Quiz time!

[andrewducker]

[Poll #117530]

Comments

Re: Eeevil

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm, yes, if their personality had suddenly changed radically and that was the kind of person they'd become then fine. Normally I'd call them psychotic (i.e. having a psychotic episode) and mentally ill rather than evil.

Being that who we are is a transient thing I find it difficult to denote an individual as being defined by any single action. It would be easy to say that the man in your example was evil, but I'd imagine that the man he was must have been starkly different to the man he used to be and I'd argue that who he had become was evil but who he used to be wasn't.

You could say that he'd been plotting all his life to torture nuns and that everything else was just a cover, in which case I'd argue that behaviour is not just external, perceivable action, but also internalised thought processes.

It's all lovely and subjective anyway (o' course).

Mike

Re: Eeevil

[andrewducker]

Well, in many ways I view the kind of people who are capable of acts of extreme nastiness to be mentally ill in some way.

Except that it seems that 99% of the population are capable of these acts (cf: Stanford Prison Experiment or the one with the people thinking they are administering eletric shocks).

It seems perfectly possible to love dogs, eat vegetarian, get on well with the wife and still think that a group of people ought to be wiped from the face of the planet (as Hitler thought).