the bombing of Hiroshima. The total for Hiroshima and Nagasaki is estimated to be at half a million. Regardless of the intent, some half of that number died slowly over the days and weeks that followed, not immediately.

What level of death and suffering does it take to get that the evil is in the action, effect and the suffering FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE VICTIM, not based of the reason and intentions of the actor.

I believe that the political justification for the nuclear bombing of Japan was to save lives. Good or evil?

 

[itfitzme]

Evil has been studied scientifically. *The two landmark studies are the Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment. Both, due to their nature, have not been performed in the same way since the original studies. *The experiments were so dramatic as to be psychologically traumatic to the subjects and do not meet ethical standards today.

The Milgram Experiment was devised by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University in 1961. *A description of the Milgram Experiment can be found at*
Milgram experiment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Stanford Prison Experiment was devised by Stanford psychologist Phillip Zimbardo in 1971. A description may be found here
Stanford prison experiment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Interestingly,*Zimbardo and Milgram were high school classmates, growing up in New York City *Zimbardo graduated from Yale, eventually teaching at Stanford. *Milgram graduated from Harvard, eventually teaching at Yale.

Zimbardo spent much of his career studying evil. He has since*changed his focus to studying amd teaching heroism. *He*founded the Heroic Imagination Project

Phil Zimbardo, Ph.D. | Heroic Imagination Project

I had the opportunity to meet Zimbardo, in 2010, when he was lecturing on the Lucifer Effect, Abu Ghraib, and his newest work on heroism.

What I found quite interesting was his more detailed accounting of the effect that his Stanford Prison Experiment had on himself as an objective observer. *

The experiment was set up to mimic a prison, with guards and prisoners. *Other than the subject being assigned the roles of prisoners and guards, and provided with the suitable uniforms for their roles, no detailed instructions were provided. *Zimbardo, being the observer, also presented his role as the prison warden. *

As the experiment played out, the "guards" became increasingly more authoritarian and sadistic on their treatment of the prisoners.*

Now, Zimbardo was dating another psychologist, Christina Maslach, who met him at the prison and observed the experiment. *This was on the fifth day. *She was appalled by the experiment, the behavior of the guards, and the treatment of the prisoners. *She told Zimbardo that if he didn't end the experiment then he was not the man she thought he was and would nomlomger date him.*

By the time the experiment dragged out into it's sixth day, the prisoners had begun to plan an escape. The guards, having gotten wind of it, prepared themselves for the prison break and informed the "warden". *Zimbardo, himself began preperations for the upcoming escape. *In a monent of claritymand objectivity, he remembered that it was an experiment and he wasn't really the warden.

On the seventh day, a week before it was planned to end, he pulled the plug on the experiment.

"Evil is a slippery slope", Zimbardo explained, "Each day is a platform for the abuses of the next day. Each day in only slightly use to the next day."

Maverick academic Philip Zimbardo says we are all capable of evil. Is he right? - Profiles - People - The Independent

Evil is a behavior or action is combination with an effect. Otherwise good people do present evil behaviors and outcomes.

90,000 to 166,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the bombing of Hiroshima. The total for Hiroshima and Nagasaki is estimated to be at half a million. Regardless of the intent, some half of that number died slowly over the days and weeks that followed, not immediately.

What level of death and suffering does it take to get that the evil is in the action, effect and the suffering FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE VICTIM, not based of the reason and intentions of the actor.

I believe that the political justification for the nuclear bombing of Japan was to save lives. Good or evil?

Yep, that is a typical reason. Funny how that works.

 

[PaulS1950]

I believe that people are inherently well intentioned.
I also believe that people are inherently short sighted.
Helping someone overcome adversity can cause long term problems with their ability to cope with adversity in the future. "Good" or "Evil" to help someone overcome adversity?

Extend this example - A biology student sees that a butterfly is having trouble getting out of its cocoon so he cuts the cocoon open to "help" the buttfly. A "good" act. Since the butterfly did not have to go through the exertion of breaking through the cocoon it was never able to inflate its wings (true). so the butterfly could not fly to get to its food or to mate and soon died from predation that it could not get away from. The "good" act and intent caused the deformity and untimely death of the butterfly which was "evil". It was not able to live a "normal" life. "evil"
An act of "charity" that had "evil" results from the best of intentions.

 

[itfitzme]

Really? There are cases of weasels, wolves , sharks and great apes killing and leaving the dead corpses to rot. Usually humans have some sort of reason behind killing - even if it makes no sense to some - it must to the killer.

true ,but sometimes animal fight over territory ect .... some humans will kill for the thrill like serial killers do.

That's typically because they have some of psychotic disorder, which means their brain synapses don't fire correctly, they're confused. I don't know if I'd call a biological condition evil, but it certainly has the sick person performing sick acts.

I suggest that the prevalence of psychosis is a rare phenomina by comparison to plain old learned bad behavior, lack of learning good behavior, and that "slippery slope" where authority, power, and social pressure shifts people's rationalizations and actions, slowly and unchecked, towards the dark side. Often, and unforrunately, evil perpetrated begets evil in response (a tricky issue).

