Is it nature or nurture in the chaser of the conjecture? Who knows? After decades of debate and controversy, no one has any definitive answers as to a single causative factor relative to the malevolence of human activities. There are of course various schools of thought, and answers depend on your particular point of view.
Such is the state of the duality of the human species, because for some of us it is both, and much more. Throughout the ages, there are numerous points of reference that testify to the salacious proclivity people have for killing. To unleash the monsters from the Id, so to speak, is of unique potentially for everyone.
As such, evil is a term some use to indicate the opposite of doing the good, the correct and the decently right thing for oneself and for others. By connection, such also concerns exercising lawful conduct. As used here for the moment, its relevance pertains to the manifestations that result in criminal behavior.
Evil is choosing intentionally to commit selfish inflictions upon others, including other life forms, as well as the environment. Also, reference is constructed with the inclusive ramifications of committing injuries upon people, places and things contrary to public law. Illicit behaviors that violate duly constituted sanctions are viewed as purposeful, planned and selfishly motivated incidents.
Regardless of upbringing history, parental guidance or lack thereof, poverty, abusive relationships, socio-economic inequities, etc., there are no excuses for malevolent behaviors. Nonetheless, others will differ as to the mitigations and argue a variety of rationalizations. Regardless, evil is a matter of self-centered desire for personal gain. With malice aforethought and premeditation, one calculates maliciousness.
The appearance, display or exhibition of any semblance of evil is expressed in diverse manners. From seemingly benign pottery bickering over nonsense, to atrocities of war, human evil know no limits. By various contrivances and collusions, across the devolving regression of humankind, intentional acts are directed toward selfish appeasements. Gratification, from hedonistic collaborations of thought and perpetration, constitute deliberate and willful instigations. Such things are within the individual and regard no excuses for antisocial antics by explanation of simplistic externality.
Yet, many will collude in the conspiratorial to trump a range of mitigations to exonerate vicariously the malicious initiations human execute. There are no alibis or excusatory rationalizations that justify humanity’s wickedness. The human species has had long enough to get beyond the degradation they enjoy committing. In addition, that is a play on words isn’t it, “humanity”. As if the mirror of humankind might spawn the vast reaches of charity and goodwill, although a few examples might testify.
People enact vile actions toward others for personal gain, and span the social spectrum from the impoverished to the wealthy elitists. Power, control and domination of others are reflective consequences of thoughtful actions. By not recognizing the potentiality of malevolent behaviors on the part of everyone, the human species is doomed to its eventual demise. Extinction is the result of a failure to transform to higher ascendency by mature insightful enlightenment as a more differentiated and evolved life form.
Good people, as one might assume and assumptions are sometimes faulty, can translate upright intentions into horrendous carnage. Frequently, so called “goodness” have disastrous consequences when coupled with lofty notions of changing others to fit a particular preconceived mold. This might be exemplified by the egocentric efforts of one person perpetually trying to changes another and failing each to achieve the ideal creation. One who seeks to rescue the “victim” of their own maladaptive contrivances meets the folly of failure by the counterproductive actions of the other.
Likewise, such considerations apply to countries whose self-righteous “leaders” assert they want to make the world safe for “democracy”. Men and women are subsequently committed to war, while the alleged leadership that put them in hostile foreign places remains safely secure. For those advocating war against another, perhaps they should be the first to go, and lead the charge in opposition to the perceived evil.
In response to such assertions, one must ask the depth of such superficiality, hypocrisy, and probability of selfishness in hidden agendas. Evil is in all aspects of human thinking, but remains controlled to a certain point. In the duality of human nature, the struggle continues beyond the antediluvian emergence to the present day. As in the studies of a few, as what might be called the “demonic effect”, given the temptation of satiating particular desires, everyone is fully capable of the most heinous actions imaginable. In 200,000 years, what has changed in the nature of people?
Primarily, the point of reference here is that evil is used to reflect the wickedness people do to each other and not things like natural disasters, pain and suffering from illness, and so forth, including metaphysical illusions to the occult. Weather and related environmental conditions are not relevant to this particular aspect of illicit human activities. However, where people, groups and organizations exploit natural resources for personal gain, similarly the nature of evil is at work.
