Bad people...Why are they like this???

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 17 Apr 2002, and now archived in the Forum Library.

Ramses	17 Apr 2002
Hey folks... How are you?...Hope you´re all fine !!! Well...you know...sometimes I wonder...Why are bad people like this?...Why do some people commit crimes, violence and other terrible acts against other people?...Why do some people kill others?... Do you think some people are born evil???...Or something has happened to them, to make´m that way???... I mean...I think most of us can´t get why some people commit such violent acts towards others...like those killers, for instance, who torture and kill...Are they natural born evil spirits??? Well...so, I was thinking that, maybe, these people have lost the sense of life...Maybe, for them, life has no meaning, no value, nothing...Maybe they have lost the sense of reality so badly, that they see other people just, for example, as the characters of a video game... Sometimes, I see no meaning in life, too...Why are we here?...To suffer?...To die?...To learn?What for?...Why were we created so not perfect?....well, but this is something for another post... But, eventhough I sometimes see no meaning in life, that doesn´t make me kill others, or harm others... I could write about this subject for ages, ´cause it brings so many other issues along with it...but, I don´t wanna bother you, folks...maybe I´ll put it in my book, when I write it, as some people have asked ....lol... Well...What´s your opinion on that ???

Liliana	17 Apr 2002
bad people are bad either because of environment or a mental defect. I suppose some are manipulated by darker spirits, but there has to be some thing wrong for a darker spirit to be able to do it in the first place. People born withamental defect really cant help it.But environment plays a large factor. Its no wonder so many teens are killing nowdays. First, many have experienced the endless harassing for even the slightless thing thatmakes them different, usually things they cant really control like weight, height, glasses,etc. I know I experienced this. Then there's nothing but violence on tv. And the violence seems to bea solution to the prolem. Kids thinking that shooting someone is a way to get rid of them forever, but not understanding death. That andgenerations of predujuices are passed down to the kids,no matterhow pc we say we are we just arent, or if the parents are the tv or grandparents arent. And the othercause is some churches. The teach gays are evil,witches areevil,sex is evil, with evil lurking around every corner no wonder kids flip. Especially when churches canbesohypocritical(ie the Catholic Priest Child Abuse Scandal happening now).

zorya	17 Apr 2002
this is not a question that can be easily answered, but if i were to try to simplify an answer i would say....... people who do "bad things", make their choices from a place of fear, instead of a place of love. this is why i try to have compassion, even for those who hurt me.

mehrdad	17 Apr 2002
Some might argue that Evil really does not exist and only an opinionated observational view from a different point. For example, in the Middle East, if you are Israelis then Palestinians are Evil and if you were a Palestinian you would strongly argue that Israelites are Evil. But clearly Evil exists and we see its manifestation in so many ways. We see evil in wars, material or mental poverty, in the actions of serial killers, or those who in the name of religion, god or self created ideas kill innocent people. I think you are questioning why Evil exists and you are wondering about the need and the use of its existence. In Zoroastrian creed, Evil and God are two faces of the same coin and one without the other cannot be. According to this philosophy, Evil is the shadow side of God or in another word, God and Evil are the same thing from two opposite faces. In Avesta, the Zoroastrian’s holy book, it describes that God and Evil are twin brothers born from the same source. We see many examples of such a notion in concepts such as light and dark, up and down, good and bad, hot and cold, beauty and ugly, Yen and Yang, positive and negative, electron and proton, feminine and masculine and on and on. The fact is that we would not be able to understand what light is if there was no dark to contrast it. We have to know what cold is before we understand the qualities of hotness and vise versa. How can you recognize the characteristic of something if there is no opposition to differentiate it? You understand what good is if you know about badness and you can picture what Yen might be if you know what Yang is. This model is basic but very powerful, in which the progress occurs because of the opposites of positives and negatives. There would not be people, Earth, our solar system, world, and our universe if there were no opposites to force an action to create them. Without the opposites everything would stay static and always the same, with no shape or form. Evil needed because without it there would not be a God to fight against it. If there were no bad people then there would not be a need for good people to have existence. Good needs Bad to survive and they both are needed for our world to be. According to Avesta, our world is the result of the battles that these two identical beings, God and Evil, have launched against one another and our globe is nothing but a combat scene. If eventually one is successful to defeat the other then our world and its excuse of being would seize to exist and the universe would end.

