Bad People Don't Exist

They know that, and they will manipulate you using your sense of compassion and guilt over their "past" and their "fear" to continue to exploit you.

They specifically choose targets that feel empathy, compassion, and guilt and use it against them.
 
Poetic Justice said:
I was with you right up to the point you started saying religious stuff
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Did you disregard the quote because it was based on religion? Or did you not catch the meaning or point of it? (Not passive-aggressive intended questions or whatever. They are honest objective ones intended to understand what you meant by your response). I thought it was relevant, perhaps somewhat indirectly, to the subject of your thread. It is a dig against Christianity. It is a quote about the faulty logic of Christianity as it pertains to 'bad people'. I considered it to be relevant because the term 'bad', in this context, is typically based on moral judgment and Christianity is one such 'authority' of defining moral standards.

I am confused by your confusion. :(
 
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I am often confused by the different ways people look at things. Some specific things that I see as black and white simple, I often groan within when others just don't get it. "Transgressor of the law" is a good study.

Another good read is "it is no longer I, but sin that dwelleth in me."
 
Paladin-X said:
Did you disregard the quote because it was based on religion? Or did you not catch the meaning or point of it? (Not passive-aggressive intended questions or whatever. They are honest objective ones intended to understand what you meant by your response). I thought it was relevant, perhaps somewhat indirectly, to the subject of your thread. It is a dig against Christianity. It is a quote about the faulty logic of Christianity as it pertains to 'bad people'. I considered it to be relevant because the term 'bad', in this context, is typically based on moral judgment and Christianity is one such 'authority' of defining moral standards.

I am confused by your confusion. :(
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I liked your post and you made some good points. The end paragraph just sounded like some quote from the bible or something though. It was the "love my enemy in the name of christ" bit which made me switch off at first. christ has nothing to do with why I don't think people should hate. That line of reasoning is a dead end. I skimmed the rest and saw other such statements so I mostly didn't read it.

I just read it properly to see if i'd made a mistake. I don't think I did. That doesn't mean that I disagree with everything thing it said. It's just that it's meaning relies too heavily on believing things I don't believe
 
just me said:
I am often confused by the different ways people look at things. Some specific things that I see as black and white simple, I often groan within when others just don't get it. "Transgressor of the law" is a good study.

Another good read is "it is no longer I, but sin that dwelleth in me."
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I used to think exactly the same. It didn't seem possible to me that people see things so differently. I think I have a pretty good handle on how this works now
 
Poetic Justice said:
There are no such things as bad people

There are no liars

There are no murderers

There are no thieves

The only thing you are is human. everything else, you do

you can change that at any time by doing something different

Thoughts?
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Maybe, but it seems there are people who have the tendency to lie, murder, steal, or whatever it is we define as bad, and thus we label them appropriately. We can say that ultimately we are human before all these traits, but what is the point?

I hope your statement does not imply any justification for pardoning people's actions.
 
o_q said:
Maybe, but it seems there are people who have the tendency to lie, murder, steal, or whatever it is we define as bad, and thus we label them appropriately. We can say that ultimately we are human before all these traits, but what is the point?
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The point is to engender an attitude of forgiveness and understanding and to recognise that people's behaviour is not due to some inherent evil or whatever. It's due to the sum of their experiences up to now and the way they have interpreted those experiences.

People can and do change. Should they be forever labeled for something they did instead of something they are?

I hope your statement does not imply any justification for pardoning people's actions.
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Yes, it does actually. But that doesn't mean people should be able to do whatever the hell they want.

I don't beleive in punishment for the sake of punishment. Using it as a deterrent or as a means of preventing further harm is of course useful though
 
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in regards to OP: possibly the most absurd thing i've heard this month.
 
Poetic Justice said:
I don't beleive in punishment for the sake of punishment. Using it as a deterrent or as a means of preventing furhter harm is of course useful though
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I agree.

The problem with punishment is that most people see it as something that is supposed to be 'eye for an eye'-- some sort of cathartic revenge for the victims... which only really reinforces the antagonistic relationship that the punished person has with society, and in fact creates villains as opposed to providing an opportunity for people to redeem themselves from their actions.

The word 'criminal' is really no different from any number of racial or ethnic slurs that help racists to dehumanize and devalue others.
 
oh, bad people exist. I think those of us who have been affected by one or many can attest to that. There are some people that are just evil.
 
sevenx said:
oh, bad people exist. I think those of us who have been affected by one or many can attest to that. There are some people that are just evil.
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Do you have an example?

Explain the sort of behaviour that would cause you to label someone as evil and I will attempt to explain the reasons for their behaviour i.e. the reason why, from their point of view, their behaviour is justified

En guarde...
 
ok; the man who I was going to marry, that lived with us for two years; orally molested my 6 year old baby.

He is evil.
 