Fundamentally, humans are flawed and imperfect, as finite physicality and perhaps mental capacity, will attest over time. People continue to carry out the selectivity of their self-centered inclinations for which others suffer. From agribusiness collusions in corporate corruption and social network stalking and bullying, to terroristic complicities of nation-state atrocities, human beings inflict a wide range of divisiveness. Diverse personalities carry out divergent pursuits over a range of competing ideologies.
In a kind of chess game, that is a mental gambit bent on maximizing self-gratification by personal and private proclivity, or perhaps group orientation, an individual pursues each move by calculated effort. It is a seduction to feeling better about oneself, the gainful enrichment, and the exhilaration of achievement, in the aftermath of the competitiveness. One gets what one wants in spite of the other’s needs.
By way of manipulations, for the amative expectation of his or her position relative to another, motion is for the benefit of the mover. And, the commotion may result in “acts of evil” inflicted beyond the basic requirements of a normative sense of civility. Here again, this is suggested to be the “darkside” of human behavior through various types of communal commotions. The perpetrator, many seemingly harmless and “normal”, harbors the thinking processes conducive to wicked adversarial endeavors.
The world as a “chess board” is a willful interactive process of out maneuvering another. For the perpetrator, the energies focus on manipulations of various sorts, in order to satisfy wants and desires. Whether by passive not so noticeable movements or aggressive up close in your face confrontations, the purposeful calamity stems for internal evilness. It is evidenced by outright acts of abusive name-calling, vandalistic stupidity, or chilling covert intentions for torture and murder. People are seen the pawns for self-aggrandizement. By childish showmanship, for attention and validation, self-promotion reflects foolishness that often culminates in harm to others.
Rather than expend the energetic eccentricities of individuality toward an enhanced and enlightened life form, the stagnant ones persist in self-destructive instigations. As perceptions purpose to narrow the selfish nurturing satiations of infantile reassurance, a person more often than not chooses the pleasurable rewards, rather than the more difficult challenges of learning then insists upon change.
While subjective cultivation of personal selectivity insists upon poor quality decision making, the amative inclinations of particular personality claim the arrogance of that which nurtures private proclivities. Answers to perplexing confrontations are easily encapsulated with simplistic solutions that do not fully explain natural complexity. By avoiding the centrality of continual harmonious integration, demise is ensured.
By one’s failure to embrace the quest of self-evolution for enlightened transformation, the easier walk with life is less cumbersome and laborious. Plotting, scheming and analyzing the probable attainment of short-term gain, with minimal risk and investment, assured of high return, he or she devolves to the carnality of the hunt. Effort is primal and existence is static, as wisdom is replaced by emotion.
With all things being answered without challenge, difficulty, pain or failure, the herded assemblies remove themselves from the persistence of advancing the species. History fades and present predicaments mirror the forgotten calamities of selfishly arrogant perpetrations in human degradation. As human nature changes little over time, the same disasters continue, undeterred by a seemingly intelligent species.
While some would advocate that I.Q.’s of post-modern samplings have risen, the darkside of the question relates to the relevance of the reality in profound transformative wisdom. At least the sampled groupings appear to know how to answer questions on of a formatted inquiry. Yet, the problems of the pre-apocalyptic planetary civilization continue. There are many examples of humans doing bad things to each other.
In another survey of human debauchery, some suggest a “safer” global environment, as homicidal actions flat-line and decrease. A lull in the “hunting” contests of human “warfare” may be short-lived, as in the life span of humankind, while an upsurge may be around the next corner. Then again, what if adaptations of selfishness find alternatives? With cyberspace, the World Wide Web, mass communications, social networking, etc., there are other insidious ways to injury fellow beings.
One does not need physically to kill another to do harm. For the amative salaciousness of quenching desires to control life and defeat death ideations, a person can inflict all types of injurious actions. From cultic collusions to political piracy, and corporate complicity, vandalizing animosity can be of varied forms. In nurture of self-deception, a person relishes in the superficiality of self-reflection. Daily, an individual sees that other self in the looking glass of illusions and pretenses to self-righteousness.
