do you think you can have an understanding for innately evil people?

Question

some people just say the truth and they get scorned for it .. the supposedly "good" people are the people i find very annoying and bland .. dry grovel .. scholars of hypocrisy but there are truly good people .. people who don't pretend .. it's hard to dissect those kind of blokes from the whole mass of ostensibly good-natured people .. what do you say?

thanks a million AAA!! you opened new doors to the subject of evil .. regarding your quoting of me in your manuscript .. that would be awesome ..
a new thought popped in my head .. why don't we ponder the caste system, the cannibals, the satanists who offer human sacrifices .. they do rituals and activities that we consider vile, derogatory, and basically inhuman .. but it is part of their culture, religion and orientation to do these supposedly horrible deeds .. so evil is a philosophical undertaking that i am not so keen on thinking about right now .. but you shed a light on a widespread issue that i feel we must tackle in order to build a better world

a lot of the war heroes too killed to gain land or whatever .. so why are they heroes? their zeal and seeming courage overpowered the deeds they had to do to glorify themselves so i really wouldn't consider them thoroughly good people .. hey what about John Lennon .. huh? huh? he's sort of a mass of good and bad contradictions .. he did drugs .. which does not have as much gravity because he did them to inspire himself .. he also promoted peace and justice ..nothing just an idea .. or this may be brought about by my fanaticism for The Beatles which is my favourite band

Answer 1

I don't know if I would call it understanding, but I do think that there are factors in these peoples life that made them into an "evil person". And I just hope to God that I am as far away from these kind of people as possible. I like to deal with normal down to earth people.

On the other hand, are these people "always evil"? or is it the circumstance of the moment that made them act as an "evil" being?.

Greetings from Baja!

Answer 2

I don't suppose people are innately well or evil however as an alternative full of intuition from the second of delivery and taught morals as they develop up. I feel this is a aware option among people to be evil or well. Keeping in brain that what we outline as well and evil is discovered by way of todays society and what society believes to be well/evil will not be the identical as our instincts. I as soon as needed to write a equivalent essay to this advertising the proposal that people have been innately evil in prime tuition and I wrote this as an instance: "If you set a cookie jar in entrance of a baby and inform him to not contact it he'll nine instances out of 10 contact the cookie jar." I recognize now nevertheless that this doesn't imply the baby used to be evil however has now not been taught proper or flawed and for this reason noticed no penalties of their movements. To be really sincere I suppose humans who say people are innately evil are looking to justify why humans do unhealthy matters in which virtually the cause they most often do the ones matters is considering the fact that they havent been taught or else or they've made the aware choice themselves to take action. Either means thats my opinion.

Answer 3

What a sad question. MAybe u equate meek for weak which is , Who can understand the mine of a person~ no one but the creator.

We are given choices for a reason. Jesus was neither bland nor boringggggg!

Answer 4

interesting topic and answers. I often find self proclaimed "good" people to be quickly headed down the path of evil....

Answer 5

Making it short,because of the first answer.
If BAD people SUCK! Does that mean NICE people SWALLOW?

Answer 6

..........That was the longest answer i have ever seen in my life....*bleep*

Answer 7

Below is a list of the "Top Ten" evil people of all time followed by a list of the "Top Ten" good people of all time -- sorted in order of evilness and goodness. Please add your votes. Who would you like to see added to the list? What alterations would you make to the list or the ordering? Do the scales of good and evil balance? If I may have permission to quote you in a manuscript, please give permission in your note to me.

Why is it easier to think of evil examples than good ones? Is it much easier to do something big and bad than it is to do something big and good?

Developing this list was not an easy task due to the complexity of human personalities and the fact that goodness and evilness depend on the perspective of the time. (For example, perhaps many Americans consider dropping the bomb on Hiroshima "good" whereas many Japanese consider it "evil.") On the evilness scale, I gave additional weight to those people who actually enjoyed and personally participated in the utter horror they produced. When compiling the good list, I also considered the number of people killed by the followers of the "good" person during the person's life time.

For both the good and evil list, I also asked myself the question, "With whom would I least like to be in a room, and with whom would I most like to be in a room?"

If you are not happy with this list, drop me a line, because the list changes in response to suggestions from my readers. If you had scales and put Stalin's massacres on the left side, what could you put on the right-hand side to balance it? Extreme kindness and attempts to alleviate suffering? Curing cancer? Ending world hunger? Charity? Elevating the thinking of humankind with respect to human rights? Perhaps the very best people don't seek publicity for their good deeds; these are the unknown heroes who work tirelessly with the poor and the sick. When considering religions leaders, do we need to consider possible negative results that evolved, such as fundamentalist groups that suppress women, or the concept of Jihad, or holy war? If the Inquisition arose out of Christianity, need we consider this in assessments we make?
The Top Ten Evil
1. Tomas de Torquemada (pictured here) - Born in Spain in 1420, his name is synonymous with the Christian Inquisition's horror, religious bigotry, and cruel fanaticism. He was a fan of various forms of torture including foot roasting, use of the garrucha, and suffocation. He was made Grand Inquisitor by Pope Sixtus IV. Popes and kings alike praised his tireless efforts. The number of burnings at the stake during Torquemada's tenure has been estimated at about 2,000. Torquemada's hatred of Jews influenced Ferdinand and Isabella to expel all Jews who had not embraced Christianity.


