Bad people -v- bad actions

Victor

How does one separate bad people -v- bad actions?

OK, it's generally agreed Hitler was a bad person, such were the scale and effects of his actions

The neighbour's two year old kicking the car was a bad action (it does not make him a "bad boy" as his teenage cousin(?) was insisting).

So where does one draw the line between the two?

chewy

ill come back to you

slighly relevent

although i remember doing some classes on dealing with youths in care.... and this was the main thing to concentrate on when the misbehave that you chasise them for the action not for them being them

simu

Originally posted by Victor
How does one separate bad people -v- bad actions?

OK, it's generally agreed Hitler was a bad person, such were the scale and effects of his actions

The neighbour's two year old kicking the car was a bad action (it does not make him a "bad boy" as his teenage cousin(?) was insisting).

So where does one draw the line between the two?

Well, with kids, psychologists would say that before a certain age a child is incapable of determining what the consequences of its actions will be and how they affect other people. Extensive research has been carried out on this but I couldn't find any good links online (all that came up in google was dodgy-looking pop psychology sites) - you could try looking for books on child psychology or maybe some other boards user knows some good sites on the topic.

Adults (with the exeption of people with certain mental disorders - psychopathy etc)are considered to be capable of understanding consequences of their behaviour and feeling empathy towards other human beings but, on the other hand, many have also found ways to stop empathy from extending to all human beings. With the Nazis, for example, they denied that Jews were fully human so they didn't feel guilty about making them suffer.

On a broader level, you're asking how we define "good" and "bad" - welcome to the wonderful world of ethics! This page seems like an ok introduction: http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/ethics.htm

McGinty

A very good book I read called 'People of the Lie' by M. Scott Peck discussed what he thought consitutes evil behvaviour, and made an attempt at defining evil on a personal and community level and how it breeds. It's a fascinating read and may be of interest to you.

There are some train of thoughts that don't believe in evil or bad, but that the person is unaware of their actions, and that one should hate the action but love/accept the person. (In my mind extremely difficult) there are others that believe some people are born bad, but that a childhood trauma triggers of the badness so it turns into evil behaviour.

I'm not sure myself, its a complex subject and one that all people need to explore in much greater detail, however I believe that if one explores this subject to try to be as objective as possible.

Victor

I was discussing this with someone "in the know" and she was saying there is no such thing as bad people, simply bad behavior, although sometime the behavior beocomes so bad and persitent that it permanently taints the person. Even the extreme of Hitler, simply did bad things and wasn't a bad person as such.

Of course, if people can't be "bad people" (and I realise the phrase is overused) is there any such thing as a "good person"?

munkeehaven

i think that everyone has the potential to be ''good" or ''bad''...and most people have very different ideas about the two states.....like in war-- the opposition is seen as the enemy--''bad men or women'' who slaughter and maim.. .whilst at the same time , this is what the so called ''good'' side are doing too. .....this can spark up the whole debate on ''nature versus nurture''--- remember how people used to examine a person's brow to see if they were born -criminals? (what is the scientific term for that again?? phrenology?!)? i think it is mainly your upbringing...or environment...if you are told ''this is good'' and ''that is bad'' you tend to stick to the norm...its only when the line becomes blurred within our minds that we begin to question and challenge our morality for eg can a good person kill another human being and still be deemed a ''good person''?

simu

Well, looking at Stanley Milgram's infamous psychology experiment, it could be argued that any one can be made to ignore their ethical beliefs in certain circumstances. So, there would be no good or bad people, just good and bad actions (for simplicity's sake, I'll define bad here as killing/causing pain to others and good as providing a person with relief from suffering).

McGinty

Victor re: is there good people, thats a good point

I have read many books on the bad v good person subject, its pet subject of mine. Those that profess to believe that there is no bad people, also believe that there are no 'good' people, we are just what we are, and that is human.

I haven't made my mind up entirely, I have had personal experience of evil behaviour, but I do find myself leaning towards this theory of people who do bad things, but are not neccesary bad people.

The persons who wronged me, also had kind traits as well, and I am beginning to believe in the phlilosophy of hate the deed not the person, I also beleive that each of us are capable of doing 'bad' things and 'good' things, each of us has a hitler inside of us, be it to a greater or lesser degree, and each of us has a saint inside of us, again to a greater or lesser degree. In actual fact (I am on a roll here with this thought), if we humans removed the bad and good tag, we would free ourselves up enormously, I know I would, you see when I do bad things ( as I tend to at times, well quite often) I beat myself up saying how could I do that, how come I am such a bitch, and okay it serves to remind me to strive to be the best I can be, but at the same time coming down hard on ones badness only feeds it further. Also, what is bad in your eyes is not neccesary bad in another's eyes, so by removing bad/good, a thing, action or deed is just that, a thing, action or deed, without judgement or label.