See "Lord of the Flies", Milgram, Stanford Prison Experiment, Nazi Germany, Hiroshima, childhood abuse, spousal abuse, early American feueds (Hatfield and McCoys), and the list goes on.

Evil effects are the same, regardless of whether they are perpetrated by a psychopath, someone with learned behavior, the lack of learning better, neglegence, or simply nature. This is what confounds the definition, the attempt to distinguish between the different motivating processes and the intents of the peretrators. And, it seems, an unstated determining assessment has to do with whether the actor shoukd be punished. The problem is that these are not hard line characteristics or even identifiable characteristics. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive. They are scalar properties and overlap. Whether punishment is warrented is secondary to containment. The blame game is meaningless in terms of tbe suffering of the victim.

"Nature, red in tooth and claw." has to often been the justification, by some, to justify evil. It is a step away from, "he needs to learn", which is a step away from repeated abuse.

The Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment demonstated how otherwise good and ordinary, intelligent people couldx be set up in a situation and pressured to commit abusive acts that, under different circumstances they would have rejected outright. If these experiment teach us anything, it is that evil is often the result of years of experiences and behaviors that walk the perpetrator ever so closer to commiting a truely evil action

This is why Zimbardo turned his studies towards teaching heroism because like evil, heroism is a learned behavior. As they say, smile and the world smiles back. What goes around, comes around. And if we could map it, like the CDC maps the transmission of diseases, we would find that evil and heroism are tranmitted from person to person.

 

[PratchettFan]

Evil is a behavior or action is combination with an effect. Otherwise good people do present evil behaviors and outcomes.

90,000 to 166,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the bombing of Hiroshima. The total for Hiroshima and Nagasaki is estimated to be at half a million. Regardless of the intent, some half of that number died slowly over the days and weeks that followed, not immediately.

What level of death and suffering does it take to get that the evil is in the action, effect and the suffering FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE VICTIM, not based of the reason and intentions of the actor.

By that definition an earthquake is evil.

 

[PratchettFan]

Evil has been studied scientifically. *The two landmark studies are the Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment. Both, due to their nature, have not been performed in the same way since the original studies. *The experiments were so dramatic as to be psychologically traumatic to the subjects and do not meet ethical standards today.

The Milgram Experiment was devised by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University in 1961. *A description of the Milgram Experiment can be found at*
Milgram experiment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Stanford Prison Experiment was devised by Stanford psychologist Phillip Zimbardo in 1971. A description may be found here
Stanford prison experiment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Interestingly,*Zimbardo and Milgram were high school classmates, growing up in New York City *Zimbardo graduated from Yale, eventually teaching at Stanford. *Milgram graduated from Harvard, eventually teaching at Yale.

Zimbardo spent much of his career studying evil. He has since*changed his focus to studying amd teaching heroism. *He*founded the Heroic Imagination Project

Phil Zimbardo, Ph.D. | Heroic Imagination Project

I had the opportunity to meet Zimbardo, in 2010, when he was lecturing on the Lucifer Effect, Abu Ghraib, and his newest work on heroism.

What I found quite interesting was his more detailed accounting of the effect that his Stanford Prison Experiment had on himself as an objective observer. *

The experiment was set up to mimic a prison, with guards and prisoners. *Other than the subject being assigned the roles of prisoners and guards, and provided with the suitable uniforms for their roles, no detailed instructions were provided. *Zimbardo, being the observer, also presented his role as the prison warden. *

As the experiment played out, the "guards" became increasingly more authoritarian and sadistic on their treatment of the prisoners.*

Now, Zimbardo was dating another psychologist, Christina Maslach, who met him at the prison and observed the experiment. *This was on the fifth day. *She was appalled by the experiment, the behavior of the guards, and the treatment of the prisoners. *She told Zimbardo that if he didn't end the experiment then he was not the man she thought he was and would nomlomger date him.*

By the time the experiment dragged out into it's sixth day, the prisoners had begun to plan an escape. The guards, having gotten wind of it, prepared themselves for the prison break and informed the "warden". *Zimbardo, himself began preperations for the upcoming escape. *In a monent of claritymand objectivity, he remembered that it was an experiment and he wasn't really the warden.

On the seventh day, a week before it was planned to end, he pulled the plug on the experiment.

"Evil is a slippery slope", Zimbardo explained, "Each day is a platform for the abuses of the next day. Each day in only slightly use to the next day."

Maverick academic Philip Zimbardo says we are all capable of evil. Is he right? - Profiles - People - The Independent

Evil is a behavior or action is combination with an effect. Otherwise good people do present evil behaviors and outcomes.

90,000 to 166,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the bombing of Hiroshima. The total for Hiroshima and Nagasaki is estimated to be at half a million. Regardless of the intent, some half of that number died slowly over the days and weeks that followed, not immediately.

What level of death and suffering does it take to get that the evil is in the action, effect and the suffering FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE VICTIM, not based of the reason and intentions of the actor.

I believe that the political justification for the nuclear bombing of Japan was to save lives. Good or evil?

Yep, that is a typical reason. Funny how that works.

Yes, that is how it works.