Support NeoGAF

[Spring-Loaded]

Or instinct in an inappropriate setting? Like, is being greedy just self-preservation, but taken to an extreme? Could something similar be said for any other negative acts people commit?

I've wondered the origin of the most destructive strains of thought. I've also wanted to come up with reasons for all of them. Not to justify/vindicate them in anyway, but to just gain some understanding, to perhaps know where those people went wrong when forming their beliefs.

Anytime someone has done something horrible and they were in fully-functional state of mind, most everyone disowns them, writing them off as scum, assholes or what have you.

But are they not human just as anyone else? If we were to look at someone who's purposefully committed an atrocity and examine their entire life up to that point, could anyone say they'd have done differently?

And is there a particular school of thought/name for this? Would this be Hobbesian or something?

 

[braves01]

I think the majority of "evil" occurs only due to opportunity.

Fear of consequence quells most anti-social impulse. Obviously that doesn't work for ALL cases, but it suffices for most. Thus, sound policy reaps the greatest benefit, and individualized approaches pick up the real sociopaths.

 

[BocoDragon]

I can see the view that if people are just the sum of their experiences, then they aren't ultimately condemnable as "BADGUYS".

But that's just on one level. On another level? fuck those douchebags. I don't do that.

 

[Deified Data]

Or instinct in an inappropriate setting? Like, is being greedy just self-preservation, but taken to an extreme? Could something similar be said for any other negative acts people commit?

This. There is no corruption of instinct - just acting on it at inopportune moments. The human animal and the human being don't often mesh very well. We have to fight so much of our baser instincts to maintain even the sliver of civility we have right now.

 

[jaxword]

Inherently there will always be deviants. At least under our current societal models which don't work out ways to prevent that kind of behavior from even starting.

 

[Jasup]

We all have basic needs, not only to eat and reproduce but to feel safe or be be accepted in a group for example.

The ills come if the ways we address those individual needs are not healthy for society -> we might have learned them in our childhood, we could be forced by the situation at hand, we might be pressuded by our surrounding culture.

It's not a question of either/or, but more of a network of causes and effects.


Edit:
There's one case I usually use as an example of this phenomenon. It's anecdotal, but shows what I mean.

There's a family with two children I know quite well. The children are two brothers who were 4 and 3 years old at the time.

The older brother wanted to be noticed by his father all the time, he'd come to him to show what he's done, demanded that the father would play with him and generally be around. The father however usually just shrugged it off and told the children to play together (quietly, I might add) or told them that he didn't have time. He wasn't the most distant father I've seen, but he took the easy way out on child rearing. However, as usually happens when children play unattended, as the two brothers would make a lot of noise, break something, or start a fight - the father would intervene by shouting, threatning and sometimes with corporal means.

Now, this set up resulted in an act I and few other adults witnessed few times: The older of the brothers wanted the attention from his father but was told to play with his brother. The two brothers would then proceed to play outside peacefully together until the father appeared.

At the very moment the older brother noticed his father was watching you could see his expression change and he'd instantly attack his younger brother. This resulted of course in the father chasing the older brother down, shouting and then punishing him, while the younger brother was left on the ground crying. What is most notable is that the whole time up until the painful punishment the older brother was smiling.

So:
1) the older brother had a need to be close to his father
2) the father was quite passive with the kids
3) the older brother had learned that the best way to get his father's attention was to do something wrong i.e. attack his baby brother
4) for the older brother the resulting punishment was a small price to pay for the moment of being the center of the father's attention

And thus the bad behaviour was the result of using learned ill means to fill a basic need of a child.

 

[Spring-Loaded]

This. There is no corruption of instinct - just acting on it at inopportune moments. The human animal and the human being don't often mesh very well. We have to fight so much of our baser instincts to maintain even the sliver of civility we have right now.

I just now noticed the "protecting women" thread and it's pretty much the same thread, just more specific.

Someone over there said that some types of sexism are the natural drive for men to want to protect women, but overdone/corrupted. I can't decide whether instinct itself is incorruptible, but that's an intersting way of looking at it.

 

[Necromanti]

At the root of all evil lies the desire to do what is best. How that is expressed is subjective, being a combination of one's nature and the effect from one's environment.

 

[happypup]

I think in part it is a result of mutations and genetic drift in a population that has lost a significant amount of environmental pressure to eliminate mental disorders.

Some of it can also I think be explained by the lag of evolution in response to a constantly often drastically changing society. What I mean by this is our natural instincts developed in small "tribal" societies and they are not the best fit for a large and largely anonymous society. Aberrant behavior can go unnoticed in our modern world, and when found is not eliminated.

Ultimately though it happens because of our own complexity. Despite our desperate attempts to domesticate ourselves we all are still at least somewhat wild and therefore unpredictable.