Hmmmm.

[corknut]

Mr. LaForce: "Maddie, how can you possibly play your saxophone with gum in your mouth?"
Maddie: "Sorry." [spits out gum]
Joel: [Pulls a huge bag of M&Ms out from under her stand] "Look, there's this, too!"

My Justice Studies professor says that the only way someone can really process or make sense of some of the most awful things in the world is to accept that evil people exist-- not just people who do evil things, but people who are absolutely, truly, unequivocally evil.

I couldn't disagree more.

Comments

[fruitsgrow.livejournal.com]

Is he teaching justice studies or really bad fantasy cliches?

[banerry.livejournal.com]

... I lol'd. :|

[fruitsgrow.livejournal.com]

8)

[harpseals.livejournal.com]

I know someone who thinks I belong to the last group. :/

[banerry.livejournal.com]

What. :(

[century-fox.livejournal.com]

I disagree, too...I mean, look at Dexter! *points to icon* Seriously, though...I don't think that anyone is completely evil. I think that a lot of awful things that happen are because, for whatever reason, people think that what they're doing is the right thing to do and that they're actually justified in their actions (like Hitler with wanting to eliminate all Jewish people because he thought they were inferior)

Another thing is that, given the circumstances, people can be convinced to do horrible things without even realizing it...I don't know if you ever heard of/learned about this experiment done by this guy named Stanley Milgram (or Milgrim, idk the exact spelling but whatevs). He claimed that he was doing a learning experiment and that some people were going to be teachers and some would be learners, and that the teachers would give the learners questions and if the learners answered incorrectly, the teachers had to give them a shock. For every question they got wrong, they would increase the amount of volts that the learner was given. In reality, though, all the people who participated in the experiment were the teachers, and the learners weren't actually given shocks, they just had to act like they were being shocked, because the experiment was testing how far people were willing to go and how much voltage they'd give a person just because they were told to. Apparantly a lot of people went pretty far, and this experiment showed that given the situation, people could be convinced to do things they wouldn't normally think they would do just for the sake of being obedient/following orders.

So yeah, sorry for this whole ramble. I just wanted to make the point that I completely agree with you and disagree with your professor, because I'd be really surprised if there were people who were just completely evil and were just like "I'm going to hurt people because I want to cause them pain." I mean, I know there are people out there who ARE really sick and twisted but I guess I just feel like there's both good and bad in everyone, and that most people who do awful things are a lot more twisted and the reasons behind that are a lot more complex than simply "They're an evil person and they wanted to cause destruction."

[banerry.livejournal.com]

Milgram's experiment and the Stanford prison experiment really show how easy it is to convince "normal", everyday people to do horrible things. DX

I pretty much agree with everything you say-- though I do believe that there are people out there who do horrible things just because they think it's fun, or because they actually want people to be in pain. But I don't think that makes them "evil"-- I just think it makes them very screwed up, dangerous, and in need of serious help. :|

[super-pineapple.livejournal.com]

I can actually agree with that. And I'm not talking about terrorists or hitler; Century_fox explained that away pretty well. Lemme' explain:

I'm pretty sure everyone has thought about doing something horribly and terribly wrong for absolutely no reason. Like, you see a frog on your lawn, and you feel like holding it down and doing something to it, and you don't know why. Or your bored and you look at the people around you, and wonder what'd happen if you decided to whale on someone. Really, the only thing that stops you is your conscience, and your conscience is something ingrained into you by other people. I am perfectly willing to believe that a person raised without exposure to morals, social pressure, or "right and wrong" would have nothing stopping them from doing these weird, inexplicable, evil things.

Or that could just be me and I really need to see a psychiatrist.

[banerry.livejournal.com]

"I am perfectly willing to believe that a person raised without exposure to morals, social pressure, or "right and wrong" would have nothing stopping them from doing these weird, inexplicable, evil things."

I definitely agree with that. I just don't think that makes them an Evil Person; rather, they're a person who does Evil Things.

... Pffft if that makes sense.