The Relationship Between Social Circumstance And Evil

Since the conception of sin itself, humans have debated the root of evil. Seemingly universal, malevolence has lurked in the darkest corners of the human psyche and made itself known to any that ever have walked the Earth. For such a ubiquitous concept, however, there remains little consensus as to why there is evil, how it came to be, and what, precisely, its nature is. Searching for answers that lend hope to these questions, people have tended towards the belief that while humans have both good and evil within them, good ultimately prevails. Although many choose to believe that the rewards of good outweigh the price of evil, the converse often proves true due to internal motivation and external circumstance. Individual corruption wrought

Those part of a group more readily adopt accepted, uniform traits than individuals do, resulting in an increased likelihood of situational violence. J.M. Darley makes a compelling case for this theory when writing on the link between social circumstance and evil:

“When one probes behind evil actions, one normally finds not an evil individual viciously forwarding diabolical schemes but instead ordinary individuals who have done acts of evil because they were caught up in complex social forces.” (qtd. in Berkowitz 247)

Paired with unfamiliar situations, these social forces possess the capability to unbalance people enough to allow for the subversion of personal convictions. With the dissolution of these convictions, then, individuals are more easily coerced into evil acts and given greater opportunity to contradict the innate goodness that they possess. As personal morals are suppressed, the darker nature of humans is allowed to hurt; wickedness, to haunt; viciousness, to

Although representing the extreme of society, these criminals harm others for the same core reason that children verbally ridicule their peers: the desire for power. While writing on the potential causes for violence, Sharon Begley notes that murderers “may be trying to exercise power over a world they believe has left them powerless” (43). When psychologically pushed to extremes, people retaliate by attempting to assert their own self-reliance, their personal power over themselves. Although powerlessness is not the sole cause for mass murder, it does play a role in a considerable number of cases. As individuals find themselves lacking a possession of themselves, they turn to external means to stabilize themselves, resulting sometimes in incomprehensible acts of evil to those who possess self-composure or ignore the root of evil