[MENTION=6195]sevenx[/MENTION] did you have any feeling about him at all that something was off that maybe you ignored? Confusion? If this is too personal, please don't feel like you have to answer. I'm just curious about our instincts and intuition. When we have no evidence that someone is a person that might harm us, our our children that we ignore or rationalize.
 
o_q said:
I don't respect hit-and-run subjective statements without any explanation.
That J shit.
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Poetic Justice said:
Care to explain?
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sorry, does warrant an explanation, i suppose.

while one can change his or her present course of actions and thoughts at any given time, it by no means negates what he/she has done before. One cannot simply have a new identity (at least in the common, public eye/sense of perception) without having a complete erasure of his or her past crimes and ways of thinking.

Bad analogy, but, just because a football player retired this year does not mean he wasn't a football player. Just because a soldier has served his term of active and reserve duties and has terminated his contract does not make him not a soldier.

Yes, one can change by thinking and acting differently, but that change applies to the present (and perhaps the future) - it does not negate the past. Also, depending on the person, it may take quite some time to properly shift mentalities.
 
sevenx said:
ok; the man who I was going to marry, that lived with us for two years; orally molested my 6 year old baby.

He is evil.
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I'm sorry to hear that and let me start by saying I in no way think that sort of thing is ok.

Our most base emotional states are related to eating, staying out of danger and sex

We don't get to choose what we are attracted to. Some people have sex with animals. Some with objects. Some, unfortunately with children. Google, "kinds of philia" and you will see that people have sex with pretty much anything. You could think of it as a miswiring of the brain. An essential part of being a human which didn't quite develop in the way it shoud have. Any kind of person could be born with one of these philias. They could have any personality. You could have been born with any one of these and still be the person you are, just with this one miswiring

Add to this a weak will and/or a lack of empathy and this could cause a person to act on these desires. You know when you realise you really shouldn't eat that last piece of cake but you do anyway? Take the structure in the brain that causes you to eat the cake, turn the volume up and make it about sex and there you go.

Perhaps many or even all paedos hate themselves for what they do and wish something would stop them.

Obviously if they can't help themselves they should be forever locked up or killed.
 
RememberWhenItRained said:
sorry, does warrant an explanation, i suppose.

while one can change his or her present course of actions and thoughts at any given time, it by no means negates what he/she has done before. One cannot simply have a new identity (at least in the common, public eye/sense of perception) without having a complete erasure of his or her past crimes and ways of thinking.

Bad analogy, but, just because a football player retired this year does not mean he wasn't a football player. Just because a soldier has served his term of active and reserve duties and has terminated his contract does not make him not a soldier.

Yes, one can change by thinking and acting differently, but that change applies to the present (and perhaps the future) - it does not negate the past. Also, depending on the person, it may take quite some time to properly shift mentalities.
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It doesn't negate the past but it does kinda make it irrelevant. If someone's personality causes them to wrong you and they later change that aspect of their personality. Surely that means that the person who wronged you no longer exists. The personality that caused the harm has ceased to be

Anyone is capable of changing aspects of their personality. It is by no means guaranteed but it is possible.

This in my mind means that bad people aren't truly bad. They are just acting truly badly. This is an important distinction. Everyone acts badly sometimes. Everyone
 
no; no idea whatsoever....it came out of nowhere; and I never would've expected it. Of course, as a mother, after the fact you scrutinize everything you ever remember about everything...looking for something that should have told you or clued you in to the fact that they were this way. There was nothing. He was my best friend, my son worshipped the ground he walked on and my daughter loved him. Sometimes you just never know about people....you worry about the crazy guy down the street; when in actuality it's the one sleeping in your house that you have to worry about. People like this are masters at making themselves look normal; and then BAM!
His defense is that he thought she was me.....it has been over a year now since it happened; we go to jury trial next week if he doesnt plea. Minimum mandatory for this is Life/25 yrs w/o parole.
I am just glad that my daughter came to me as soon as he left her room. He wasn't outta there for more than a minute before she came and woke me up.

People have choices...they can choose to do the right thing; if they have this kind of tendency. I really want to hurt this man in ways that I cannot even explain; but I choose not to; it's my choice. He had a choice.
 
Poetic Justice said:
It doesn't negate the past but it does kinda make it irrelevant. If someone's personality causes them to wrong you and they later change that aspect of their personality. Surely that means that the person who wronged you no longer exists. The personality that caused the harm has ceased to be

Anyone is capable of changing aspects of their personality. It is by no means guaranteed but it is possible.

This in my mind means that bad people aren't truly bad. They are just acting truly badly. This is an important distinction. Everyone acts badly sometimes. Everyone
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If someone wronged me, and they changed, they're still them, and they still wronged me in the past. Yes, they might have changed, and i would forgive them, but it doesn't negate the history. There is no simple erasure.

so by your reasoning, (sorry to use such a cliched example) Hitler and Stalin were just acting poorly and weren't themselves bad people? What about Ted Bundy, Timothy McVeigh, and Terry Nichols?

we're going to have to agree to disagree. Your and my definitions of bad people, and how evil and the actions of a person defines them are different. But, interesting discuession - thanks.
 
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