Evil People Aren't Evil

Was Hitler evil? If you ask any common person off the street this question, most people would first be stunned that this is still even a question, but then answer of course he was. But to call Hitler was evil, we must understand what evil is first. Now before I continue, I would just like to say that I am no way saying that Hitler was not evil and didn’t do anything wrong, but that’s my perspective. By definition evil means wickedness and immoral. These types of standards are taught throughout one’s child hood and mostly through their parents, religion, and society. But what happens when someone isn’t taught this morals or “rules”. a while back I watched a documentary titled Rage Child, you can watch it here at this link;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aGNbl7Nx-A. In this documentary, a little girl was brought up abused and was not taught any rules until about the age of 4. All she knew before that was to hide from her father so she wouldn’t get beat. But after she was taught rules, she found no substance in them, and decided to carelessly break them. This escalated until she was killing birds and stabbing her dog. And again, she found nothing wrong with it. Now from our right minded perspective, this little girl is evil and even a little psychopathic, but from her perspective, what she is doing is good, since she was never taught that it was wrong to hurt and kill, and they things are giving her a sense of pleasure. Perspective is everything when it comes to deciding whether an act or person or place is a certain attribute. If you are going to visit Niagara Falls, it’s beautiful, but if you’re house was built 10 feet away from the down pouring water, it’s repulsing, annoying, and you would feel a deep hate you wouldn’t have for it, if you visited the falls. This same concept can be applied with Hitler; if you believed the same things as Hitler did, then Hitler was an angel to you, if you didn’t believe in the torture and cruelty, he’s a devil, like to most of us. What I’m trying to portray is, maybe not everything we’re taught that is “wrong”, is wrong. It all depends on how one looks and perceive it, so don’t let all of your morals control you, and don’t judge somebody on theirs.

I posted this in another thread, which is relevant for this OP;

Note I am not referring to any ontological evil, e.g. the existence of Satan, devil, etc., in this post.

What is evil?
What is not good is by default evil. Evil is any thing that is net-negative and net-harm to the individual and therefrom to the well being of humanity.

The concept of evil can be very subjective and to ensure a high degree of objectivity we need to establish the following;

  1. Obtain a full or thorough listings of what acts are generally termed directly or synonymously as ‘evil.’
  2. Obtain consensus on what is obviously recognized as evil.
  3. Put aside contentious elements for further deliberations.

I don’t think it is difficult for us to agree on a list representing what is obviously ‘evil’.

  1. In general most people will agree mass genocides, mass rapes, serial killing, premeditated murder, tortures, torture then murder are ‘evil’.
  2. Deliberately lying is evil albeit of low degree in comparison to those in 1.

If we do a serious exercise of a taxonomy of the elements of evils, I am sure most people can agree on a listing on what is obviously recognized as evil of various degrees [putting aside whatever is contentious for further deliberations]. This common consensus of ‘what is evil’ as supported with a list of evil elements is our objective grounds [not absolute but open for contentious views any time] to deliberate on the issues of evil.

Where does evil come from?
DNA wise, All humans are born with the inherent POTENTIAL to be beastly and evil.
note potential mean dormant within and is not active until activated

To facilitate survival all humans are endowed with a neural circuit to kill and maim [including other physical and mental harm to others] within the basement of their brain. It is critical to kill animals for food and kill other humans to defend oneself, etc. These killing and harmful impulses are termed ‘evil’ when perverted from their natural instinctive purposes.

Because the potential to be evil is embedded deep in the brain as an instinct, there is no way of getting rid of it physically at present. However through 6 millions of progress this potential to be evil is suppressed in humans at the present by inhibitors and triggered when necessary.

One critical point relevant in this case is, based on empirical evidences, all human variables are naturally and Normally Distributed over a range of degrees from low to high. Thus what we have with humans is the inhibitors that suppressed the evil potential in all humans come within a range from very strong, average to very weak.

Since a percentile of ‘very weak’ inhibitors will naturally exist, there will be human who has weak to very-weak inhibitors that are unable to suppress the evil potential within them. These are the percentile of humans who are born with an active evil tendency to commit evil of various degrees [from low, average to high].
These are the people who are compelled to commit evil on their own evil impulses or when their evil tendencies are triggered by external stimuli, e.g. violent elements in various medias, movies, books, etc.

There are a percentage of people who are born with a good set of strong inhibitors that suppressed their inherent evil potential. However all neuron inhibitors are subject to atrophy and damage [various reasons]. Thus some humans who are born with good tendencies can turned to be evil prone if their inhibitors are weakened due to various reasons.

So as long as there are humans, a percentile [%] will be evil prone naturally from birth due to nature and some turned evil due to nurture factors. This is the basis where evil came from.

The above is the reason why there is so much evil acts being committed by SOME humans at any time. There is no Satan, devil, Iblis existing out there seducing humans to be evil. The so-called “Satan” is within humanity and active in SOME humans due to weak inhibitors.

Solutions to deal with Evil

The most effective solution to prevent and reduce evil is to

  1. get rid of the killing and fighting impulses that has evil potential or
  2. increase the strength and efficiency of the inhibitors [brakes] that modulate the impulses that can turned evil when perverted.

I don’t believe option 1 is possible because they are necessary for survival, etc. and beside they are embedded very deep in the brain thus more complicated to deal with due to their interdependent and complex connectivity throughout the whole brain.

I believe option 2 is very possible and many has been tried and are successful except they are not practiced by the masses because of their ignorance and the defending/resisting nature of their religion.