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Elysium · Jun 25, 2010, 07:01 PM

I haven't been able to make it through all of the links yet, or see the video, but I will. This topic is a bit sensitive for me though so it's taken me a day to decide to post.

Just my two cents.....

I too believe that evil is in our (human) behaviors and acts. There are some people who may be born more genetically predisposed to aggression, and if put in a traumatic and horrible environment may develop "evil" behaviors and commit "evil" actions. I do not believe anyone is ever born evil though.

I think it is something like a "perfect storm". You take a child, you suffer them to experience horrible things at the hands of family/society and, depending on their environment, culture, spirituality, etc they start to act out. Some are able to hold onto themselves and find themselves treatment. They make a choice. They are able to see the forest for the trees and say, this is not who I want to be. Others have been so corrupted that they lose the ability to see the forest, and they lose the ability to make healthy choices for themselves so they make the choices which tend to be the easiest ones to make, which generally tend to be the worst ones. It's very easy to make a choice to commit an "evil" act. It's a lot harder to hold yourself up to a higher standard as this requires the ability to recognize your conscience and allow it to be heard. It requires you to be able to tolerate the inner conflicts of "good" vs. "evil", which can be exhausting. Regardless whether you can or cannot see the forest though, it is still a choice.

There are some people who will claim that "evil" is something that can infect people who do things that society has deemed inappropriate. They use "evil" as a way to manipulate others so they will behave in a way that "society" deems appropriate. They are told "If you do not do things the way we say...you are a bad person....and if you are a bad person....then you are an evil person and you will be treated accordingly and be damned to a horrible place, where only the bad people go, for all of eternity. Unless, of course, you CHOOSE not to be 'evil' anymore and you CHOOSE to follow our rules. Then you will be safe from eternal damnation and we will wash you clean."

Wow!! So you have people who threaten and manipulate other people with Eternal Damnation and manipulate them into thinking they, themselves, are actually "evil" and that they will only be "good" if they agree to abide by a set group of rules? Does this not sound mean? It does to me. This is a behavior people CHOOSE to engage in that I find very "evil".