The idea of good and evil is a product of socially instilled norms and values. A thing/ person is considered good if they conform to a set of values, dictated by social institutions (media, education etc.); whilst a thing/ person is condemned as evil if they break these socially dictated moral rules.
I am completely against the argument that we are all build with innate ideas of what is good and what is bad (a core set of morals) and i further reject the ridiculous standpoint that some people (evil people) chose to reject these core values and go against their nature to commit atrocities. People do not choose to be evil. I belive it is too simplistic to think that people who have do ‘bad’ things do them because that have chosen to be ‘bad’. For many it is something they are either forced into doing by social systems and conventions. For example Brenda Ann Spencer the 16-year-old girl who killed her class mates et al in 1979 did not do this because she is an intrinsically bad person who chose to reject her natural feelings in place for more sadistic ‘evil’ ones. Rather she is a product of society. She is a person who, like all of us, contained the potential to be normal and ‘good’ as well as the potential to be ‘evil’. the only difference between the majority of the population and Brenda Ann Spencer is that something in her upbringing/ environment caused her to react in a way which rebelled against social convention in the most extreme way. Now the obvious argument to this might be “well now other people have the same upbringing and don’t do that so she must have something wrong with her right?” Well I’d suggest that anyone who is exposed to an environmental stimulus which may lead one to react in that way, as well all are at one point, has something wrong with them if they just accept that situation. Lets look at another example… right fucking billions of people conform to the strenuous, tedious, torture that is office work. These people spend a huge chunk of their life bored. Sitting at a desk doing menial, pointless work and being given wank all back (look at the cows in Radiohead’s 2+2=5 vid). Surely then it is totally understandable if some individuals respond to this social stimulus by rejecting their insufferable routine and escaping their hideous patterns of work by killing everyone in their office. See who in this context it is clearly, almost justifiable, that the individual committed such an evil act. If there is an evil in this would i would suggest that it is not the individual’s, rather social institutions and oppressive patterns and conventions which exist in the interests of the few and which leave the masses to be content with caged thought and uncurious entertainment outlets (media nad sport for instance).