2. Vlad Tepes - Vlad the Impaler was a prince known for executing his enemies by impalement. He was a fan of various forms of torture including disemboweling and rectal and facial impalement. Vlad the Impaler tortured thousands while he ate and drunk among the corpses. He impaled every person in the city of Amlas -- 20,000 men, women and children. Vlad often ordered people to be skinned, boiled, decapitated, blinded, strangled, hanged, burned, roasted, hacked, nailed, buried alive, stabbed, etc. He also liked to cut off noses, ears, sexual organs and limbs. But his favorite method was impalement on stakes, hence the surname "Tepes" which means "The Impaler" in the Romanian language. It is this technique he used in 1457, 1459 and 1460 against Transylvanian merchants who had ignored his trade laws. He also looked upon the poor, vagrants and beggars as thieves. Consequently, he invited all the poor and sick of Wallachia to his princely court in Tirgoviste for a great feast. After the guests ate and drank, Dracula ordered the hall boarded up and set on fire. No one survived.

Note: Every Romanian who contacted me said I should remove Vlad from the list. They said he was not evil and seemed to like him. In an effort to understand how our views of evil can be so different, I reproduce an exchange I had with Marius who was born in Romania. Perhaps this will help us understand more generally how the perception of evil can differ from person to person. Other strange discussions on this same web page focus on Bill Clinton and those people who truly believe Clinton was more evil than Adolf Hitler who exterminated millions.


3. Adolph Hitler - The dictator of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler, was born on April 20, 1889, at Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary.

4. Ivan the Terrible - Ivan Vasilyevich, (born Aug. 25, 1530, in Kolomenskoye, near Moscow) was the grand prince of Moscow (1533-84) and the first to be proclaimed tsar of Russia (from 1547). His reign saw the completion of the construction of a centrally administered Russian state and the creation of an empire that included non-Slav states. He enjoyed burning 1000s of people in frying pans, and was fond of impaling people.

5. Adolph Eichmann - Born in March 19, 1906, Solingen, Germany he was hanged by the state of Israel for his part in the Nazi extermination of Jews during World War II. "The death of five million Jews on my conscience gives me extraordinary satisfaction."

6. Pol Pot - Pol Pot (born in 1925 in the Kompong Thom province of Cambodia) was the Khmer political leader whose totalitarian regime (1975-79) imposed severe hardships on the people of Cambodia. His radical communist government forced the mass evacuations of cities, killed or displaced millions of people, and left a legacy of disease and starvation. Under his leadership, his government caused the deaths of at least one million people from forced labor, starvation, disease, torture, or execution.

7. Mao Tse-tung - who killed somewhere between 20 and 67 million (estimates vary) of his countrymen, including the elderly and intellectuals. His picture still hangs throughout many homes and businesses. Mao's own personality cult, encouraged so as to provide momentum to the movement, assumed religious proportions. The resulting anarchy, terror, and paralysis completely disrupted the urban economy. Industrial production for 1968 dipped 12 percent below that of 1966. In short, the Revolution led to the destruction of much of China's cultural heritage and the imprisonment of a huge number of Chinese intellectuals, amongst other social chaos. This policy is usually regarded as a complete disaster.

8. Idi Amin - Idi Amin Dada Oumee (born in 1924 in Uganda) was the military officer and president (1971-79) of Uganda. Amin also took tribalism, a long- standing problem in Uganda, to its extreme by allegedly ordering the persecution of Acholi, Lango, and other tribes. Reports indicate torture and murder of 100,000 to 300,000 Ugandans during Amin's presidency. In 1972, he began to expel Asians from Uganda. God, he said, had directed him to do this. (Acutally, he had been angered by the refusal of one of the country's most prominent Asian families, the Madhvanis, to hand over their prettiest daughter as his fifth wife.) Over the years, Ugandans would disappear in the thousands, their mutilated bodies washing up on the shores of Lake Victoria. Amin would boast of being a "reluctant" cannibal - human flesh, he said, was too salty. He once ordered that the decapitation of political prisoners be broadcast on TV, specifying that the victims "must wear white to make it easy to see the blood". One of Amin's guards, Abraham Sule, said: "[Amin] put his bayonet in the pot containing human blood and licked the stuff as it ran down the bayonet. Amin told us: 'When you lick the blood of your victim, you will not see nightmares.' He then did it."


9. Joseph Stalin - Born in 1879. During the quarter of a century preceding his death in 1953, the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin probably exercised greater political power than any other figure in history. In the 1930s, by his orders, millions of peasants were either killed or permitted to starve to death. Stalin brought about the deaths of more than 20 million of his own people while holding the Soviet Union in an iron grip for 29 years. Stalin succeeded his hero Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in 1924. From then on, he induced widespread famines to enforce farm collectives, and eliminated perceived enemies through massive purges.


