• lennybird@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    That depends entirely on how you define evil: Are you using biblical evil? That is unscientific. Are you using “Evil” in the sense of psychopathy, scoiopathy, and a range of mental disorders that makes them deviant to mainline society? Then I believe most cases of evil can be summed up as such: a predisposition to doing something perceived by most as wrong in lieu of a mixture of nature & nurture and its impact on the physiological and mental state of the brain.

    We’ve seen evil acts committed by shooters who after autopsy have large brain tumors impacting their state of mind. We’ve seen evil acts commited by people under the influence of strong drugs. We’ve seen evil committed by people who themselves were abused as children (survivorship bias fallacy aside).

    After all, we can identify parts of the brain that deal with behavioral inhibitions; we can identify other areas of the brain associated with empathy.

    I do believe that if we looked at evil as a predominantly mental disorder we’d probably be able to identify and address “evil” before it becomes enabled and acts.

    People aren’t born fascist. There is no such thing as biblical evil. There exists simply broken minds.