"Evil"....Genetic or Learned?

Do you think an evil spirit (and by "evil spirit", I basically mean somebody who is exceptionally problematic and nefarious in temperament) is genetic or learned/environmental? Some argue this is mental illness, but I question that....

I don't think it's genetic because if it was, my mother would be one hell of a mean person and she is the exact opposite.

I would say that in the very rare case, yes, but for the most part, it is a learned behaviour. In one daycare I worked in, there was a 4 year old who was pure evil and an 11 year old. With both kids, there was something seriously wrong with this child. There was no history of abuse that we knew of, though with the four year old, his Mom was a twit and with the 11 year old, his parents were clueless and total idiots. These kids had eyes that looked dead. They're what a friend of mine calls flat-liners. With both of these kids, it was like there was something missing. They were incapable of empathy and delighted in hurting others and causing pain and misery. Co-workers called them sociopaths and we all said it was only a matter of time before they killed someone. I've worked with hundreds of kids, though, many with behavioural issues, but these are the only two that I would say were born with something seriously wrong with them.

I think it's a combination of something gone wrong in the brain and what's going on around them. I think everyone's first image of evil is Hitler and you couldn't possibly say there wasn't something wrong with his brain.

However, I don't believe people are born evil. Now, I had a neighbor kid who was the poster child for evil incarnate, when he was 2 years old his mother was babysitting and when nobody was looking, he beat the baby between the eyes with a flashlight because he was jealous of the attention it was getting...now, could this be something that was just festering up inside of him since he was born? Perhaps, but to look at his family is to know where he learned ALL the crap he pulled.

I don't know...I think it goes both ways. I truly don't believe that nobody is born predispositioned to be evil.

I don't believe anybody is born good OR bad, they learn it all, then it becomes a matter of what they do with what they've learned.

Supernova wrote:I don't believe anybody is born good OR bad, they learn it all, then it becomes a matter of what they do with what they've learned.

Nah, there are too many people who do some really bad things, yet they were born into a good family and just turned.

MandyPerfumeGirl wrote:I think it's a combination of something gone wrong in the brain and what's going on around them. I think everyone's first image of evil is Hitler and you couldn't possibly say there wasn't something wrong with his brain.

Yeah - with both of these kids, it's like they were wired wrong form birth. They also had permissive parents who enabled them. I think with psychopaths and sociopaths, they're wired wrong from birth. Intense therapy and support might change their path, but I really don't know.

I think some kids might have a higher propensity for evil but SOMETHING probably "qualified" it to make it stick.

Can be a little bit of both.

I haven't read that science has discovered anything definitive but there's so much about the human brain that we don't understanad. There is this though:

Experiments with lab animals continue to offer fascinating insight into the links between aberrant behavior and genes. Just last year, researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that the absence of a single gene in mice can turn them into vicious, over-sexed killers. As reported in Nature, mice raised without the gene needed to make nitric oxide, an important brain chemical, exhibited such violent and antisocial behavior that they had to be separated from the normal group. Scientists speculate that nitric acid may act on serotonin, another brain messenger that is widely believed to act as an inhibitor against aggression in humans.

I think somebody may be born with some genetic tendencies for bad behavior. However, bad behavior is largely learned. And by adulthood, it is a choice people make.

Forgiveness Man wrote:I think somebody may be born with some genetic tendencies for bad behavior. However, bad behavior is largely learned. And by adulthood, it is a choice people make.

Yeah that.