amyel	17 Apr 2002
I haven't read the other posts yet, so all I can say is I wish I knew what motivated bad people to be bad. If we knew, then perhaps we could do something about it! Create a pill or something. :) But then this raises another question and that is: Can the world exist without some sort of bad/evil? I mean, if it was all good, would the world fall out of balance?

truthsayer	17 Apr 2002
i totally agree w/ mehrdad's response. no need for me to repeat what he eloquently stated.

kayne	18 Apr 2002
I really don't beleive there are any bad people, they just do bad things for various reasons. We all have varrying degrees of good and bad in us... most of us choose or naturally harness the good aspects of our personality. What makes someone bad? Terrible acts are commited and I am not so forgiving that I can consider these things anything other than evil but I always believe there is some good in everyone... If they choose, even people who have done terrible things can bring light into the world. :TTEMP

Kiama	18 Apr 2002
The Irenaen theory of Evil's Existence says that this world is a 'Vale of Soul-Making', where our souls are prepared for the next world. The theory states that we experience evil as part of our learning and spiritual growth. Another theory (Augustian) is less accpted than the other... It states that evil is on this Earth, cuz whilst God intended for it to be perfect, it "Fell' from perfection throgh Lucifer's treason, and the Fall from Eden... Of course, the question arises as to WHY human beings have to do evil... We don't know. Nobody's answered that one yet. Although he people wonder wy there is evil in the world, and why we have to expereiene it, the usual answer from Philosophers nd Theologians is that we should not expect a Hedonistic Paradise! God/Creator of the World is a parent, and parents, although caring fro their cildren, do not wrap them in cotton wool and protect them from all forms of sufferng, evil, pain etc... We all agree that such a practie would leave the child ill-equipped for life. The same is true of the World and the Creator, only on a bigger scale. Kiama

Musicman	18 Apr 2002
mehrdad , I totally agree and your post is eleguently said. The same idea is also behind the teachings of Swiss physcologist Carl.G.Jung, who also believed that both good and evil are the two sides of God. We must learn to intergrate and accept our 'shadow' sides in order to become whole. Wholesome, not in the sense of perfection, but in the sense of a balance of both light and darkness, thus a healthy individual. Life to me is many shades of grey.

Malachite	18 Apr 2002
hmmm...good deep question...and glad you're back...we were sat here wondering what to ask each other!... I think, like some people have said, that good and evil are not absolute concepts. There are the opposing forces of creation and destruction, and which you think is evil depends on your perspective. As an extreme example, which doesn;t really hold up to much scrutiny, a lot of people in post-depression Germany thought that the Nazi regime was a good, solid government. The fact that we think it was evil because it encouraged blaming, hating, and annihilating ethnic, cultural and social minorities doesn;t change the fact that it took one of the world's major countries out of extreme poverty... (btw, I don't support Nazism, I'm just attempting to look at it from both sides...) Attempting to define Good and Evil is a structure that people have designed between themselves, to encourage thinking about the consequences of your actions before making them. Aligning them with creation and destruction is to malign the basic concepts of existence. Without death, birth would be not be needed. Without Birth, death could not occur. They are the flip sides, the balancing energies. 'Evilness' in people is doing things that hurt other people, and improve your own position, like corrupt businesses that make profits from third-world labour, or drug pushers that encourage addiction to keep themselves in profit. I think that this is down to choice. However, that doesn't mean that energies around a person cannot affect this.. If you got fired, divorced and sued in one day, you'd be pretty darn annoyed. If the people around you are angry, or if you work in a high stress environment, you will pick up that negative energy. Sometimes there are medical reasons tho. Psychopathy is a syndrome where you are incapable of realising the consequences of your actions on other people. Lots of people have it in minor forms. I don't know if that can be cured, but it results in lots of 'evil' things.