10. Genghis Khan- The Mongol Temjin, known to history as Genghis Khan (born 1162) was a warrior and ruler who, starting from obscure and insignificant beginnings, brought all the nomadic tribes of Mongolia under the rule of himself and his family in a rigidly disciplined military state. Massacres of defeated populations, with the resultant terror, were weapons he regularly used. His Mongol hordes killed off countless people in Asia and Europe in the early 1200s. When attacking Volohoi, Khan convinced the city commander that Mongols would stop attacking if the city sent out 1,000 cats and several thousand swallows. When he got them, Genghis had bits of cloth tied to their tails and set the cloth on fire. The cats and birds fled back to the city and ended up setting hundreds of fires inside the city. Then Genghis attacked and won. At another time, Mongols rounded up 70,000 men, women, and children and shot them with arrows. Genghis told his comrades: "Man's greatest good fortune is to chase and defeat his enemy, seize his total possessions, leave his married women weeping and wailing, ride his gelding, use his women as a nightshirt and support, gazing upon and kissing their rosy breasts, sucking their lips which are as sweet as the berries of their breasts."


11. H. H. Holmes - built a hundred-room mansion complete with gas chambers, trap doors, acid vats, lime pits, fake walls and secret entrances. During the 1893 World's Fair he rented rooms to visitors. He then killed most of his lodgers and continued his insurance fraud scheme. He also lured women to his "torture castle" with the promise of marriage. Instead, he would force them to sign over their savings, then throw them down an elevator shaft and gas them to death. In the basement of the castle he dismembered and skinned his prey and experimented with their corpses. He killed over 200 people.


12. Gilles de Rais - A Fifteenth Century French war hero, Gilles was also one of medieval Europe's worst killers. He enjoyed killing mostly young boys, whom he would sodomize before and after decapitation. He enjoyed watching his servants butcher the boys and masturbated over their entrails. He killed over 140 people.

Some Runners-Up: Nicolae Ceausescu decreed that all women must bear five children. Due to terrible food shortages, many women were unable to support their "decree babies." They turned them over to state-run orphanages. More than 150,000 children were crowded into these institutions. Many died of malnutrition and disease. Others ran away becoming homeless beggars. Ceausescu also forbade testing of the nation's blood supply for AIDS. Through transfusions and shared vaccinations needles, thousands of orphans contracted AIDS. Eventually Romania had over half of Europe's cases of childhood AIDS.

Basil the Bulgar Slayer blinded 14,000 prisoners. Heinrich Himmler was the architect of the "Final Solution." Tallat Pasha decreed there must be no Armenians on the Earth. 1.5 Million Armenians were beaten, raped, robbed, and killed.
The Top Ten Good


1. Buddha - Buddhism, far more than Christianity or Islam, has a very strong pacifist element. The orientation toward nonviolence has played a significant role in the political history of Buddhist countries.

2. Baha'u'llah - Baha'is believe that all the founders of the world's great religions have been manifestations of God and agents of a progressive divine plan for the education of the human race. Despite their apparent differences, the world's great religions, according to the Baha'is, teach an identical truth. Baha'is believe that Baha'ullah (d. 1892) was a manifestation of God, who in His essence is unknowable. Baha'ullah's special function was to overcome the disunity of religions and establish a universal faith. Baha'is believe in the oneness of humanity and devote themselves to the abolition of racial, class, and religious prejudices. The great bulk of Baha'i teachings is concerned with social ethics; the faith has no priesthood and does not observe ritual forms in its worship.

3. Dalai Lama - head of the dominant Dge-lugs-pa order of Tibetan Buddhists and, until 1959, both spiritual and temporal ruler of Tibet. In 1989 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in recognition of his nonviolent campaign to end Chinese domination of Tibet.

4. Jesus Christ -- for the preaching of love.

5. Moses - just the idea of "resting on the seventh day" improved the life of countless people.

6. Mother Teresa - Once Mother Teresa was asked how she could continue day after day after day, visiting the terminally ill: feeding them, wiping their brows, giving them comfort as they lay dying. And she said, "It's not hard because in each one, I see the face of Christ in one of His more distressing disguises."

7. Abraham Lincoln - for paving the way to freeing the slaves.

8. Martin Luther King -- American clergyman and Nobel Prize winner, one of the principal leaders of the American civil rights movement and a prominent advocate of nonviolent protest.

9. Mohandas Gandhi -- Indian nationalist leader, who established his country's freedom through a nonviolent revolution.

Who should be number 10? Would you ever consider someone like Carl Djerassi, "father of the birth control pill"? Because millions of unwanted children were not produced, countless suffering has been abolished (including decreases in crime, child abuse, and ecological nightmares). With women gaining more control over their reproductive fate, society has changed. Reliable birth control became as easy as taking a pill, which some call the single greatest factor in helping women achieve equality. Although religious people may debate whether a fertilized egg (zygote) should be accorded the same rights as a child (and therefore the pill is evil), no one debates that the pill has decreased the suffering of fully formed, multicellular humans.

Note that "zygotic personhood" (the idea that a fertilized egg is a person) is a recent concept. For example, before 1869, the Catholic church believed that the embryo was not a person until it was 40 days old. (Aristotle agreed with this 40-day threshold.) Thus, the church did not believe a human had a soul until day 40. Pope Innocent III in 1211 determined that the time of ensoulment was anywhere from 12 to 16 weeks. This means that the Catholic church, for centuries, did not equate abortion with murder. (Pictured at left is a two day old human embryo at four cell stage of development, magnified 260 times.)

