Good v Evil

[sadoldgit]

There was an interesting Horizon last night on what makes people evil. Nature over nurture has been debated over the years but according to this there is a genetic connection. But if you have the "warrior gene" your upbringing will determine if you become full on psychopath of not.

 

They found that many people with the dodgy gene but with decent nurturing often went on to become senior managers in corporations (The Don?). They still had the psychopathic tendencies but were able to control the more extreme behaviour that led to many with poor upbringings ending up behind bars.

 

One of the main features of psychopaths is their lack of empathy. They are also very charming and work their way to the top through charisma rather than hard work (these are the ones with decent upbringings). I don't know about you but I have worked with and under a number of managers like this.

 

Fascinating programme, watch it on catch up if you can.

[sussexsaint]

Not seen it but its an interesting topic for debate. I think a ot of people who are inside aren't inherently evil people - they have had the mist descend and didn't have the failsafe to keep them on the right side of the line in a fleeting moment.

[sadoldgit]

We have been debating this for some time in the pub philosophy group. Whether people are born evil or become evil through upbringing. The programme is saying that some people do not have empathy (the thing that stops us doing bad stuff to others) and it is dependant on how they are brought up as to how they turn out. They will always be psychopaths but some will commit bad crimes and others will rise up the management ladder. These people may seem like they have empathy but they learn to mimic the behaviour. They will never understands how you feel because they don't know themselves. Quite scary really. I know a bit about this because I was married to someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

When you look at people like Pol Pot, Hitler, Idi Amin and Stalin you see it in its purist form. We are all damaged individuals to degrees but most of us have a moral compass that keeps us in check. Without that you have trouble.

[Unbelievable Jeff]

There was an interesting Horizon last night on what makes people evil. Nature over nurture has been debated over the years but according to this there is a genetic connection. But if you have the "warrior gene" your upbringing will determine if you become full on psychopath of not.

 

They found that many people with the dodgy gene but with decent nurturing often went on to become senior managers in corporations (The Don?). They still had the psychopathic tendencies but were able to control the more extreme behaviour that led to many with poor upbringings ending up behind bars.

 

One of the main features of psychopaths is their lack of empathy. They are also very charming and work their way to the top through charisma rather than hard work (these are the ones with decent upbringings). I don't know about you but I have worked with and under a number of managers like this.

 

Fascinating programme, watch it on catch up if you can.

 

Blimey, hope I'm not one of them. How can we find out if we have it?

[Ex Lion Tamer]

My understanding is you have psychopaths and sociopaths (its possible I'm wrong but I think that;s what I remember). So psychopaths have defective brains so they don't feel empathy. Sociopaths do bad things because of their upbringing.

 

Ian Brady was a psychopath, Myra Hindley was a sociopath. They both did evil things - Myra because her violent father had made her believe violence was ok at a young age and Ian because he just enjoyed it.

 

Jon Ronson's book the Psychopath Test is very readable if you are interested in the topic

Edited 10 March, 2015 by Ex Lion Tamer

[hypochondriac]

Blimey, hope I'm not one of them. How can we find out if we have it?

 

The fact you are worrying about it means you are not. Good books on the subject as mentioned above is the psychopath test but also the sociopath next door and confessions of a sociopath. All interesting.

[Whitey Grandad]

I once saw a program where a criminal psychologist was interviewing someone in prison who had been a hitman for the mafia. This man had a family and children and seemed to be a caring father. When the interviewer asked him if he had any questions himself he was initially surprised that anyone should give him this opportunity and asked why he was what he was. He was told that he had no sense of personal fear combined with no sense of responsibility to society, and this made him a very dangerous person. He had always been like this. As a boy he would tie two cats together by their tails and hang them over the washing line so that he could watch them fight.

[hypochondriac]

I once saw a program where a criminal psychologist was interviewing someone in prison who had been a hitman for the mafia. This man had a family and children and seemed to be a caring father. When the interviewer asked him if he had any questions himself he was initially surprised that anyone should give him this opportunity and asked why he was what he was. He was told that he had no sense of personal fear combined with no sense of responsibility to society, and this made him a very dangerous person. He had always been like this. As a boy he would tie two cats together by their tails and hang them over the washing line so that he could watch them fight.

 

Pretty sure thats the iceman AKA Richard Kuklinski. That's another book worth reading and also the HBO documentary. Some of the things he did were horrendous (burnt people's genitals off, ripped them off with his bare hands, fed people alive to rats and filmed it etc.)

[buctootim]

No idea if Beverly Allit the nurse who killed four kids and injured four more was a psychopath or not, but a friend used to work at Rampton. He said her room / cell was like a small childs room complete with fluffy toys and dolls on the pink bed

[Whitey Grandad]

Pretty sure thats the iceman AKA Richard Kuklinski. That's another book worth reading and also the HBO documentary. Some of the things he did were horrendous (burnt people's genitals off, ripped them off with his bare hands, fed people alive to rats and filmed it etc.)

