How Good People Turn Evil Essay Example for Free

How Good People Turn Evil EssayUnderstanding is not excusing. Though it whitethorn help to prevent wrong acts against humanity in the future (may it? ). The world was created with the potential of sin. Looking at the theological approach, Adam and Eve, when were put into the situation of seduction by the snake, started to be driven by roughshod inclination giving birth to the first sin. Why does it come to pass? Why do sight go against normality and moral principals? Why do nation do shame things? Psychologists-experimenters, philosophers, writers have been trying to execute this question. There will everlastingly be thoroughly and evil in our world. However there is a fine line between serious and evil, several(prenominal)times it is so vague, that without noticing we can find ourselves on the opp sensationnt military position. Zimbardo in his Stanford experiment proves, that not only is the line blurred, but also movable and permeable. The Webster dictionary defines vertical as being positive or desirable in nature not bad or poor. Bad is on the contrary not achieving an adequate standard poor injurious in effect detrimental.We mustiness keep in mind that it is not right to think nearly these notions as only about global ones, but good and evil atomic number 18 found in every person and dominance of one or another depends on different factors. Good people can turn evil, as well as (thanks God) evil people can drop dead good again. How does the renewing happen? After the ab usances in Abu Ghraib the general wanted to know who is responsible for the inhuman sermon with the prisoners, who were those rotten apples infecting others. However the question rather should be What is responsible? At first we have to grade at the situation in order to understand the behavior. In the fight between good people and vicious situation the situation has won. Some may argue that it is not right, as far as the guards who were taking part in the crime in Abu Ghraib (as well as the guards of Stanford experiment) were intelligent, normal, mentally and physically muscular people, who should have been responsible for their terrible actions. But could just bad apples go that far? The human transformation according to Zimbardo has several perspectives ?Dispositional internal factors. The evil starts in the person oneself. These are the bad rotten apples. ? Situational remote factors. The situation is the one to incrimination, which influenced people and helped evil to gain the guards over. ? Systematic the power that is in a clay (political, economical, cultural, etc). Those are the bad barrel drivers. A country is considered the more than civilized the more the wisdom and susceptibility of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak and a powerful one too powerful. Primo Levi. Evil is the exercise of power. As concisely as someone has the power to humiliate, do harm or destroy someone else physically or spiritually, the potential of evil may fail to unreachable heights and it usually does (which was turn out by the Milgram experiment). Starting the Stanford experiment, Zimbardo could not predict such a development of events, because the guards who were thoroughly chosen and tested to be normal people, in a couple of years turned into madmen, psychopaths and sadists.The main driving force that provoked this metamorphosis was power. First it had to be used as a tool for reign over of disobedient prisoners, but later the guards started receiving pleasure out of it, feeling their perk and dominance and the right to exercise their power in every possible way. Personally I find the same phenomenon in sports, a gymnastics girls team. A couch may use the power of a superior for too much, abusing children morally and physically, excusing it as a training and forming of tenacity.One more compositors case can be found in the student dorms of LBS. One girl was chosen by the administration as a unit rep resentative, the task of which was to coordinate girls living in the unit and make sure the community room and the corridor are kept clean. She also had to help girls with the home appliances lending them such things as vacuum cleaner, iron, etc, which belonged to the dorms. Only students who showed themselves to be responsible, tolerant, helpful could get this position including some privileges.As soon as the girl received this trivial power, she started humiliating girls, each time pointing out that they are loathly and disgusting and as a punishment depriving them of things that they could use freely before, like a fridge or hanger. In this case the person was changed, because she was put into another situation and the situation in turn was empower with power by the system. If we go back to the Stanford experiment, one of the important factors that influenced the transformation in people, both guards and prisoners, was the phenomena of deindividuation. vexation and disgrace inc rease where personality is about to vanish. John Watson in his research proves that while starting a battle or a fight people who wear masks or costumes, which cover their faces or cover them, are more likely to kill and to torture. Zimbardos guards were given a uniform and shades which someways protected them from the external world, as if nix could see the horrors they were doing or as if it were not them, but some other people conducting that evil behavior. In other words this phenomenon can be called the power of anonymity.It work for every one. We are much more likely to do something unusual for us and even immoral, when nobody can see us or recognize. However we should not forget that on the other side of the barricade were the prisoners or victims, who suffered from deindividuation, rather than gained of it. Prisoners were given numbers instead of names their clothes reminded rather that of women, than men, their heads were cover with ridiculous hats. People stop perceive themselves as individuals and later as human-beings, when are found in such conditions.Deindividuation was one of the strongest driving forces of final solution, though it made its long detour to gas chambers in concentration camps. First Jews were not allowed to get high positions at work, than to sit on the same benches in a park as locals, come in to a shop (reading a sign that Jews and dogs are not allowed to enter), later every Jew had to wear a yellow star on ones clothes, so every one could easily identify them in a crowd. Step by step the personality was diminished, so when Jews were told to move out from their homes and to settle in ghettoes rather few of them resisted.One of the most(prenominal) striking things for me that actually quite few of them tried to resist, accepting the situation and believing in their identity element being erased. We are Jewish, we should be quiet. They were imposed the opinion that they were not part of the country, which many of them defen ded during the military personnel War I and they did not belong to their home. Finding themselves in camps, people were usually in all disgraced having no power and desire to oppose whatsoever. It is hard to imagine a human-being sinking so deep, deeper than an animal, totally perverting ones nature.Hanna Arendt in her book Eichman In Jerusalem. The Report On The Banality of Evil. wrote that evil is eternally on the surface and as soon as we dig deeper it disappears. This means that often when people happen to be in some situation it becomes difficult for them to judge their actions, as soon as they become the prisoners of the situation. Being inside makes one perceive the horror as normality. Going back to Milgrams experiment, which proved that people can turn evil easily and very fast, by imposing power of control and blurring their responsibility for the crime.The electroshock experiment showed that two thirds of people who were tested conformed and obeyed the experimenter b lindly, suggesting an idea that they are not the ones to blame for the death of other participants of the experiment. The evil is the readiness to follow the commands and fully comply. There are really quite few monsters in the world the problem is in the whole majority of people who are piss to follow them and to conform to any orders without considering the consequents or the actions themselves.People face uncritical conformity to the leaders or group norms. Their personality and moral principals are simply switched off and the aggressiveness starts growing. However Zimbardo claims that evil is not only concluded in an action, but also in passive tolerance of what is firing on. A new situation may breed both rage and inaction and both levy evil. Although on the other hand a new situation may provoke heroic imagination. For example during holocaust many non-Jewish families under the threat of death were hiding Jewish kids in their homes.After the holocaust they were granted th e title of the righteous among the nations though the righteous considered that what they did, everyone would do in the same situation. That is something that must be conveyed to our children. In every situation we can choose 3 ways either give the car park light to the hostile imagination and evil, stay aside or become heroes. Every one must be taught that humanity is our business. Bulgakov in his Master Margarita through his character Voland claims that in the last 3000 years decree did not change. People will always stay the same and the evil and the good will always confront inside us.We must always keep in mind humanitys previous experiences and try to make the best out of them. The XXth century was a pure return of barbarism holocaust, genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda, Abu Ghraib, mass suicide persuaded by the pastor Reverend Jim Jones etc. The list is long. According to Judaism the evil and the good come from one and the same source, so that is the reason, why it is somet imes so difficult for us to notice between those two. Our task is to fight with our bad inclination (Hebrew- yatzir ha-ra), helping the good inclination (yatzir ha-tov) to develop.