Adding to the Evil List
Please send me e-mail if you have ideas for people to add to the evil list. My goal is to make a list of 100 evil people. Feel free to tell me why you think your candidates are evil and how to find out more about your nominated evil person.
Responses from Readers
From Geoffrey Riggs:

For me, when it comes to the most important Good figures throughout history, one has to measure not just their Goodness but, IMO, the degree to which their Goodness inspired or changed others around them. Would this planet be distinctly different had they never impacted either those around them or those coming after them to the same significant degree?

By that yardstick, I'm not quite sure that Baha'u'llah, much as I admire him, would qualify among the top ten, what with the dozens of candidates who have demonstrably done Good for their fellow creatures throughout history. He is certainly among the top twenty, yes, but I don't feel that his influence, salutary as it has been and hardly insignificant, quite rises to the level -- yet -- of a Gandhi, a Moses, a Jesus, or a Buddha. Ultimately, of course, one is dealing with a snapshot of the planet at a given moment only. That picture could always change. But right now, the planet as a whole, while impacted to a degree by Baha'u'llah, does not display his impact to the same degree that it does that of certain others (would that it did!).

Similarly, when it comes to the degree to which certain benefactors may be contingent upon the cultural context in which they arose, I'm more prone to single out figures who more clearly, IMO, established a more or less unprecedented pattern of altruism in their benevolent concerns than in those who may have taken singular advantage of a role already afforded them. Thus, IMO, I might suggest that, for instance, the Dalai Lama could not have existed without Buddha himself, nor Mother Teresa without the example of Jesus himself, nor Abraham Lincoln without the challenge of those cultural pathbreakers in the 17th and 18th-century who first made the political soil rich enough for the American Experiment to spring up in the first place.

Given these parameters, while they might disqualify candidates like Baha'u'llah, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, or Abraham Lincoln, they distinctly reaffirm the centrality of Buddha, Jesus Christ, and Moses. Gandhi and King we'll put aside for a moment.

We have here three definite Titans (with seven slots still to fill):

Moses was one who significantly amplified the moral obligations intrinsic to law itself in a code that still resonates in many respects today, although generally assumed to have been established way back around 1200 B.C.E.! Many maintain that law itself as a concept would look altogether different today were it not for this man's example.

The first well-documented figure to live out an apparently blameless life and to do so in tandem with an espoused ethical doctrine that urged harm to no one -- thus a figure who acted and said precisely the same in all weathers within a context of caring always for the other -- was probably Siddhartha Gautama, known better as Buddha, 6th-5th centuries B.C.E.

And Jesus was unique in an outlook that encompassed the moral obligations of each individual human being toward each and every other human being without exception. Thus, on an individual level, he seems more willing to give every person, no matter her/his past, a second chance to an extent that is arguably greater than any other comparable figure. Jesus is at as selfless a level as anyone in this lineup. Only a tiny, tiny number in this group are within hailing distance, IMHO.

What of the remaining seven slots? Well, the first legislator who formulated the principle that those who cannot help themselves ought to be protected from -- at least -- _avoidable_ harm, if possible, through the protection of the law -- a law in which the weak would be given some protections against the strong -- was Urukagina, a Sumerian lawgiver from ca. 2300 B.C.E. I'd say Urukagina would be the earliest figure who ought to be viewed as being "unique" in his own way.

A figure as apparently as upright as Buddha who both walked and talked his doctrine faithfully within a context of public life, not just of the individual, was Confucius, a contemporary of Buddha's.

And, for many, the great pioneer in formulating a systematized approach to ethics itself would be the Athenian philosopher Socrates, of the late 5th century, B.C.E. He too appears to have "walked the talk" of an upright life and doctrine before his summary execution.

Around the middle of the first millennium A.D., Mohammed's life traces a remarkable transformation, from increasingly impatient warrior, to a life centered on violent raids and general aggression, to an unexpected return to Mecca, where he refuses to carry a weapon of any kind or to allow his followers one and ends up, at great danger to himself, changing the region where he lived from one convulsed by endless feuds to one where people could live in relative harmony.

Roughly a thousand years later, John Locke appears to have been the first in the second millennium C.E. to urge an empirical approach to experience. Implicitly rejecting an obligation to accept knee-jerk assumptions of any majority, Locke urged study and contemplation for oneself. He also urged the importance of certain freedoms we view as fundamental today. Democracy today could not exist as we know it without the contribution this man made to the human comedy. So I would view Locke as a more central figure than Lincoln ultimately.

In the nineteenth century, wars grew more and more apocalyptic as technology grew more and more fiendish in its pursuit. Deeply alarmed, a new way was urged by a Russian genius who was both an inspired author and an upright human being: Leo Tolstoy. A pioneer in the philosophy of non-violence, Tolstoy established a pattern of peaceful co-existence that flourished in the example of a few others in the twentieth century, including Gandhi and King.

We now have 9 figures in all. They are, in chronological order:

Urukagina
Moses
Buddha
Confucius
Socrates
Jesus
Mohammed
Locke
Tolstoy

I confess I am almost stumped by whom to choose as the tenth figure. Benefactors who occur to me are the earliest figure whose law code survives practically in its entirety (and BTW, a law code partly based on the mostly lost Urukagina statutes apparently): Hammurabi, ca. 1800 B.C.E. Again, this accomplishment stands as something worthy and pattern-setting -- to a degree.

