In “The Genocidal Killer in the Mirror”, Crispin Sartwell argues that the average citizen can be convinced to commit atrocious crimes under the right circumstances from the premise that the traits to become a genocidal killer are not that uncommon, using examples from recent history such as the Holocaust in Nazi Germany and the Rwandan Genocide. Sartwell clarifies that although most people delude themselves into thinking that they wouldn’t partake in genocide if they were placed in a similar situation as many have before, it would take a “moral hero” (Sartwell 118) to refuse the opportunity given the circumstances. On the other hand, in “Just Do What the Pilot Tells You”, author Theodore Dalrymple claims that people's response to authority in respect to their obedience is what leads the average man to kill countless others. While both authors address the fact that it doesn’t take a malicious person to engage in genocide, Sartwell focuses more on the qualities that people who commit genocide commonly share, Dalrymple seems more concerned on how people react to authority in …show more content…
He continues to specify that these traits could trigger the instinctive malicious feelings that have been demonstrated repeatedly throughout history. Sartwell drives his point home by mentioning that “If the same thing were happening in my town to people ‘not like me’ in some identifiable way, I would take the same approach. Many decent people have” (Sartwell 119). By stating this, he builds ethos with the audience considering that he doesn’t put himself above the average man, and implies that he would be capable of perpetrating genocidal acts under the right
Then by the same sign when a man kills ten others, his crime will be ten times greater and should be punished by death ten times…. Crime such as attacking another country is applauded as a righteous act, can this be said to be knowing the difference between righteousness and unrighteousness? (20)” this quote originated from Judy Grahn’s book, “blood, bread, and roses” and it is notable to mention for its truthfulness that people place blame to everything else unless notably acceptable in society. When it came down to it Ehrenreich had no qualm to point out humanities flaws and even mentions that it shows humans true nature. Ehrenreich brings a good thought to the table, “Which are we: beasts because we make war, or angels because we so often seek to make it into something
Conscience is the feeling inside one 's self that alerts them that something is wrong. This can sometimes be overpowered by stronger external forces such as a powerful authority figure, surrounding circumstances, or the belief that what they did was correct. Through, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Hannah Arendt argues that for the first time the world has encountered a different kind of criminal- - one that blindly followed orders from superiors and was made to believe the anti-Semitic ideology, although it could have been any ideology. Similarly, in her work, A Human Being Died That Night, Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela claims that the actions of ordinary citizens could be influenced by surrounding practices and drive people
Hernando Tellez persuades revolutionists in the excerpt “Lather and Nothing Else”, does a person go against his/her morals because during war people are tempted to do actions that are wrong. A revolutionist deciding to know kill. The excerpt states “No one deserves to be the sacrifice that turns other people into murderers. What is to be gained by it? Nothing.”
3.The truth of terrorists cause justifies any action that supports it. While some terrorists recognize no moral law, others have their own “higher” morality.” 2(Taking Sides, 232) Brown believed society to have embraced a sickness through the act of slavery. This sickness, he believed, could not be cleansed without bloodshed due to the faults of the state. To rationalize his behavior of the killing of innocent civilians, he created his own morality in which he was working for God alone.
Milgram himself concluded how easily ordinary people ‘can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority". (Milgram 1974) As this report has highlighted the research is not without controversy with many questioning to what extent Milgram’s experiment is true to real life and has been criticized for not highlighting further situational variables in determining obedience to authority. Regardless of this, there is no doubt Milgram highlighted a rather troubling phenomenon.
When we think about some of the horror stories throughout history, we try to convince ourselves that the criminals are different from us normal people. We imagine villains with no moral since just killing people for the fun of it. Nobody likes to consider the fact that under the same circumstances “normal people” would be able to commit the same heinous crimes against humanity. Ordinary Men, by Christopher Browning portrays a story of the most notorious mass murders forced on normal people, and gives us some interesting insight to who the perpetrators of this mass killing really are. A brief summary of this book could simply be explained by one word, horrifying.
