Pace
Clayton Pace
Mrs. Thomas
Honors English 11
04 December 2012
Evil Nature vs. Evil Nutriment
Malicious. Psychotic. Sadistic. All these words are the attributes assigned to people
whom observers claim are evil. Usually no one questions why these people act the way they do.
People’s unrelentingly terrible actions are either explainable by logical means, or they are just
labeled as evil. From a practical standpoint though, every concept and action has a cause, and
evil is not an excluded concept. Evil behaviors carried out by an individual are caused by
environmental factors (such as stress, abuse, neglect, pressure) that happen to him or her, in the
past or the present, that exacerbate certain genetic combinations, ultimately resulting in
deliberate evil actions being carried out by the individual, and possibly resulting in the
development of a disorder; contrary to popular speculation, evil is not completely genetic or
some congenital innate trait which a person genetically inherits to predestine them to a life of
uncontrollable evil.
Just what exactly is evil? This question has circulated throughout society for ages. “Evil
consists in intentionally behaving in ways that harm, abuse, demean, dehumanize, or destroy
innocent others—or using one’s authority and systemic power to encourage or permit others to
do so on your behalf; knowing better, but doing worse” ( Zimbardo 5). Evil is the description
given to people because of their seemingly unthinkable actions. Evil behavior is prevalent
throughout human history. When one hears mention of the Holocaust, people are quick to
Pace
comment on its horrors and on how the humans who carried out this systematic slaughter must
have had evil natures. Talk of Ted Bundy also results in a unanimous decision that he was
innately evil. From most people’s perspective, evil is a narrow-minded concept that justifies
itself at the mere mention of the word; people will say that Hitler and Bundy did the things
because they were evil, but they do not go on to question what made them that way. Instead, they
just assume it was their nature. Most people distinguish evil as an individually existing quality
that is present in one person or group of people, but not in another/others. Evil is thus affiliated
as residing in the tyrants of our history; however, evil (on a bit lesser scale) is also affiliated to
rapists, murderers, and even bullies and scam artists. The perverse evil traits are in all of these
types of people, yet what exactly causes the actions to arise in these types of people is still being
debated by biologists, scientists, psychologists, and neurologists.
The affiliation of evil only capable of being in a certain person is false. Some people are
more susceptible to it, but every person on the planet is capable of evil. One may be offended by
this statement, but it is a fact. Depending on the circumstances, a person may act without
remorse or empathy in the heat of the moment, or in the long scheme of things; additionally,
people are able to learn evil/act evilly regardless of genes, personality, susceptibility, or family
legacy. “The capacity for evil is a human universal,” says psychiatrist Robert I. Simon, director
of the program in Psychiatry and Law at Georgetown University School of Medicine. “There is a
continuum of evil, of course, ranging from ‘trivial evils’ like cutting someone off in traffic, to
greater evils, like acts of prejudice, to massive evils like those perpetrated by serial killers. But
within us all are the roots of evil” (Begley 1).
Just like darkness is the absence of light, evil is the absence of good. Good is depended
on by evil so evil can perpetuate itself, and vice versa. Evil is the good, corrupted and deformed.
Pace
“The idea that anyone has the capability to be evil is not a new idea. The idea that evil lies within
the qualities and impulses of improving life and society was called Dionysian by the Romans,
because Dionysus was death as well as life. He built cities and wrecked them, and exhibited joy
and destruction” (Eagleton 1). The qualities of Dionysian are analogies to the potentiality of any
person being able to commit evil actions.
To prove this theory, “a special experiment was conducted at the Psychology Department
of Yale University. To eliminate placebo, regular subjects were individually told that they were
being selected to help a certain middle-aged man retain his memory better by the use of electric
shock (the middle-aged man was actually an actor). The “doctor” (also an actor) was dressed in a
lab coat signifying his authority, and he, the subject (who was to be the teacher) and the middle-
aged “student” would meet together, and the doctor would explain the procedure. The teacher