For some, the most profound utterance on the human condition is the Hindu text, the Bhagavad-Gita. The date when this was written is in dispute (6th/5th century B.C.?), but some ascribe this to a certain (apparent) genius at synthesizing many different concepts and ideas, Vyasa.

Perhaps the first figure to articulate political freedom in a way and a context one can relate to today was Solon, the Athenian lawgiver, who also lived around the same time, I believe(?).

In the C.E. era, we have perhaps the first figure to maintain outright that all are equal, in so many words: the Roman jurist Ulpian. "So far as the Civil Law is concerned, slaves are not considered persons, but this is not the case according to natural law, because natural law regards all men as equal." This may be the first known formulation of the concept of natural law, which has come to function (sometimes) as a counterpoise to tyranny. He also enunciated the principle: "The precepts of the law are the following: to live honorably, to injure no one, to give to every one his due." For its time, it was something new to place these as paramount concerns rather than merely guiding ones.

And now for Gandhi and King: In the first half of the twentieth century, a simple man in India, Mahatma Gandhi, brought one of the great empires in world history to heel through non-violent means. His example, partly influenced by Hindu philosophy in texts like the Bhagavad-Gita and partly by the example of Leo Tolstoy, inspired a whole nation to throw off an imperialist yoke and live free.

Finally, a whole people who -- to the country's shame -- did not live free, though dwelling in an assumed democracy, were finally afforded greater rights than their forebears (although still not made entirely equal to their compatriots) through the tireless efforts and eventual martyrdom of an apparent follower of Gandhi, of Jesus, and of Locke: Martin Luther King, Jr.

To choose just one amongst these towering six altruists may be impossible. One could perhaps argue that, with Hammurabi being an arguably transitional figure between Urukagina and Moses, Hammurabi is probably to be relegated to the next ten along with Mother Teresa and so on.

However, Vyasa is certainly a strong candidate, being a profound synthesizer of one of the chief global religions and a philosophical forebear of Gandhi.

Solon is in many ways the Ur-democrat (small "d"), making him arguably as essential as Locke.

Democracy could not exist without the concept of equality, so Ulpian is pivotal here, too, although one could argue that Ulpian could not even have been possible without the prior example of Athenian democracy -- hence, Solon.

Gandhi is the first one who had to carry out the Tolstoy philosophy on a practical globally transformative level, so one could claim him as central to the human condition today, even though Tolstoy was partly conditionally foundational for Gandhi in turn.

King, arguably, has three distinct forebears already: Jesus, Tolstoy and Gandhi.

That leaves us, IMO, with at least two figures whom I find it impossible to ignore: Vyasa and Solon. This is why I am pretty much stumped in my choice of either one as the tenth. If I were choosing a dozen instead of ten, both Vyasa and Solon would be easy, but then the 12th would become a difficult choice between Ulpian and Gandhi -- possibly Gandhi, but.........

Sorry to be so inconclusive.

As for choosing the Evil figures, they frankly bore me.

Cheers (and feel free to put this up on your discussion page re the most significant Good and Evil figures, if you wish),

Geoffrey Riggs

Reponse from David G.:

Wow, Cliff, you've really ventured into a mine-field here, haven't you? I think that it will be very difficult to devise such a list, mainly because no one is entirely good or entirely evil. And, often, even those with evil means are attempting to carry out good agendas (although perhaps in the wrong manner).

For example, I think most people would say that Adolph Hitler was the personification of evil. However, at least, in the beginning, his intentions were good. He was attempting to rebuild Germany after the collapse caused by the loss of the first World War, and by the war reparations demanded by the victors which resulted in the financial collapse of the German economy. While the means he used to accomplish this were rather draconian, he did achieve his goal of the reunification of Germany, restoration of civil order (as opposed to the anarchy which was in effect), and an improved economy. It was only later that he started his campaign of military assaults, and his crusade against various ethnic groups (which, in my personal opinion, is the ultimate evil). Additionally, in his younger years, he was an aspiring artist, and some of his paintings were rather interesting. Thus, even in the most evil person imaginable, it's possible to find good characteristics.

Consider the case of Ivan the Terrible, and the situation in Russia in the 16th century. Would the fear from such stories be useful in controlling an unruly and partially barbaric population? Even Tomas de Torquemada was inspired by religion.

Also, don't forget that we tend to judge people by our own standards. Thus, good and evil are relative to our environment, our thought process, our heritage. Consider how someone like Hitler might have been thought of if Germany had won the war. Would we have thought that Franklin Roosevelt was a war monger who needlessly sacrificed soldiers, and caused needless suffering while wrongly attempting to influence the proper world order? Would the United States have been thought of as a barbaric country filled with soft-headed idiots? Could Germany's persecution of the ethnic groups be compared to the slaughter of the Native Americans by the early Americans?

Personally, I think my own beliefs tend to run close to your own. But, I think that these issues need to be considered before attempting to classify people into either the evil or the good category.