This is a crazy thought but run with it for a while, is it possible that in the dark of the night, that Hitler wrestled with his conscience? I wonder? To be honest its such a huge, interesting, fascinating subject that I believe when I am on my death bed or wherever I'll still be wrestling with this, but I will say that when you remove the bad/good people thinking, my perspective changes. I see each person as doing the best they can, making the occasional, or continual f*** up. I am not sure.

Kell

McGinty- the "no such thing as a bad or good person" thing is good up to a point, but, what happens when you interject people who give no consideration to their actions (in terms of people their actions affect) and never quizz their own conscience?

I ask, as I am meeting this new breed of individual more and more frequently.

In terms of good and bad, the parameters of definition are normally actions or thoughts deemed en masse as socially acceptable. Socially acceptable doesnt have to be restricted to whats legal, and can run into the realms of "well, friends should behave in x fashion towards eachother, because by behaving in x fashion denotes that person as being my friend".

I do believe that there are fundamentally bad people, rather than bad actions. Example-

If a rational thinking someone decides, in a pre-meditated fashion, that they should kill someone, it means that they have consciously subjugated the fact that the act is wrong, making not only their action wrong, but also their thinking. Mentally sane people are responsible for their thoughts as well as actions, therefore making the sane person who pre-meditates a murder, a bad person.

We all have bad thoughts, yes, but for the majority of us, we allow ourselves to be tempered out of destructive behaviour based on social norms.

I see that most individuals are good people, who, through social conditioning learn habits that compromise the way they think or act.

An example of a good person would be someone who consistently thinks and acts for the overall good and who constantly strives to be better within themselves.

K-

Fysh

Originally posted by McGinty
This is a crazy thought but run with it for a while, is it possible that in the dark of the night, that Hitler wrestled with his conscience? I wonder? To be honest its such a huge, interesting, fascinating subject that I believe when I am on my death bed or wherever I'll still be wrestling with this, but I will say that when you remove the bad/good people thinking, my perspective changes. I see each person as doing the best they can, making the occasional, or continual f*** up. I am not sure.

About your Hitler question...I highly doubt it. Given the high profile that some Nazi apologists (eg David Irving) have attained, someone along the line would have suggested this if there were any evidence whatsoever to support the idea. Instead the claims are usually that Hitler was "unaware" of the extermination camps, etc. Never mind that his rhetoric was essentially based on the idea that the Jews weren't really people and thus did not have the same rights as everyone else.

Regarding your comments on good/bad people...admittedly it's a thorny issue, but I don't think that we can just discard the idea of "bad people" altogether. It's all very well saying that someone who commits bad actions isn't necessarily a bad person, and it is indeed important to bear in mind that an action's "badness" does depend on the values by which it is being judged, but still...there has to be some sort of evaluation of a person's tendencies. Otherwise you could get a serial killer being justified as someone who "just made a few mistakes" (although that is an extreme example). What if someone's values are defined entirely around their own satisfaction? By their own standards they aren't "bad" because they just don't consider other people at all, but does this make them "good" people?

simu

If a rational thinking someone decides, in a pre-meditated fashion, that they should kill someone, it means that they have consciously subjugated the fact that the act is wrong, making not only their action wrong, but also their thinking. Mentally sane people are responsible for their thoughts as well as actions, therefore making the sane person who pre-meditates a murder, a bad person.

We all have bad thoughts, yes, but for the majority of us, we allow ourselves to be tempered out of destructive behaviour based on social norms.

You can only judge if a person is "bad" by examining their actions, though. In a way, it's a bit meaningless saying that a person is bad - even if the thoughts that led them to carry out murder could be labelled "bad" in hindsight, what about all their other non-related thoughts and everything else going on inside their brain and body?

As for people who don't quiz their conscience, well it's impossible to know what people are thinking. Maybe they have quizzed their conscience and decided that what they're doing isn't wrong. Or maybe there are people who do "good" by accident or without thinking deeply about it rather than after having wrestled with their conscience. Does this make their good actions any less good?

I think it's more productive to think in terms of a person who displays behaviour that is damaging to society at large and who needs to be prevented from continuing to do so. Then again, in the case of Hitler, the society he and the other Nazis created actually approved of his actions and had the 1000 year Reich come about, he would have been venerated as a saint.

Victor

Actually, in a way, I think the accountant that exploits people knowingly is a much worse way than a serial killer (whether the serial killer has mental problems or not).

simu

Originally posted by Victor
Actually, in a way, I think the accountant that exploits people knowingly is a much worse way than a serial killer (whether the serial killer has mental problems or not).