Anyone is fully capable by carnal influence, of the easy acceptance of lies he or she tells oneself. When that is done, and often it is, the process of magical thinking can loom to enormous proportions. Where a proposition is made to assert a falsehood, as in a dogmatic belief system, dangers creep close in non-acceptance by others. The various religious beliefs around the world are a testimony to such potentiality.
Given a range of ideological projections, and the power of language, trouble free believability is not far behind. Many easily accept simplistic trouble free assertions of what someone might say. Yet, few understand what was actually said. For the vast majority of people, a limited number, a minority of such groupings, does anyone actually employ critical thinking applications. Few invoke the troubling prospects of thinking by analytic reflection. A template, a basic profile, is preferred over the facts.
To go deeper, more insightful, in an effort toward enlightenment is laborious, and rife with the animosity of others. Fearing the loss of status quo stability, reactionary and emotional intolerance takes on varied means of retribution. By acting neither stupid nor misinformed, seemingly intelligent people who ought to know better believe in foolish things. By doing so, evil is encouraged at various level of communal conformity.
Most people are very fearful in facing the inner demonic forms of their dysfunctions. As such, they willingly embrace obligations of perceived cultural necessities for normality in maintaining a fictitious state of affairs. Fear grips the senses in the prospect of surviving in a failing culture, faltering governments, social collapse, and moral decline. Likewise, complicity in fostering the deterioration intellectual ascendancy toward hastens the devolution of humanity toward eventual demise. With such dereliction of societal responsibility to mature, grow wise, and renovate thinking, other more disastrous choices are made. Self-evolution is a frightening prospect because it means a more liberated differentiated lifestyle, beyond debasing self-centeredness.
From cerebral manifestations to real life devastations, an evil disposition to do harm is lurking in the shadows of human thinking. Humans will not change, except for the daring few, to achieve the gratifications they feel entitled. For the one contemplating a criminal transgression, as opposed to a more benign social contemplation, the energy applied to crossing the line of civility is readily available. Predictability as to potentiality is beyond our limited human capacity at this juncture of history. By seeming to understand, perhaps maybe comprehend the motivations of people, we think we might change humankind for the betterment of all planetary life forms. That expresses our arrogance.
Likewise, in relation to criminality, which manifests in many diverse forms, prediction is nothing more guesswork. Take the popularity of so called “criminal profiling”, or “behavioral analysis” for instance. Many, especially a lot who ought to know better, believe in their pretentious to gullibility, that one might know the unknown perpetrator by pretending to “read” the “signature” of the crime scene. While that works within the time slot of a televisions drama, with time out for commercial messages, a case can be easily solved by applying a simplistic template to the diversity of human behavior.
In the real world of human nature, that is an illusion. Such is the myth, magic and metaphor of fiction claimed as reality and the expressiveness of smug piety. We confuse and confound the murkiness of cause and effect into a fabrication of lore, legend and fairy tale. As hope springs eternal, the assurance of subjective validation finds the “evidence” needed to substantiate our cognitive bias. In the process, we contrive the foolishness of inferential fallacies and race to resurrect misguided hasty generalizations. It is the sleight of hand and legerdemain of the smoke and mirrors by which we deceive ourselves. For the amative feel of immediate gratification, anything is possible.
When the line is crossed, others will suffer. It is by will and by choice, from the basis of a hedonistically calculated perspective. The world is but a matter of human competitiveness, survival orientation, by which each expresses his degree of power, control and domination, or the lack thereof. Personal gain is at the core of the thinking processes. Given the conditions conducive to the selectivity of acquisition, accepted rules can be suspended, manipulated or otherwise exploited. Since most people do not change willingly over time, and prefer a more “juvenile” or adolescent approach to living, immaturity can be played out in very destructive ways.
