"Why People Do Bad Things"

That's not stupid, it's evil.

The kids stealing hurts the store owners, workers, users by cutting into profits, raising prices, loosing jobs.

Little, big, they all hurt each other. You justify what you think is smaller but condemn the larger because you see the direct hurt.

Nowadays the term 'evil' seems to have glory, prestige and suggest craft, guile, wit, genius and something to worry about.

"Stupid" or "intellectually impeded" is less complimentary.

Pretty much. I don't necessarily justify the small stuff - I just don't sweat it.

Sorry, I didn't see this one.

I never thought I'd live to see 30 because at the time it seemed so far away.




"Murder, slavery, megadeath, and sexually taking advantage of children are extremes and obviously bad.

Let's get down to the small witch hunting like the guy on the street corner with a cigarette always poking out of his face. "

You already threw out the big stuff. I thought it was the small stuff we were sweating.

Like the stealing in stores which gives the trickle down effect.

There's a method to my madness. I usually don't criticize or take action unless there is a dire reason to. It has to be something seriously bad and it has to take place right in front of me where I see it with my own eyes.

I'm not righteous and I don't go out of my way looking for what others may or may not be doing wrong.

Unless I'm at work because I'm a security guard but once again I'm a pretty laid back liberal guard. I'll go out of my way not to make small situations big situations.

I live in a block of flats with lockable mail boxex outside. The lock to mine has jammed so I can't get into it. I'm paranoid enough to think this was done deliberatly and can be easily re-done if I'm able to get it open. To me this is a bad act and that I'm disliked sufficiently for someone to deliberatly do this saddens me. Just like my mail I'm trapped.

Any one able to contribute to this forum demonstrates a high level of free will. That we can't have total control over our lives shows there will always be limits to free will but mostly there are choices. More informed choices and ability then the greater the free will.

I'm not really talking in defense of anyone; if someone does something that is wrong in your perspective, then that doesn't change just because they don't think it's a problem.

But though I was talking about a smaller example, it can really be applied to anyone. Even Hitler thought he was doing good for the world; Jews were subhuman and their suffering was no worse animals in a lab, a controversial wrong at most. Slavers were giving their slaves a place to stay and a civilized example. Killing of innocents has been carried out by every culture in the history of the world in the name of war; we protect our people and destroy our enemies.

In any of these examples are people who are not justifying, but due to their values and their perspective they genuinely don't believe themselves to be doing anything bad or evil. Obviously this doesn't apply to everyone who does something that we deem as wrong; there are plenty of people who commit evils even though their own values and culture tell them it's wrong.

I was just bringing up the differences in values as one part of why people do wrong.

My husband tends to think this way. It's so strange to me...it seems 'poor self-esteem' and yet 'egotistical' at the same time - and I'm not saying this to try to put you down.

I don't usually say it because I think it will be taken wrong, but the thing to remember is..."Not everything is about you ."

The jamming of the lock may have been someone mistakenly thinking that your box was theirs and they broke it trying to use their key. Or, they may have been trying to steal things from mail boxes and broke yours...but you may not have been a specific target.

If someone does something out of dislike for you, the would probably do something more personal, like scratch a word into the paint on your car. They're not going to make you wonder.

I go by the book definition, which I will now paraphrase. Evil is violating the rights of others to their life, liberty or property. Emotion, not intelligence, can be the only process justifying such a violation. Intelligence does however figure into the sophistication of the scheme to violate those rights and not getting caught in the process. Prisons are mostly full of idiots, but there're also some geniuses.

For every Sherlock Holmes, there is a Moriarty.

That's an assinine thing for someone to do and even worse would have been if they busted the lock so that the box always remained open so that they could pinch from it.

This kind of thing frustrates me to no end.

We had one guy, here in NZ, lose it and chase down and stab a kid that kept repeatedly spray painting graffiti on his house.

Yeah those are small things that actually hurt people. Busting my mail box may not be as extreme as raping a child but the person that can justify doing it isn't too far off from the latter if they were ever placed in that situation with that opportunity.

The devil does exist-but again free will determines the actions-good or bad.

I consider Evil to be someone violating another while purely aware and conscience of themselves and what they are doing.

Obviously, however, for someone to harm another while completely aware of themselves and everything else, there still has to be some intellectual deficiency taking place.

Most violators are not clever enough to have turned over into that state of mind and are driven by rudimentary selfish yearning to feed desire and ego.

While most others don't have mind at all in which case they could not be labeled as good or evil but merely zombies. I don't question why these individuals harm others when I'm impressed that they were able to make it out the door without repeatedly bashing into the wall next to it over and over again.

No, the Devil is just a word for the urge to satisfy ourselves by violating others. Evil is when we follow that urge. To say that the Devil exists is to say that God created evil. He didn't. We do that all by ourselves.




Why? It's nothing more than declaring "I am more worthy than you", or "You're worthless". They rarely even give lip service to justifying their stance, and when they do, it's complete emotion. But then yeah, I guess you could call a complete avoidance of intellect a deficiency.