How so? Personally, I'd rather be broke than dead!

Victor

My point being the (in this case) accountant knows he is doing wrong.

Victor

This type of person

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,2765-1151251,00.html

Top bosses ‘need to take sanity test’
Daniel McConnell

HAVE you ever felt your boss is mad, bad and dangerous to know? A leading Irish academic believes some of them might be and says all chief executives should be asked to take a “sanity test” to see if they have psychopathic tendencies.
Michael Barry, a senior lecturer in industrial relations and sociology at the National College of Ireland, says some of the country’s business bosses display recognised psychopathic behaviour patterns.

According to his research, based on a similar study in America, up to 2% of the population is likely to be psychopathic or have strong psychopathic traits. He states that, of the consequent 39,000 potential psychopaths in Ireland, 500 are in prison and the rest live in open society.

Tell-tale signs include a thirst for money, power and status, as well as an ability to manipulate others. They are often charming, and are expert liars. He said: “People with these behaviour patterns will gravitate towards jobs that offer those things. The world of business often rewards people who have these traits, and common sense suggests that some are occupying high office.”

Barry’s research concludes that businesses are perfect playgrounds for psychopaths.

Professor Robert Hare of the University of British Columbia first looked at testing criminals for these sort of tendencies and created a test to determine an inmate’s condition. Later, with another academic, Paul Babiak, the model was applied to the business sector. The pair produced the B-Scan test, to be completed by an individual’s workmates and supervisor. A chief executive’s test would be conducted by his deputy or the next senior figure in the company.

“Pyschopaths are social predators, and like all predators they look for feeding grounds,” said Hare. “Wherever you have money and power you will more than likely find them. They leave victims all over the place.”

Hare highlighted the former media mogul Robert Maxwell as somebody who exhibited a high number of the traits examined in the tests.

“The corporate psychopath is not one that immediately attracts attention,” said Babiak. “They often fit the profile of the perfect leader but behind the mask lies a dark side which is deceitful, manipulative and which bullies other people.”

Recent events prompted Barry to conduct his research. “With the level of corruption in both politics and business it is not inconceivable that people of this personality type have risen to positions of power and influence,” he said.

He declined to speculate on which Irish chief executives might exhibit classic signs of the condition.

Some leading Irish businessmen welcomed the suggestion. Ben Dunne, the former supermarket magnate and health-club owner, said the test made sense. “There is nothing wrong in finding out whether or not people are capable of handling the pressures of high office. I go to a doctor to check my heart, so I see nothing wrong with having my brain checked too,” he said, adding, “he can do the test on me if he likes.”

Siobhan Corrigan, a post-doctoral fellow in the psychology department at Trinity College Dublin, said: “I would be strongly against sanity testing unless they were thoroughly researched and validated. One would also have to question the causal relationship. Maybe it is not so much that CEOs have psychopathic tendencies to start with but that the stress and pressure of the position induce such tendencies.”

A spokesman for Mary Harney, the tanaiste, said that there was no plan to make business chiefs sit sanity tests.

TELL-TALE SIGNS
Comes across as smooth
Talks about himself
Puts others down
Lies to co-workers
Considers people stupid
Tends to be opportunistic
Appears to be calculating
Acts in an unethical manner
Creates a power network
Shows no regret

Source: Hare, University of British Columbia

Fysh

Originally posted by Victor
My point being the (in this case) accountant knows he is doing wrong.

As would a serial killer who was not suffering from mental problems. In which case, the relative scope of the harm inflicted on the victims would relegate the accountant to second place in the Big Book of Baddies list, IMO.

Although this does raise an interesting side question to do with the highly competitive environment of financial trade - can it really encourage an ethical environment when it's so supremely focused on profit and success? (obviously they'll claim it can, but if nobody seems particularly keen on enforcing this through law or independent monitoring body) Possibly not a question for this board.

DadaKopf

Hehehe, I found Milgram's test really amusing when I was studying it in college. Among those who administered the highest "charges" were priests!

Of course, once again such a question - bad people vs. bad actions - requires us to explain good and bad. It's a typical definitional maelstrom.

Simu mentioned 'psychopathy'. Sure, psychology and cognition studies are considered sciences. But, inevitably, their discourses, constructs and conclusions inevitable involve a subjective, or normative aspect to them. What such studies inevitably come down to are human judgements about what the culture or society in question sees as 'normal' or 'ethical' behaviours or ideas.