A psychology professor Phillip Zimbardo once explained "people are seduced into evil by dehumanizing and labeling others. " I believe this is true labeling and dehumanizing others can make it particularly easy to forget all of your moral codes amd forget about the goodness inside you. A lot of this is seen in William Goldings book Lord of the Flies, a story is told about a group of British school boys who are stranded on an island after their plane crashes. The boys are left without adults so one boy named Ralph steps up to power and leads them all. There is a struggle for power when a boy named Jack seeks to be leader, but he has different ways of leading then Ralph.
Conformity and group mentality are major aspects of social influence that have governed some of the most notorious events and experiments in history. The Holocaust is a shocking example of group mentality, or groupthink, which states that all members of the group must support the group’s decisions strongly, and all evidence leading to the contrary must be ignored. Social norms are an example of conformity on a smaller scale, such as tipping your waiter or waitress, saying please and thank you, and getting a job and becoming a productive member of society. Our society hinges on an individual’s inherent need to belong and focuses on manipulating that need in order to create compliant members of society by using the ‘majority rules’ concept. This
In contrast, “The Genocidal Killer in the Mirror” focuses on the history of mass death goes back as far as 500 years ago. Sartwell cited some historical events that happened, including the Cambodian Killing Field, Nazi Holocaust, Cultural Revolution, Belgians vs. Congolese and the African Slave Trade. In his article, Sartwell assumes that authority especially hierarchies is the most “evil” thing in our society. Sartwell also states that all humans are "evil” (Sartwell), but then ask if evil is something that is learned behavior through institutional means, for example through media and bureaucracy.
Evil is Within Everyone Without thinking, the laws and social rules we abide by every day are actually a fragile barrier keeping the worst of human nature from overtaking modern society. In the allegorical novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a plane full of British school boys is shot down over an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. They are stranded without adult supervision or means to communicate with the outside world. This creates the perfect setting for Golding to explore the best and worst of human nature. It is in this setting that Golding illustrates what can happen when laws and rules vanish and human instinct reigns.
There is no doubt the society in The Giver contrasts our own, however the similarities between the two might be startling. The dystopian environment in the Giver can be a humbling thought for how good we have it in our life. Following that trend, we are also forced to look at the horrifying similarities between these two societies. As we look at The Giver’s rules, family, and leadership we see the vast differences and also the shocking familiarities.
There are many factors that determine how people behave in their daily lives. We are run by a number of rules and regulations that influence the way we behave, talk and live. In Lord of the Flies, William Golding shows that without the influence of a civilized society and law and order, people’s characteristics can change drastically. Similarly in Macbeth, Shakespeare represents the loss of morality of a leader as his hunger for power clouds his judgement. Both pieces of literature present how both writers view the breakdown of morality through the breakdown of civil behaviour.
The works of Dittmann and Golding imply that people will be more violent in a survival situations that are difficult to exit because they provide the person with an ideology to justify their actions so that they will not be held accountable. In the article “What makes good people do bad things?” the author states that situations can foster evil by “Providing people with an ideology to justify beliefs for actions”(Dittmann) and by making “exiting the situation difficult”(Dittmann). Golding examines these points in his novel through his character Jack, one of the older boys who fills a
While the protagonist, Alex, may choose vicious acts, he chooses them with a clear ethical capacity. On the other hand, when being controlled by the government, he loses the part of him that makes him human. Individuals may not always make the best choice, but humanity comes from a human’s ability to choose between right and wrong. In this case, the destruction of Alex’s humanity proves that it is better to be bad by choice, than to be good by government coercion.
Human beings are naturally evil, throughout our lives we learn or pick up the non-civil actions through other people, books, movies, or tv shows. In “why boys become vicious”, by William Golding, he wrote about a time when he was stationed in “Russia after the first world war” when he saw “gangs of children who had their parents” abandon them or were killed during the war roam the countryside “attacking and killing” others either out of boredom or pure cruelty.