Ok, now for some of my own recommendations. Where on the list would Idi Amin fit (Dictator of Uganda)? Didn't he publicly profess to cannibalism? Does this automatically qualify someone as evil? Or, isn't this really a cultural bias? What about Abraham Lincoln? Here was a man who had an impossible job, the reunification of a country at civil war, which eventually led to the loss of his life. What about the various winners of the Congressional Medal of Honor? While these were typically not leaders, quite a few of them voluntarily sacrificed their own life to save those of their friends (and, what higher good can there ever be?). What about Jesus? Isn't he the personification of goodness? Of course, now we're factoring in various religious thoughts, so I'm sure this could be considered very controversial. What about the prophet Mohammed? Going back to the second World War, what about Schindler (Have you ever seen the movie "Schindler's List"?). What about Timmothy McVey? He's almost certain to take a place on the list of the top twenty evil for his part in the Oklahoma City bombing. What about John Kennedy? While generally regarded as being responsible for putting a man on the moon, which has partially led to the technology explosion which exists today, he also came extremely close to provoking worldwide nuclear war. Where on the list does he belong?

I'm sure that there are literally millions of candidates for each list. However, in nominating these candidates, we're all evaluating them according to our own particular beliefs, so everyone's list will be vastly different, and, some entries might even swap portions, depending upon the person doing the evaluation. And, of course, the scariest part of this whole process might be that people have to publicly examine their own thoughts and their own morals, and, this can be extremely frightening at times!

From: Ron Kuby (famous attorney and WABC talk show host, pictured at right)

Cliff, thanks for your note. I was slightly familiar with your work as I am a sci-fi buff. Terry Bisson is a friend of mine.

As to good and evil, I do not know where to begin. In the absence of some definitional framework (intent vs. result, for example), it is tough to know where to begin. Surely Harry S. Truman deserves a place above Vlad the Impaler; Hiroshima/Nagasaki resulted in the murders of over 100,000 innocents. And if you want to argue that the murder of 100,000 saved 1,000,000, then why is Chairman Mao in the negative column? And so on. Anyway, glad you like the show. Best, Ron

[More about his show at: http://www.wabcradio.com/ ] From Greg K.:

One of my favorite examples - how would JFK have been viewed if the same moral standards we are applying to President Clinton were applied, and if the press pried into his personal life as deeply as the press does now (I am grossed out that this is an issue at all for the President). I believe he would have one plot in a ranking based upon his lifetime, and quite another if the standards of the time were applied.

Then, what do we apply "good" and "evil" to? The person's day job? Their life as a whole? Their motivations? President Carter may not rank high as a "good" president, yet I believe of all the recent presidents that he is truly committed to helping others - is this "good", does it count?

Then there is Mother Teresa - I'm not saying she shouldn't be considered "good" - but what about the other nuns that worked with her that aren't recognized as individuals. Is the same work without world recognition even more "good"?

Is saving people "good"? If you feed a starving person, are you good? If that person lives to have children and the same basic problems of lack of resources still exists, haven't you made things worse, merely deferred a current problem and made it worse in the long term? Is that good or evil? Is the leadership of China good or evil - clearly their Draconian state enables a rapid reduction in their birth rate. Isn't that evil? Yet, if they didn't control their birth rate, millions would die - isn't that evil?
From Arni D.:

Hi, Your list looks really strange. I have another:

1. Leopold II king of Belgium. Killed half of the population of Congo, about 10 to 15 million people, during his reign in the Free State of Congo 1870-1908. Hands were cut of much of the rest of the population, preferably children, to ensure rubber production quotas were met.
2. Christopher Columbus. During his reign in Hispaniola in the Carribean the Indian population dwindled from 3 000 000 to 300 000 in about ten years. In 1520 none were left.
3. Oliver Cromwell. During his campaign in Ireland in the middle of the 17th century 400 000 Irish, a third of the population, perished because of his cruelty in conducting the campaign.
4. Fransico Pizarro. Brutally destroyed the Inca empire and its culture in the 16th century and killed its emperor despite receiving a room full of gold in ransom for the emperor.
5. Julius Cesar. Campaigned in Gaul in 1st century BC. Killed every third grown male in the country, another third was enslaved. Culture of Gaul destroyed.
6. Hernan Cortes. Destroyed the Aztec culture in the 16th century.
7. Lyndon Johnson. Organized the slaughter of 2 000 000 innocent Vietnamese.
8. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, politically responsible for neoliberalist policies of the International Monetary Fund. Responsible for suffering and death of up to 100 000 000 people, primarily in Africa because of „structural adjustment“ (privatization etc.).
9. Merchants from Liverpool, f.ex. mr. Penny (Penny Lane of the Beatle song is named after him) in the 17th to 18th century. Responsible for enslavery and transport and death of 30 millions of Africans (minimum numbers). 20 million of these died as a result of captivity.

From Jim M.:

I can't think of him as more evil than, say, John Gacy or Jeffrey Dahmer.

There are probably lots of exceedingly "good" people (measured from the view of *not* being evil in any way) that have had no impact on the world whatsoever, except perhaps as role models to those who have known them. Those who have "*done* good", like some of the examples Dave mentions, tend to be less perfect -- it's hard to be effective without stepping on a few toes here and there. How interesting that it's easier to come up with evil examples than good ones.