The issue of psychopathy is in intruiging one. It was found shortly after World War II that only 2% of Allied field soldiers were responsible for the killing of enemy troops. The remaining 98% were too scared. This they put down to an autonomic response, which most human beings have, a response that makes us entirely unable to kill another human being. Therefore, the 2% of troops who won the war for us were technically 'psychopaths'. Sure, in normal everyday life, these individuals would never have considered, nor probably have been capable of killing anyone, but in the situation of war, in their roles as soldiers, they found it easier than the other 98% to kill not just remorselessly, but often to relish in it.

Now, we'd generally consider these guys to be the good guys, the heroes of their and our generations. Their actions are thought to be 'good'. On the other hand, German soldiers' (it's most likely that the 2% ratio held for Axis powers, too) actions are considered 'bad'.

I'm certainly not a Nazi apologist by any means. What I'm getting at is that these kinds of questions seem to be as malleable as language. Human beings have a certain physiological architecture, objectively speaking, but when it comes to ascribing meaning to human systems, structures and actions, these can change. In fact, they nearly by definition change. I tend to think about it in the same terms as language: signs and their signifieds aren't necessarily connected, they're connected only by mental association within an intersubjective context.

So the 'bad people versus bad actions' thing is a bit of a false dichotomy. Firstly, the definition of 'bad' is a political one, therefore somewhat subjective and malleable. Secondly, like the structure of language, normative judgements of scientific categorisations such as 'psychopathy' cannot be essentially good or bad or anything because those definitions and actions are defined socially and are therefore elastic, as modern readings of history has shown. Physical states, I don't think, can ever be identical with value judgements*. Thirdly, it's dangerous to label people as 'bad' because that can justify all kinds of activities like genocide, which, let's face it, isn't nice for the victims. However, it's also reductionist to visualise the world in behaviouralist or functionalist terms. There is always the nebulous arena of 'meaning', which I believe is a cross we just have to bear.

In the end, though, we're sort of doomed to continually redefine our existence as surroundings change. I think we should still search for standards by which we all agree we can live by, but that those standards come from us and that 'rationalistic' science itself is imbued by those contingent standards we make for ourselves.

* If anyone is interested in Mind-Brain identity theory can go here. It's interesting but to my mind has been largely debunked. Basically, it holds that e.g. the sensation of pain (a subjective experience) is physically (and logically) identical with nerve C-fibres firing in the body. I suppose it's similar to JS Mill's scientistic utilitarian theory of morality.

DadaKopf

Oh yeah, the thing is: if it's a false dichotomy, they it's not possible to divide people from their 'selves' and their 'actions', just like it's not possibly to divide an 'individual' from an 'intersubjective community'.

Like Milgram's experiment, the focus is often on uncovering how people internalise 'roles', and, more weirdly, how people's identities can change as they move from, for example, their 'work role' into their 'family role' and so on. But it's simply too reductionistic to blame everything on roles because, as I said above, roles are imbued with human judgements.

Those judgements are usually, maybe always, situated within power structures of some kind of another (coercive or consensual) and so the social histories of such assumptions within, say, institutionalist discourses need to be unpacked to reveal their structures and in whose interests, good or bad, those structures serve.

Victor

Originally posted by DadaKopf
The issue of psychopathy is in intruiging one. It was found shortly after World War II that only 2% of Allied field soldiers were responsible for the killing of enemy troops. The remaining 98% were too scared. This they put down to an autonomic response, which most human beings have, a response that makes us entirely unable to kill another human being. Therefore, the 2% of troops who won the war for us were technically 'psychopaths'. Sure, in normal everyday life, these individuals would never have considered, nor probably have been capable of killing anyone, but in the situation of war, in their roles as soldiers, they found it easier than the other 98% to kill not just remorselessly, but often to relish in it.

I'm not sure what the definition of "field soldier" is, but the vast majority of people killed in (industrial) war tend not to be killed face to face, but in a distant "to whom this may concern" way, where actions and results are disassociated. It becomes a "video game war".

Originally posted by DadaKopf
Like Milgram's experiment, the focus is often on uncovering how people internalise 'roles', and, more weirdly, how people's identities can change as they move from, for example, their 'work role' into their 'family role' and so on.

Isn't this why we judge people by their peers? Subjective yes, but often there is no other way.

DadaKopf

Fine, infantrymen, whatever, I'm not a war expert because I hate war. I'm not one of these types who subscribes to How To Kill People In Cold Bood With Really Big Weapons Monthly or Nazi Uniforms are Sexy you know.

I'm simply not prepared to discuss war-fetishism (although it may be an interesting side-topic: 'Are war-ethusiasts evil?') and the different ranks of soldiers.

Whatever, only 2% of soldiers could kill other humans face to face in open combat. OK?

If you want to discuss distanciation of machines of war, start another thread. Or join the democracy debate in Politics.