The Root of All Evil

           Some say that evil resides within our heart, that it is a force we must always combat. Others say that it is an external force, like the devil. But the truth of the matter is evil is not conscious. Some would disagree saying that if a hurricane destroys a city is it evil? Most would answer that it is not because it does not think it is a just bad luck. If a tiger eats a child is the tiger evil? Well no it might be more aware but it killed to eat. But when someone kills another in cold blood it then becomes evil. 

          To understand evil we must understand good as well, using examples like heavy rains in a dry area increase the amount of crops that the village will harvest. Is the rain good? If a wolf mother nurses a lost baby is the wolf good? If someone donates thousands of dollars to a charity is that man good? All of these examples only give the "good" side of the effect. The heavy rain will flood the steams into a river that floods the nests of the small burrowing birds nearby. The wolf child when it is found is brought back to society while the wolves are put in a zoo. The man donated the money to a charity so that he could get a bigger deductible on his taxes. 

        Of course this may not be true with all acts of good, but is it with all acts of evil? The hurricane the destroyed the town left the people alive giving it worldwide support to help rebuild create new jobs and better houses and buildings. The tiger survives the winter and goes on to repopulate the nearby jungle. And the person killed the burglar to stop him from killing the rest of his family. 

       These to are extremes but the point is that evil and good are not inside of us or an external force but part of a situation. In many social experiments people have proved that when given roles of power most will turn evil. And when put in positions to help they will do good. An experiment done at Stanford shows this to be true, 75 students volunteered to be part 6 were selected to be prison guards, 9 more at random were arrested days later and put in a mock prison, after 4 days the prison guards started to abuse the prisoners. It should be noted that the guards worked 8-hour shifts meaning that they had 16 hours to think about what they were doing. Overtime the abuse escalated and the experiment had to be stopped. These 6 normal, healthy, students went from college students to perpetrators of evil. 

      The point of all of this is to say that good, and evil are subject to their environment.