Dave's comments are interesting, but I wonder whether there's not a tendency to confuse the inherent nature of a person with the results of acts. For instance, McVeigh may have killed a lot more people, but

There is a web site called the "Serial Killer Hit List" that might be useful, at http://www.mayhem.net/Crime/serial1.html . Fairly strong stuff, but if we're talkin' 'bout EEEEvil . . .
From Craig B.:

I think Dave had a point, this is something of a can o' worms, because as we all know, there are no moral absolutes in the cold, existential universe we live in...or something like that, I dunno, it sure sounded good when I typed it. But seriously, for example, one of my top contenders would be Mao Tse-tung, leader of the Gang of Four, who killed off somewhere between 20 and 67 million (estimates vary) of his countrymen. But my parents recently returned from a trip there, and his picture is still hanging all over the place.

Similarly with Mohammed, the Prophet of the Islamic faith. An amazing number of people alive today would put him at the top of any list of "Good" people, but if "Name the top 10 Good People of all time" were to be asked on _Family Feud_, he wouldn't even be on the list.

Is Jack Kevorkian Good or Evil?

For personal selections, I'd probably add Mao (above), Stalin (who killed off ~10 million misc farmers while "collectivizing" their farms)(and there were at least a couple of other "purges" in the USSR in the first half of this century that killed off similar numbers of people), good ol' Pol Pot, Adolph Eichmann and the rest of Hitler's buddies, Genghis Khan (his Mongol hordes killed off an amazing number of people in Asia and Europe in the early 1200's (like 35 million Chinese, I forget the figures for Europe, I know he hit Poland hard).

All of which leads me to wonder, what's worse? Mass, impersonal murder of millions, or attention to detail? There was some nut- case in California who got caught some years back, his deal was driving around, picking up hitchhiking young men, then he'd knock 'em out, wire them up to a 4x8 sheet of plywood and torture them to death. Similarly, I've heard stories of some of the so-called "scientific research" conducted in the WWII concentration camps. Are the doctors involved more or less evil than Eichmann?

I'll write more on "Good" when I get a chance...sad fact is, as Jim observes, it's easier to come up with ideas for the "evil" list than the "good" list...but I wonder if this is a survival trait, as it's more important to be aware of evil (which can kill you or hurt you) than it is to be aware of good (which can help you, but in general you're doing okay on your own if you can avoid evil).

BTW, a couple of excellent sources for this kind of discussion would be a copy of the _Guinness Book of World Records_ and one or more of them there _Book of Lists_...I seem to recall that at least one of them had a list of "evil" people.
From Mike H.:

There is another aspect, and that is while we tend to single out an "individual" as being good or evil, not infrequently as in everything else it is the collective environment that results in the fame or infamy of a particular person.

In post WWI Germany, if Hitler did not rise to power, someone else would have. Perhaps the someone else would have beaten the U.S. to the atom bomb... or managed to throw off the shackles of the punitive Versailles "treaty" and institute a democracy (not likely in that era, but possible). Europe was not known for peace and tranquillity back then, it is a recent phenomena for that area.

While comment is made of Stalin, does anyone realize that the British and French applied considerable pressure in the Dumas (but mostly with Czar Nicholas) to continue Russian participation in WWI? The continuing debacle led to the rise of the Bolsheviks and thence Stalin-- heir to millions of deaths. Is Stalin the sole holder of opprobrium here or does some get spread around to the others that caused the environment that lead to his ascendency? In other circumstances Stalin would be just the guy next door... or you or I could be a Stalin... how do we know?
From Craig B.:

Okay, I've been trying to come up with a nice, big, juicy list of Good People, and I'm finding it's harder than I thought it would be. And I think I found a simple reason why: it's a lot easier to do something big and bad than it is to do something big and good.

Like, if you had scales and put Stalin's massacres on the left side, what could you put on the right-hand side to balance it? Curing cancer? Ending world hunger? I don't know. I guess you could put people like Jonas Salk (and others who have saved countless lives by developing vaccines) in the Good category. But with the occasional exception (Dr. Martin Luther King), there really aren't many individuals who you can really say have done good things that have affected millions of people. And someone mentioned Jimmy Carter, a man who I agree is probably the only "good" man to hold the office in the past few decades. But how much good did he really do while he was president? One could argue that he's done the country more good working with Habitat For Humanity than he did while he was in office (not to slag the man, but it seems that Nice Guys Make Lousy Presidents).

I guess charity is one way that people (rich people, at least) can do Big Works Of Good. Perhaps Carnagie belongs on the list, for all of those libraries he funded? (I know that the library in my hometown of Edwardsville was a Carnegie library). But to do so means that Ted Turner is Really, Really Good for giving all that money away.

And also, there is something like the Heisenberg principle at work here: the very best people don't seek publicity for their good deeds. The unknown heroes who work tirelessly with the poor and the sick, firemen who risk and lose their lives saving people...these are some of the best of the race, but few people know who they are. Even rich people fall into this category: in the last three months I've seen at least a couple of news- paper accounts of wealthy people who've been very quietly donating tens of millions of dollars anonymously for years.

