Do I believe in "evil?"
Dec. 30th, 2025 02:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seeyatI think "evil" is an abstract and mystical concept tied to demons and devilry.
All biological beings are born with traits and characteristics aligned with learning and adapting to their world. Some are born with limitations to perception, cognition, sensation, etc.
One of our most fundamental drives is to understand our world, feed and consume to survive, to thrive and potentially propagate for genetic continuation. These things all rely on complex biomechanical systems which allow us to meet our basic needs, when given a healthy social system meeting all emotional needs and an educational framework that's based on individual cognition and understanding.
I believe there can be fear-based cognitive detachment, emotional suppression, dysregulation and miscommunication along with adaptation toward so-called anti-social behaviors. These can be caused by inconsistency or fear in the child's environment or family of origins.
More often than we often want to acknowledge, conditioning factors and either inconsistent or half-assed social strategies from caregivers cause behaviors that when overlooked or punished instead of properly understood, cascade into what is commonly known as "evil" behaviors and personalities.
The interesting thing I've noticed is a pattern of people explaining serial killers as coming from "happy middle class families" when very often, those are the families with the most to lose and therefore they are presented with so much perfection that they shame, blame, punish and scapegoat their family systems into that image.
There's bound to be maladaptive behavioral strategies. We just don't bother to look deep or examine workaholism, alcoholism, over-performed "niceness" or obsessions with religious rituals even so mundane as Sunday Mass.
All biological beings are born with traits and characteristics aligned with learning and adapting to their world. Some are born with limitations to perception, cognition, sensation, etc.
One of our most fundamental drives is to understand our world, feed and consume to survive, to thrive and potentially propagate for genetic continuation. These things all rely on complex biomechanical systems which allow us to meet our basic needs, when given a healthy social system meeting all emotional needs and an educational framework that's based on individual cognition and understanding.
I believe there can be fear-based cognitive detachment, emotional suppression, dysregulation and miscommunication along with adaptation toward so-called anti-social behaviors. These can be caused by inconsistency or fear in the child's environment or family of origins.
More often than we often want to acknowledge, conditioning factors and either inconsistent or half-assed social strategies from caregivers cause behaviors that when overlooked or punished instead of properly understood, cascade into what is commonly known as "evil" behaviors and personalities.
The interesting thing I've noticed is a pattern of people explaining serial killers as coming from "happy middle class families" when very often, those are the families with the most to lose and therefore they are presented with so much perfection that they shame, blame, punish and scapegoat their family systems into that image.
There's bound to be maladaptive behavioral strategies. We just don't bother to look deep or examine workaholism, alcoholism, over-performed "niceness" or obsessions with religious rituals even so mundane as Sunday Mass.
Thoughts
Date: 2025-12-30 09:56 pm (UTC)I've seen enough of it to know it's real.
>> I think "evil" is an abstract and mystical concept tied to demons and devilry. <<
Humans don't need any outside assistance. They are entirely capable of evil on their own.
I wrote an article about "Concepts of Evil" once; it's an interesting topic.
>> More often than we often want to acknowledge, conditioning factors and either inconsistent or half-assed social strategies from caregivers cause behaviors that when overlooked or punished instead of properly understood, cascade into what is commonly known as "evil" behaviors and personalities. <<
A common cause, though not a universal one. Interestingly, while most criminals have an abusive past, it is not true that most abuse survivors become abusers themselves. Connection disruption is a good point.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2025-12-31 11:00 pm (UTC)I also see the idea of indifference a little ...differently. "Indifference" could also be seen as optimism and acceptance of the unknown, such as the inner-workings of any other person's mind. It's easier to go through life self-assured that you know what's "good" or "bad" and "right" or "wrong" but it's harder to recognize we're often left in the dark... unknowing, not for lack of knowledge but lack of insight... or the ability to see what's behind the curtains for another soul.
I think black and white or "yes and no" thinking is very systemically serving because rigidly determined, binary mindsets are very easy to classify, categorize and direct... especially in a world with such complex advertisement algorithms that can easily be swayed in one direction or another.
Morality often remains obscure to us as individuals even though we wrestle to give ourselves some fundamental framework of rational "good" and rational "evil" because in the end, motivations are where good and evil would be truly defined. Not in actions... as we can't possibly know the motivations of another when many of us barely understand our own motivations.
Then again... this is all my personal perspective. I personally subscribe to Marshall Rosenberg's perspectives. I think society really enjoys pathologizing people in order to wash their hands of their own responsibility to empathize and give up their mental bandwidth in order to lift people out of their darkness.
Sometimes, this understandable... especially in the cases of murder, child abuse, pedophilia... the deep dark and "demented" stuff. Thing is, even those things can be understood to be life serving from a contorted conditioning framework and emotional abandonment or abuse.
We all seek peace, comfort (which can be twisted to mean release from stressors that could mean people or oppressors), liberation, freedom, connection (which can be contorted to mean disconnection from abusers). We may also seek liberation from tumultuous thoughts that may have been implanted by emotionally abusive caregivers or inconsistent and often irrational punishments and praise dynamics.
What many people label as "bad parenting" can mean lazy or inconsistent parenting from an otherwise respectable, yet exhausted person. That alone can condition all sorts of intrinsic chaos, especially for deep feelers and thinkers... that can turn to serial killer mentalities that took root even in infancy.
When we break it down to a most foundational level, infants and toddlers could be encouraged toward violence just because an emotionally immature parent laughed at or celebrated the wrong TV show, movie, news story or perceivably violent sport in pre-verbal development. They can also learn violent tendencies if their parents argued back and forth or constantly triggered each other's nervous systems with bickering or underhanded teasing as a normal daily activity.
I do see your thoughts on the matter. I also agree there's no "fundamental fact" here as we're all trying to figure these things out and we've got governments and societal systems trying to create an umbrella of laws, rules and structure with what we eventually collectively agree on.
I just prefer to be... optimistic. I see all actions as actions... they serve the actor in the moment.
Hopefully that actor was taught the value of compassion, self-accountability and authentic appreciation for life.