Insanity vs. Evil

MrBishop

MrBishop

Well-Known Member
I sometimes dread to open the newspaper, turn on the evening news, or even go to online groups (much like OTC) because of what I'll read there. Rapes and murders, torture, pyromania, stealing from the poor, massive drug rings selling to kids, child prostitution and kiddie porn, mass-graves, terrorism, and numerous other attrocities committed in the name of God/Allah/Budha/etc or just for the fun of it.

I try to be an optimist..I try to understand why people do things, but I can't. I try to live by my own saying "Nil humanis a me alienum pota" (Nothing human is alien to me) , in an effort to let things roll off of my back, but I often feel the weight of these attrocities as they roll, ever so slowly, off of my back leaving a foul and rancid trail behind. As I age, and my sence of immortality begins to fray at the edges, I find myself asking "why?" more often. Why do these things happen?

I'm hoping that you all might help me shed even a small ray of light onto this subject. Perhaps together, we can begin to see its outline and call out its name. Is it human nature which drives us to such deeds? Is it the presence of evil in teh world? Is it a wave of psychological/physiological errors which render so many insane? or is it merely normal for us to act in this way occasionally?

Please, before the darkness falls upon the land and I awaken to another horror written in black ink or splashed upon the digital reality, help me call it's name so that my nightmares can be brought into the light.
 
Some out there seem to have an innate sense of thrill in tasting the forbidden fruit by acting outside of the moral code of society. There are those that also seem immune to empathy or human restraint either because of nature or because they were themselves the recipient of ill treatment at some point within their lives. There are some that even see pain and suffering as pleasure or self destruction via proxy or a way of extracting some measure of dominance or superiority amongst their peers. It is the ones that meet at the crossroads of all three that seem to be the destructors within society. I believe it to be a compound result of a tragic series of errors as well as unchecked nature that leads to such acts.
I don't think that many wake up and decide to dedicate themselves to evil. They, in their own ways, always think of themselves as being the last bastion of good and that the rest of man has been distracted by the maliase of having full bellies and no common enemy to unite them in a cause. How many James Bond super villains actually thought of themselves as evil and acting in a self enriching manner and how many of them thought that they were saving humanity from themselves by being the genesis of a new utopia... and consequently seeing themselves as the ultimate good? Morality is in the eye of the beholder.
 
It is all a matter of your view point, except for some EXTREME cases

albert fish knew he was evil, and loved it.
 
*Sigh* I see this too. The evil. The hatred. The corruption. Why? Let's just call it 'human nature' and ignore it... Right?

:disgust:
 
nah, you rise up against it, fight it when you can.

I teach teenages respect in the metro, they get upset when I pull them out of there seats so someone with a cane can sit.

but I'm scary, so I can get away with it
 
MrBishop said:
or is it merely normal for us to act in this way occasionally?
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Indeed. Its clearly within our genetic programming. Its thankfully rare though. and it takes an extraordinary set of events to bring it about. the really bad stuff at least. but look at nature. many animals commit infanticide against their own species because it benefits their genes. they arent considered evil though. its just part of their programming. what is benign in nature appears to us through a lens of consciousness as evil.
 
bish you are opening up a major can of worms here. i think as TD said it is natural to have reactions like this but also think of this for a second. Most people even psychiatrist and psychologsts dont know exactly how a mind works. and some people are influenced by other factors. Some are evil some are insane. and David Berkowitz AKA the Son of Sam was a little of both. supposedly it was a demon that told him to kill
 
DaBish said:
I sometimes dread to open the newspaper, turn on the evening news, or even go to online groups (much like OTC) because of what I'll read there. Rapes and murders, torture, pyromania, stealing from the poor, massive drug rings selling to kids, child prostitution and kiddie porn, mass-graves, terrorism, and numerous other attrocities committed in the name of God/Allah/Budha/etc or just for the fun of it.
Click to expand...


And thats just YOUR threads....:D

Seriously, I've come to understand it simply. HYPOCRISY IS THE ONLY SIN. Ponder it a moment before attacking it.....
 
People do things because of the bad traits inherent in human nature.

Evil is a stupid word to me, no oneis really evil, it's just a word used by people to describe others with different beliefs and standards.
 
i agree but there are some people who do evil acts such as killing for the sake of being evil. some devil worshippers have done this in the name of Lucifer
 
It's a sad state of affairs, thats for sure. Yet somehow it is understandable whilst being lamentable.

6 Billion people all struggling for an identity. A yearning to be recognised, understood and cared for. A desire to feel compassion and human comfort. A need to communicate. A cry for help.

