One of my favorite blogs to read is Experimental Theology by Richard Beck. Lately he has been pondering on evil. Below are some samples of his post: Everyday Evil, Part 1: The Fundamental Attribution Error. Check it out, he makes some strong observations.
The thesis of Everyday Evil is this: All of us are capable of evil.
Much of the evil in the world has been and still is committed by people just
like you and me. Evil isn't a malevolent force that randomly attacks people.
There aren't "kinds" of people. There aren't good people or bad people.
There are simply people in situations. Configure the situation a certain way and
we can make some people look weak and others strong.
This is not to say that situations wholly determine our behavior. Just
that we tend to dramatically, and often catastrophically, underestimate the
power of context and situation. And it is this "underestimate of context" that
sets us up for evil.
So the first lesson in dealing with everyday evil is this: Treat your virtue with the utmost suspicion.
1 comments:
Excellent topic Jason! I find that in almost every circle of people I'm in there's a tendency to identify people as bad or good. I had an interesting conversation with my dad and brother about this stuff last week. Doug works for the youth prison in Franklin furnace, and we were talking about the inmates and the terrible things they did. I was trying to explain that while their acts are/were despicable, they once were innocent babies. I firmly believe that uncontrollable negative circumstances often set folks up for a series of experiences that puts them in situations to do evil things. That's why you see some pillars of the religious world paying for sexual services, and senators whose bathroom habits are at best questionable. Some small experience always precipates that behavior. Thirteen year-olds do not just wake up one day and decide to microwave their infant siblings. But as in most things in our society, we seem to only address the symptoms rather than the root causes. Thanks for the challenging post.
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