Logiatrix	18 Apr 2002
good question! i agree with malachite. i work in a facility where i see firsthand those individuals with various levels of mental impairment and emotional challenges. these conditions often coincide with an inability to feel compassion for others, see the consequences of their actions, or establish a code of self-protection (resulting in self-abuse). these people, while distinguishing between right and wrong or acceptable vs. unacceptable behavior, are disconnected from any emotions about right or wrong--like that file is just missing. i have also seen people who were just taught to "handle" obstacles and problems with conflict. for example, i once tended to a child who constantly responded to negative occurences, like having something taken from him, with a raised hand and yelling. he had learnt to strike back and scream at negative stimulus, because he was struck and yelled at as punishment. whether he goes on to be "bad", i believe, is determined by the rest of his personal history. if he chooses to break the chain of conflict-oriented response as a means of coping, then he won't go on to strike out at the world. that is so key to the preservation of this world--how we treat our children. i don't believe there are "bad seeds", maybe just neglected sprouts?

Kiama	19 Apr 2002
Okay, here's the next question: We all agree that we need the good to balance the bad, and vice versa. Without bad, we could not know and appreciate th egood, or grow. BUT... Now I ask... Just how far does the Universe have to go, by causing the bad to be in actual humans, and for those humansto harm other humans? Can an embryo who suffers in the womb, either through miscarriage or abortion, really learn and grow from its suffering? How do we account for those people who actually go down in growth due to suffering, who want to exact revenge? Kiama

Malachite	19 Apr 2002
How exactly does the unborn survive to grow? Anyway...the point...I think people can always grow back, as long as they choose to...there is a line, and people that do not walk back across it become whirlpools of bad.

truthsayer	19 Apr 2002
i can't help but think of a statement that a serial killer said--that hate was to him what love meant to other ppl. i think love and hate have different values according to who you are and your life experience. for me the drive to give and seek love has a high value. to others, hate is what drives them. the problem is it's impossible to always know what inner motivations others have. some have a great talent for hiding their true self. i'll never forget when a beloved psychologist in town was indicted and now serving time for sexually molesting his adolescent patients. the entire community was in shock b/c we all completely trusted him and his family. they seemed like an icon for all of us to follow in family relationships. i worked w/ him professionally. i was in a local play w/ him. i even went to a christmas party at his house and i never saw any signs. i've always considered myself intuitive but he completely fooled me. i never guessed at the darkness w/in him.

moondust	19 Apr 2002
i certainly don't have the answer to this question, but on the note of those who point to mental/enviornmental causes, I DO think that a great deal of those who carry out those violent or evil acts as we call them are mentally/enviornmentally/chemically inbalanced related. I have a son who is schizophrenic, in some of the extreme cases as his, "choice" is often taken away from them. My world totally changed, when he initially went thru this, and one never looks at things and people quite the same again. A perhaps question along with this is why is all this mental diseases, chemical inbalances occuring and what seems to be more and more frequently. Is it overpopulation, deterioration of the enviornment, what do we do, how can we help all these people, ... we talked about purpose in another thread, what is the purpose of this.? Again, my faith that things happen to people and us for reasons we cannot fathom, and what is said that people are born with the ability to handle what happens to them. I don't know, I only have more questions. moondust

tassetasse	30 Apr 2002
I'm a newbie, hi there ^_^ This is a very good topic and I've been thinking about it for all my life. Recently, i bought the philosophy book for dummies and i believe that it helped me a lot in figuring out what i believe in. Why do bad people do bad stuff? Well, first i don't say 'bad', because i feel that you're categorizing people in a way (bad vs. good)...also because what bad is basically (to me anyway) doing something for overly selfish reasons. Anyway, i think that people do very selfish/bad things because i guess they don't realize that we are all connected in some way or another. This could mean anything from spiritually to the just plain cause-and-effect way. An example could be the environment. Everyone just does their thing, littering parks, throwing garbage into the harbour, never really realizing that their one action will impact other things, like the environment and animals. And in the end, it'll just come back to us, be it karma, someone retaliating back or whatever. The bottom line is, I think people are not taught enough that with freedom comes a responsablility to make sure you don't abuse it, and that you are responsible to yourself and others because we are, again, ALL CONNECTED in some way. As for meaning in life, i don't know if there is one, I don't know if i'll ever know, but since I a have a life i might as well do something with it -- and make my own meaning. Heh, enough rambling...hope i didn't confuse anyone~!

The Bad people...Why are they like this??? thread was originally posted on 17 Apr 2002 in the Spirituality board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Spirituality, or read more archived threads.