That said, still the question remains: what Good Deed balances the slaughter of millions?
From Daniel P.:

These are all pretty obvious... Have you ever read Dostoyevski's (sp) ``Notes from Underground''? Fiction, but describes a kind of violence we all participate in to some extent. Some of those you listed are simply mass murderers. How about a mass of murderers -- like the 3 million + KKKers who were active in the 1910's - 1930's? Or those who for the sake of political advancement, promote the death penalty even when it is applied to mentally retarded people who were juveniles at the time they committed their crimes? (Bill Clinton, then governor of Arkansas, went back to his home state to sign a death warrant for a mentally retarded kid while campaigning for the presidency.) Or the rest of the Americans who voted for this kind of thing? Or how about when nobody's life is at stake, but rather what about individual belief? Consider the Scope's trial... On one side are people who believe people's immortal souls will be lost if they do not hear and accept a picture of Christianity that is built on ancient Babylonian mythology and cosmogeny... and the others who feel that they will do their children a grave disservice in dealing with a modern world if they do not learn the principles of science and critical analysis. Or more, that people feel they have no need to offer charity, that it is not a part of their moral conscience? That it is better to lock somebody up and permanently disfranchise them, than to try to promote their participation in legitimate society?

My own sense is that evil people have done far less than evil ideas.
From Dina R.:

I object to Lincoln's being on the good list for freeing the slaves because it was a necessary political move and not from the goodness of his heart. if not freeing the slaves gave him more support during the war, he may have very well not done that. Aand i think that stalin and hitler were more evil than genghis khan, but that's probably just cultural conditioning, I don't know the inner motives of any of them too well. Hey, do you know that story about when genghis khan wanted to take this city that was behind a wall and he couldn't get into, so he surrounded it and told the people that he'd leave if they gave him 10000 swallows and 1000 cats? Wwhen they did, he set them on fire and let them go and they went back into the city and set it on fire and burned it down so he could take over it. That just has style.

"When choosing between two evils I always like to take the one I've never tried before." -- Mae West
From Clarke N.:

I would definitely add Saddam Hussein to the Bad list. Not only did he invade Kuwait for no good reason, and torch the oil wells on his way out, etc., and also force his people to fight for his foolish cause, but he has gassed and tortured his own people, killed hundreds and thousands, drained the lands of the Reed people in southern Iraq, causing genocide there, and destroying thicker culture. He is an ego maniac, etc., his photos all over the place. etc.

I am not so big on history so as to know history's worst characters. I am wonder if Torqemada should be so high, since, in theory, he thought he was pursuing the good of the church, etc. Shouldn't, really, the Pope that appointed him as Grand Inquisitor be on this list then.

I don't know a thing about Vlad Tepes. But shouldn't he be much lower on the list?

I would rate Hitler higher, perhaps at the top. And, I wonder, does Eichman belong, given that he is really in Hitler's shadow. He would not have existed but for Hitler. Stalin, also, should be much higher. He killed some 20 million peasants, recall, and was ruthless etc. in every other way. Anyway, in today's NEW YORK TIMES, on page B8, is a superb book review on a book about Hitler. The book is "The Hitler of History" by John Lukacs, and it addresses many of the issues you are concerned with. Check it out and you'll see.

Interesting that so many are in the 20th century. Weapons of mass destruction, mass propaganda, etc., have given evil minded sorts even greater power, when they get to power. You might want to comment on that.

H.H. Holmes certainly sounds interesting. Never heard of him, either, so his inclusion would definitely make the book interesting.

I think you need to do a bit of discussion about what makes evil, what is evil and good. I don't think you can define it solely in terms of a body count. But rather it must have something to do with purity of motive, of ego, etc. Someone who is not merely crazy, but knows what good is and turns away, out of selfish interest. Doesn't that define it. Evils is really putting your own selfish interests above everyone one else's, in a manner that uses coercion and violence to achieve it. In this respect, Hitler might actually drop on the list, inasmuch as, from what we know, he sincerely believe in his Cause. Whereas someone who knows better, supposedly, would rate higher. But, still, coming from a supposedly "Christian Culture" Hitler should have known better.

And shouldn't we hold people to a higher standard in the 20th century, when ideas about good and human rights and all are in wider circulation? For example, this is why I think Saddam Hussain is so bad. He knows what the world thinks of him, he has lived through the genocide of Nazism, and should know better.

Now, about good people. I like that you have Baha'u'llah -- and would put him at the top of the list in some respect. On the other hand, theologically speaking, it would be unfair to put Baha'u'llah -- or Buddha or Christ or Moses or Muhammad, etc., on the list at all, since I believe they are not really ordinary men, but rather all are incarnations of pure God, of the pure God-head, or as, we say, manifestations of God. So there can be no evil in them at all.

If I were to draw up such a list, I would make a point about this, talking about these figures in this way, and then excluding them from the list. But, I know, from your point of view, this does not make sense. So, looking at it from your perspective, I would have to include these people, since they are so manifestly good.

If we look at goodness in terms of deeds, rather than teachings, and if we define good as the opposite of my definition of evil, that is to say, people who have sacrificed their self interests in favor of serving others and helping others, then, still, Baha'u'llah would come out very high, in that he walked away from a very comfortable life as a Prince to go endure a life of torture and exile to promote his concept of Good.

But if we exclude the Manifestations of God, I would suggest the following possible additions:

Abdu'l-Baha -- Baha'u'llah's son was an ordinary man. Yet his life was one long sacrifice and tenure of service. He had, for example, only two coats. And he was always giving one of them away to the poor. Giving the shirt off his back, so to speak. Lots of more stories of self-sacrifice, etc.

Gandhi -- a similar life of self sacrifice and working for other people's go od.

Martin Luther King -- likewise, courage in the face of fire, promoting a good cause.