Born Evil?

I was reading a thread here about how some people were attacked and it got me thinking. Are some people just born bad or does their upbringing or life circumstances change them into monsters? What do you think?

 

I think that we are all born pure and it's our environment and life experience that turns us into who or what we ultimately become.

 

I studied psychopathologies at university. There are some cases of children who were born with the condition as the part of their brain responsible for empathy fails to develop. These were children who were as close to born evil as anyone. They would attempt to kill siblings because they wanted to and saw no reason not to harm others. Very few of them would be involved in terrorism as killing themselves would not benefit them in the slightest.

Anyone can make the conscious decision to harm others, but it is a decision and something that they themselves are responsible for. The nastiest truth that came up in training was that no matter how bad someone's upbringing there was someone with similar or worse who did not decide to harm others, even when tempted.

 

I'd of said a mix of both for most people. Then again, some people are just not right from the start and for others, it's purely learned behaviour from those around them.

I'd probably say that more people become bad from learning from those around than from being born that way, which makes me think that if we could do something to help more people, we would have less of these situations arising.

Doesn't help if the person being copied is bad though, you just wind up with a vicious cycle.

 

I am very interested in learning about psychology and anything to do with the human mind. I like what you said about the part of the brain that's responsible for empathy not being fully developed in some people, Tregaron. I think that is worth exploring.

 

I find it really hard to believe that anyone can be born evil. Science and medicine move so slowly forward because they don't factor in the fact that we are vibrational first before we are physical. Even if the part of the brain that is responsible for how you feel toward other people is not developed I think that the real you is still the same spiritual being that everyone else is made of and so we all have the same capacity to think and feel the way we choose to.

 

So if we all have the same capacity to feel, how do cases like Phineas Gauge happen, where physical brain damage changes someone's personality completely?