In the nature of human evil, actions can speak out in a number of ways. The manifestations do not have to be outright horrific. Such activities can be very subtle. By abuse in relationships, blowing up a subway, allowing impoverished conditions for the sake of greed and corruption, hacking a database, or stealing parts of an economic system, as well as avoiding accountability for communal responsibilities in public office. For self-indulgent purposes, people can suspend empathy, avoid productive decision-making and prefer illicit tasks to more productive actions.
With one’s personal belief system fixed in place, with little or no alteration over time, odds are that person will not change for the better. Any threat to such inner prejudice, or bias, will be met with hostilities across a multifaceted hostile spectrum. Malevolence is expressed in a belief system that translates thinking into action. Religion is a good example in a variety of ways. With a self-focused conception, along with a fixation on a personal unbending moral perspective, steeped in an illusion of dogma, and fallacies of reasoning, a person is fully capable of antagonistic behaviors.
Additionally, in one’s hypocrisy, it is easy to ignore in oneself what is presumably observed in others. By an individual’s seduction to his or her own point of view, he or she will fight to defend that ideological position no matter what. Emotional reactivity, absent the facts, purposely overlooks the relevance of evidentiary considerations. Reliable evidence in proof to the contrary, will be seen as threatening. In self-deception, given the avoidance of a self-evolving and transforming ascendency, many will allow the recognition of both individual and group regression. Along with that comes the assertion of particular believability where evidentiary artifacts are absent.
As such, the nature of evil and its nurture encompass many aspects of human interactivity. None of these things is good for humankind to evolve productively as a more transformative species. In the scope of criminality for instance, a person can appear to be normal, and seem to be what others might say is a “good person”. Yet, when that so-called “fine upstanding citizen” commits a horrible breach of social consensus, others pretend to be surprised. All manner of “disbelief” are conveniently expressed, and suddenly “monsters” are running loose everywhere. However, what do we really know about any particular person at given juncture of time and place? The complexity of thinking goes deeply within the individual’s multidimensional realm.
Significantly, to ensure one has continued existence, contrary to the permanence of extinction, and the finality of a life, there remains the eternal struggle to oppression toward another. Live perceived is death relieved, at least momentarily. Regarding the nature of evil is the relevance of this descriptor for counterproductive human interactivity. Simply calling an act of maladaptive behavior, of one person versus another, as an act of “evil”, only ascribes a reference point.
Evil as the actions of harming others covers a variety of behavioral inflictions. From ethical issues to criminal conduct, the wickedness that people do remains destructive to the advancement of civilization. To that point of particular allusion, the nature of evil, that invites the notion of “demonic forces”. From the perspective of criminality, some believe the “forces evil” drive people to criminal behavior. Whatever one’s philosophical or pseudoscience viewpoint, solvability factors ought to receive more validation that an immediacy of excusing the conduct. Yet, everyone is quick to find excuses.
All too frequently though across the societal spectrum, a cry for mitigation echoes. An easy answer desires to quench the panic of ignorance. While foolhardy conjecture and emotional irrelevancy trump facts and rationality, silly things are done in the name of fixing “the problem”. A metaphorical scale of malevolence stretches the scope of evil, from lesser forms to more insidious destructiveness. Across that continuum, stupidity, the foolishness of unenlightened thinking, can be very destructive.
Following a horrendous event, such negotiated speciousness quickly looks for “reasons” why such behaviors took place. Exact, precise, and quantitative explanations are elusive. Terrible things will happen again. And, in the aftermath a search for a quick fix, to make sure it “never happens again”, usually fails to ask deeper questions about human selfishness. Politicians, the press and pundits of curious “expertise” join an uninformed, misguided chorus of calls for “change”. Do people really change?
History of human beings does not show many positive trends. Instead, the human race hasn’t changed all that much in thousands of years, as to the essential nature. Nonetheless, there are multitudes of persistent nurturing explanations. Nature-nurture is confounding, multifaceted and intricate. To this day, little is known, or even clearly understood, as to the complexity of individual in terms of his or her thinking processes. It represents the age-old debate, on several levels and directions.
