right. And how does this happen? To say that Eichmann had a family he probably loved is not to defend him, imho. It's far too easy to say he is a mass murderer and therefore a monster, because then he is comfortably different from *us.*
Ted Bundy was the kid next door to most of the people who knew him. Either they lacked all sense of who people are, or there was a person there who could have gone another way. If Larry were around I'd ask him the name of that famous experiment where random people quite happily shocked other random people.If the reference gets blank stares I suppose I could look it up. There are some rather deep moral questions here. If you live in a society which permits atrocities, what is your own responsibility? Socrates drank the hemlock because he had lived as a member of Athenian society and therefor he felt bound b its judgements. I'm with Aristotle on this one when he said you don't have to be that mindless. But isn't the converse of this perhaps that you should speak up? As a footnote to this debate, the event at which the man was to speak has been cancelled due to death threats on him and on the organizers. Oh brave new world where such things occur. Dana On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 15:40:10 -0600, Gruss Gott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Dana wrote: > > Along the way it expressed some very complex thoughts about the > > capacity of most people for evil. > > Someone already mentioned the "banality of evil" thing, but isn't all > of this similar to the topics of 2 famous books: > > * Lord of the Flies, and > * Heart of Darkness? > > In the first, Golding covered how civilized kids could become very > uncivilized, and downright evil, when not constrained by law. > > In the second, Conrad covered how adults could do the same thing. > > There there's a book by Lawrence Sanders - I don't remember the title > - but in it a computer programmer, who's fairly well off because he's > single and makes good dough in NYC, becomes a serial killer. > > He gets really bored with life and hooks up with some weirdo trust > fund lady. Pretty soon he's killing people in Central Park with an > Ice Axe he used for rock climbing. > > And all because he was bored. > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Find out how CFTicket can increase your company's customer support efficiency by 100% http://www.houseoffusion.com/banners/view.cfm?bannerid=49 Message: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=i:5:145970 Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/threads.cfm/5 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:5 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5 Donations & Support: http://www.houseoffusion.com/tiny.cfm/54
