evil/good inborn (was humanism on main list)

[Amy Z]

jenny from ravenclaw wrote, on the main list:

>I feel guilty disagreeing with anything Amy Z says,

Excellent!  ::rubs hands together::  My training is taking effect!

>but here I think differently - at least partly, anyway.  I agree that evil 
>can be
inborn, because, IMO, we cannot have any good if there is no evil to
go with it (you know, how we can't understand one without having the
other).  We are all capable of doing evil things, and certainly of
thinking evil thoughts - I know I do - bwahahahaha!  I digress.
However, I think much evil behavior is related to how one was raised.
I couldn't agree more.  I was just delineating between some of my 
coreligionists' POV, which is that human beings are essentially good, and my 
own, which is that human beings are born with selfish and cruel desires as 
well as impulses towards altruism, justice, compassion, and love.

I actually don't spend much effort breaking my head against the problem of 
what is "inborn" or "essential"--it doesn't interest me all that much as a 
philosophical problem.  When I say that one's deepest self is good, I mean 
that I believe one cannot be cruel, unkind, unjust, etc. without being 
fundamentally out of harmony with an important part of oneself (let the 
professional ontologists worry about whether it's "the core" of oneself or 
not), and also out of harmony with the rest of the world, not to mention the 
divine.

>I'm also a bit confused about what Amy said about Tom Riddle's "deepest 
>self".  Does that mean that maybe Riddle is ignoring the warm and fuzzy 
>feelings he is capable of getting?  Or does it mean > > that he has worked 
>extremely hard to squash the empathy out of > himself?

Both, I suppose, though I don't know how hard he had to work at it.  When 
one is abused from infancy, one may well find empathy hard to sustain.  I do 
believe that everyone has the capacity for empathy and that Riddle has 
suppressed his, glorying in power over others and the ability to cause pain 
instead.

>Perhaps that's what true evil is - the way Riddle devoted his entire life 
>to death and destruction, and has trained himself to delight in it.

Sounds like a good start at a definition to me!

Amy

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