Agelessly, there continues the argumentative posture of two major schools of thought, with many linkages and subdivisions. From an assortment of ideological considerations, one side of the spectrum looks to the hedonistic intentional selfishness of freewill. Meanwhile across the communal framework, the other searches for clues in deterministic forces. Often, this means that there are mitigations outside the person and beyond his or her control. Opinions are diverse and represent many theories as to the aspects of how, what and why people think the things they do, and do the things they think.
Regardless, the end result may inflict harm to others. From particular thoughts, a chain of good or bad events becomes probable and then a certainty. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, no one has cornered the market in greater wisdom about the multidimensional complexity of human ideations. We continue to debate one’s self-motivated free expressions of malevolent thinking, where poor choices are made regardless of personal history, social status or other excuse-oriented influences. That goes in contrast to the growing acceptance of one excuse upon another, to alleviate culpability.
Fallacies of inference that lead to hasty unscientific generalizations, steeped in ignorance, emotionalism and bias, no matter how well accepted, do not ensure certainty. Likewise, unscientific asserted conjecture, absent evidentiary validation, for any claim not exclusively provable, regardless of public gullibility, substantiates nothing. Unfortunately, in post-modern pop culture collectivism, where easy solutions and immediate gratifications are reinforced, analytic thinking falters.
Rational choice advocates, as well as classical theorists, with a focus on responsibility for what one thinks and subsequently does, contrasts sharply with the forgoing philosophical perspectives. Those views that are fast to “justify” illicit behaviors, whereby “externalities of influence” are “driving forces”, do not advance the cause-effect necessity for advancing human civilization. On the contrary, while being a contrasting contrary position, aid in hastening the regression of the human species.
For many people, quickly getting an alibi, and eventually “rehabilitation”, doesn’t often insist upon accountability and corrective responsibility for actions committed. Many people, from politicians to priests, from consumers to corporations, want a convenient way out of whatever predicament they chose in the first place. Manipulation of interpersonal interactions hides behind clever and cunning disguises.
On the so-called darkside of human nature, the dark aims of individual willfulness use anything to rationalize the easiness of perpetration. With criminals for instance, and those who haven’t been caught yet, this includes quick collaboration with comfortable trouble-free theories that excuse their behavior. Exploiting the naiveté of the “experts” has been learned at an early age and willfully continues through all lifestyles. Supporters quickly rally to express their emotional postures, laced with plenty of subjective validation, as to the societal ills that caused culprits to perpetrate “evil” deeds.
To seek an uncomplicated explanation for deep privately created thoughts, known only to the creator himself or herself, is superficial at best. In the process, hopeful adherents yearn for the “silver bullet” that reveals the extraordinary nature of complex behavioral mysteries. Of such manifestations, that is not likely in the near future. The reality of an in-depth analysis of human nature is never ending investigative process, with no hard and fast conclusions. Solvability continues an endless digression where an ultimate answer is an elusive trek into the depths of human darkness.
Yet, an ongoing focus as to the thinking processes ought to continue, for the sake of intellectual discussion, investigative research and civilized enlightenment. As nothing is well settled at this point in time, it is divisive discourse and counterproductive to say we know everything there is to know about human nature. For the classical perspective on criminality, the fundamental notions to this day, remains a culmination of complexity in willful self-indulgent ideation. A seduction to adversity is purposeful.
Excuses are irrelevant once accountability is expected and responsibility accepted. From fantasy to fulfillment, a yearning to achieve physicality of experience suggests the purposeful realism for intentional inflictions. The essential nature by which people put ideas into action, and the deceptive probabilities that foment “evil” intentions, are within the schemes of every individual. Decision-making assesses a personal “cost-benefit” to either infliction or restraint from fulfilling what one wants to do.
The nurture-nature complexity remains enigmatic, regardless of how many movies, television dramas, or newscasters claim otherwise. Subsequent mixtures by which individuals emerge in dysfunctional yet creative ways are self-induced. Selfish unevolved thinking is at the foundation of arrogance for intentional malevolence, regressive premeditations and intricate personal capacity for any perpetrations.