Family Forum / Marriage / Marriage / July 2008

Guess that depends on one's definition of "defect".   Or abnormality.   Or
aberration.  (Of course, in today's PC world, no such thing exists.   We're
all perfect).

and

Nobody ever believes that they are the bad guy.  Everybody has their
reasons for what they do, no matter how much harm it causes or how horrid
it appears to others.  They see some larger good they are serving, and
believe that shining future to which they work justifies the troubles
of the present.

There is no line between good people and bad people.  The line between
good and evil runs right down the middle of every one of us.

The delusion that you are somehow different than those who do evil
deeds is the principle necessity for committing evil deeds yourself.
You are no different; you are not somehow perfect and sinless; in the
same circumstances, you might do the same things.

Os Guinness wrote a book about evil, titled _Unspeakable_.  One of the
things he says is:

       The monster view of evil is dangerous, because it simultaneously
   seduces and distances us.  Often we have a strange fascination with
   wicked people, but through them we can also push evil away because
   "we are not like them".
       To restrict evil to such men is to slip into the error of
   seeing it as an aberration, a rarity, an exception, as something
   well distanced from ourselves and also perhaps also as a think of
   the past.  To think like that is to miss the real menace of evil
   here and now.

Sometimes, when a Jeffrey Dahmer is caught by police and his crimes
become known, the neighbors say things like "He seemed so normal".
That is exactly the point: he was basically normal.  The capacity for
horrible crimes lurks inside everyone.  Stanley Milgram's famous
experiment made clear that "normal" people will do horrible things
under the right circumstances.

In his book, Guinness tells the story of Gary Haugen, who went to Rwanda
to investigate the genocide that occurred there.  In an interview with
_Christianity Today_, Haugen said:

   Ordinary people have the capacity, with surprising ease, to become
   mass murderers.  The people who did the hacking in Rwanda were
   average people.  They had delivered themselves over to the power of
   evil that can make killing exhilarating and empowering.

People who do terrible things are not monsters.  For the most part, they
are no different than you are.  Until the moment when they do their
first horrible thing, they may well be indistinguishable from you.

There is no "balance" between good people born and evil people born;
that's just a comforting lie that lets you imagine that you're somehow
above "those people" who have done bad things.  But that comforting lie
is one of the very things that makes evil possible: if you're not a bad
person, you don't have to question your own motives and face honestly
the results of your actions.

And that failure to question one's self is exactly how people commit evil
acts and rationalize away the truth of what they are doing.  I'd wager
that every truly evil person believed in "good people" and "bad people",
resting comfortable in the knowledge that they were "good", even as they
did horrible things.

Darren Provine ! kilroy@elvis.rowan.edu ! http://www.rowan.edu/~kilroy
And, behold, one came and said unto him, "Good Master, what good thing
  shall I do, that I may have eternal life?"
And he said unto him, "Why callest thou me good? there is none good
  but one, that is, God[.]" -- Matthew 19:16-17

How can we even begin to divide the world into "good" and "bad"
people?

 I believe nature the stage to create that balance.

Had he the "right" influences Jimmy might have learnt early on to
become detached and not allowed his family to get him down.

- Michaela

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