The stresses of modern life are almost unbearable. The pain and confusion of failed relationships, the humiliation of not being employable, the crushing financial burdens of trying to make ends-meet, the inability to maintain meaningful friendships - these are just a few of the root causes of this malady.

Like anything that is subject to too much pressure, something has to give.

Evil? I don't think so. A sad and sick reflection of the pressures of modern-day life? I'll go with that.
 
Squiggy said:
And thats just YOUR threads....:D

Seriously, I've come to understand it simply. HYPOCRISY IS THE ONLY SIN. Ponder it a moment before attacking it.....
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I use OTC in three parts, all as equal as possible. For me, OTC and other sites which I haunt are:

1) A place of solace and companionship

2) A location where I can place issues that I feel should not just die out, lost in the half-consciousness of our daily lives. So many things happen in the world, so much advertising, so much crap...that we wear blinders to prevent our own insanity. Sometimes, major issues arise and I fear that they will be ignored, or worst belittled, like wheat tossed out with the chaff, and so..I post them here.
I hope to increase their life and doing so, increase our consciousness of reality in all of it's dirt and grit.

3) A place to poll others and measure my own humanity against it. A living, breathing and evolving status-poll.

It might be hypocratic of me to complain about what evils that I find online whilst all the while posting them myself, but it's only a reflection of my duality...I dread what I write. I dread that it shall not be written.
 
I dread what I write. I dread that it shall not be written.
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I've pondered that as well....

And that leads me to another branch of this discussion, or perhaps it's own. I think it's own.
 
PuterTutor said:
I've pondered that as well....

And that leads me to another branch of this discussion, or perhaps it's own. I think it's own.
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You going to open up a new thread for it, or shall I?
 
freako104 said:
bish you are opening up a major can of worms here. i think as TD said it is natural to have reactions like this but also think of this for a second. Most people even psychiatrist and psychologsts dont know exactly how a mind works. and some people are influenced by other factors. Some are evil some are insane. and David Berkowitz AKA the Son of Sam was a little of both. supposedly it was a demon that told him to kill
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It's because people are genetically programmed to be self-centered. Insanity, and what we descrbe as evil, are more extreme cases of ego-centrism. We are social primates with anti-social tendencies. Programmed to follow the alpha primate while, all the time, striving to be the alpha primate.
 
freako104 said:
bish you are opening up a major can of worms here.
Click to expand...

I like worms. Long thin slimy ones, short fat juicy ones, itsy-bitsy fuzzy-wuzzy worms :)

Consider it my 'other' day job...to help fight dull threads and boring days/nights with thought-provoking threads. :)
 
I like the breadth of the responces thus far, but a lot of them fall into the "It's not our fault, we're just that way" thread.

We can't begin to understand the human mind, or can we? Psychologists and sociologists have studied it for decades and archaologists for longer still. What's led us to where we are today?

We are animals and have certain ways of thinking because of that. We seek food, shelter and companionship. We crave sex to pass on our genes, and we crave power because it's better to lead than to follow. Fine.

The problem is that we diverge from our own biological desires, where we place one need above another. People who starve themselves in order to have sex (models), people who seek solitude in order to rule over others....

Then, there are those that focus so much on one aspect of their needs that the desire surpasses the needs itself. Megalomaniacs, nymphomaniacs, despots, etc... and those who twist their understanding of their own needs into something that only nominally resembles the need: Sadists, Bestialists/pedophiles, Michael Jackson :) (j/k)

I can understand when a mind goes into some wierd loop and enters absessive-compulsive behavior.*Storing goods and never throwing anything away*
I can understand the sudden jump forward that people can have when their barriers are removed suddenly and they enter into unknown territory *A weak man who crack after one bullying affair and kills the person who offended him*

but...when there seems to be no path taken by an individual to lead them to this behavior, I'm lost.

If the person in the thread I started about the 5-year-old girl had been mollested as a child, tried finding sexual satidfaction with women and failed, tried with mena nd failed, tried with himself and wasn't satisfied and then...tried with kids...well, that'd be a twisted, but natural progression. I can see where the logic failed.

Sometimes though, there is no discerneable path or progression. Sometimes, people find pleasure in doing evil things while still managing to remain 'normal' the rest of the time.
Is it a hidden desire to do evil?
 
MrBishop said:
Sometimes though, there is no discerneable path or progression. Sometimes, people find pleasure in doing evil things while still managing to remain 'normal' the rest of the time.
Is it a hidden desire to do evil?
Click to expand...

are you talking about psychopaths? I consider them "broken circuits" if you will. i think thats very much hard wire issues. but this isnt to say they dont have their place in our species from an evolutionary perspective. it COULD be a very beneficial trait to have no sense of guilt whatsoever. think about the benefits of having no remorse no matter what vile acts you commit.
 
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