 

That's him!

 

The interview's here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjTYwZKuyBs

Edit:

 

This is probably the one that I saw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mxC_NH7SFM The part I referenced is from about 35:00

Edited 10 March, 2015 by Whitey Grandad

[sadoldgit]

Blimey, hope I'm not one of them. How can we find out if we have it?

 

 

Have you killed anyone?

 

Seriously though, a good start is with empathy. If someone tells you a sad story can you put yourself in that position and imagine how it must have felt?

[Saintandy666]

Interesting concept of what exactly is evil. There might be some central commonalities to morality possibly based around stuff like kin selection - but aside from that, there seems to be an endless stream of variation both culturally and historically as to what 'evil' means. So seems in the end evil is best thought of as just going totally against the social conventions of the day. Although there are definitely cognitive structures that bias people towards certain personality types and rebellion from the norms, or even gift the opportunity to manipulate others effectively. Psychopaths may struggle with empathy, but they seem to be able to map people's reactions in situations exceptionally well meaning they can take control of situations.

 

Edit: And I think there should be less 'defective brains' chat and so on, cognitive development is an incredibly plastic process that creates a spectrum of outcomes that we are all on. There's no such thing as a 'normal' brain.

Edited 10 March, 2015 by Saintandy666

[sadoldgit]

Spot on. They pick up on things and use them to their advantage. because they don't feel in the same way as others there is nothing stopping them behaving in a certain way.

Empathy, conscience - you can still have these and do bad things but at least there is a little voice inside telling you this isn't right.

[sadoldgit]

I worked with a guy for 22 years. We both worked our way up to senior management positions in the same office. As you can imagine we were mates and knew each others families etc. One day we were talking about infidelity and my colleague said if his wife played around he would divorce her. A few weeks later I found out that he was having affairs (at least two) with women at work. I found out because he told me and said if his wife ever asked where he was I was with him. I thought about this for a while and decided it wasn't on. I knew his wife and kids and didn't feel comfortable lying to her. I asked him not to use me as any alibi any more. From that point on he stopped asking me to go to the pub at lunchtime with him and a few months later I was made redundant and he and our overall boss had made the decisions as to who was going. I have not heard from him since. I cant prove it but I suspect that this bloke falls into this bracket. I have found out since that he took credit for many of the good practices that I implemented whist there. He has since seen off two senior bosses and now runs the show himself. I don't think he has ever put a full shift in and is very good at delegating and then taking all of the credit. When we think of evil we think of Hitler etc. There are however people who behave very badly toward their fellow man - they may not be evil in the sense we know it but they certainly are Grade A @resholes.

[pap]

Interesting concept of what exactly is evil. There might be some central commonalities to morality possibly based around stuff like kin selection - but aside from that, there seems to be an endless stream of variation both culturally and historically as to what 'evil' means. So seems in the end evil is best thought of as just going totally against the social conventions of the day. Although there are definitely cognitive structures that bias people towards certain personality types and rebellion from the norms, or even gift the opportunity to manipulate others effectively. Psychopaths may struggle with empathy, but they seem to be able to map people's reactions in situations exceptionally well meaning they can take control of situations.

 

Edit: And I think there should be less 'defective brains' chat and so on, cognitive development is an incredibly plastic process that creates a spectrum of outcomes that we are all on. There's no such thing as a 'normal' brain.

 

I've always thought so.

 

You'd think that we could agree on some of the big stuff. For example, killing another human being.

 

If I were to go out and do that today in my capacity as private citizen, I'd be tried and convicted. If, however, I joined the Armed Forces and killed someone, no such sanction would be applied.

 

Various holy books all say that this act is evil, and our law upholds these principles. The only real difference is the social convention you mention, which says if you kill someone as a member of the Armed Forces, you're doing good instead of evil.

[Bearsy]

How about we say Killing for Fun is evil, pap, would that work? Killing for other reasons, we can call Misguided

[sadoldgit]

Interesting debate. If killing is wrong/evil, why do we have armies and train people to kill? Because there are times when social conventions go out of the window. When society breaks down and we go to war (or a state of conflict) although there are "rules" (the Geneva Convention etc) morality pretty much goes out of the window. Is the act of killing evil? There is an ongoing debate about euthanasia. Is it evil to assist a death of someone who is terminally ill? is it evil to put a dog down when it is in pain and cant be helped? Back to conflict. Is it evil to kill an IS member who has been cutting off heads of Christians? Would it have been evil to have killed Hitler? The act itself may be abhorrent but there are times when it can be justified under our moral code.