Evil

A few weeks ago in my amazing english class, my amazing english teacher asked us to answer the question can a person be born evil.  My initial answer was no.  I thought that it took some huge traumatic event for a person to become evil.  (When I say evil, I mean hugely evil, like serial killer status evil).  I felt that everyone was born equal and that people were molded to become who they turn out to be.  Then I thought  more deeply and I realized that that wasn't so.  There are many counter examples to my previous theory, but I won't get into all of them.  People can be born evil, and there is a psychological name for these types of people. They are called sociopath.  Sociopaths only see self gain, are incapable of giving love, have no conscience and are very manipulative.  That kinda sounds like an evil person in my opinion.  I think if someone can be born with physical birth-defects, people can also be born with psychological birth-defects.  People definitely are not born into the world with a blank slate.  I think we are all born with some part of us already developed just like all baby's aren't born the same shape and size and all births don't turn out the same.  I think if everybody was born like a blank canvas, we would live in a utopia and there would be no such thing as evil.

"Be above the battle of good and evil"

Today in english class we watched a movie about politics.  The man in the movie, Haidt (pronounced hate :]), explained his theory of liberal vs. conservative.  He said that everyone thinks they're right, so its best if we take ourselves out of the battle of good vs evil.  He said that liberals claim to be open minded but when they are in a group against conservatives it actually makes them closed minded. His idea that we should all put aside our biases sounds good in theory, but I don't think it actaully works.  I relate it to communism.  The overall idea was good and had good intentions, but it simply didn't work because it's not how we as humans are programmed to function.  Without biases, then what are we?  Without choosing a side then we have no voice and no reason to stand up for whats right.  I actually tired to be unbiased in a political sense and it was nearly impossible for me to not to say what was right and what wasn't.  Being above the battle of good and evil means being above the issues, but when we are above the issues it doesn't mean they go away, and if they don't go away then how do we solve them..?