Is it weird that I don't hate "evil" people?

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Someone could be a murderer, a racist or just a terrible person and I don't feel any hatred towards them. I still regard them as a human being with value, not a worthless "piece of crap". It doesn't mean I'd want to hang out with them, but I'd still wish them well in life.

I actually get disturbed at how much otherwise nice people hate those who have done really bad things. Like how most people support the death penalty, or take pleasure in the idea of a bad person rotting in jail for life. It's understandable, but kind of disappointing that most people aren't very forgiving.

I'm of the opinion we should strive to care about everyone, not only heroes and good people.

I can't believe that exist "evil" people. Some people do bad, but I often think there is a reason that lead them towards that (which doesn't mean that they shouldn't take responsibility for their acts, but the environment should be considered).

I'm completely against death penalty or life sentences. I dislike how people feed emotional vengeances feelings, this doesn't any good for society.

We agree, and completely. As an example: I used to correspond with an inmate serving time for raping his mother, and I treated him just like I would anyone else. We talked about cars, women, politics, prison life and whatever else, and we were becoming good friends until he told me his mother had since died and he began acting like that meant he should be released. I did my best to just keep things going as they were while hoping to help him understand why God was not answering his prayer for freedom, but he heard that as my being condemning of him and stopped all conversation.

My point: He is a human being with the same overall needs and ambitions as anyone else, and treating him as anything less does absolutely nothing of any good for anyone.

Hatred is never appropriate, no matter what they did. Justice, if we can manage it, is enough. I have trouble with "Love thy enemy" - but I don't have to hate.

Well I admit I don't like the death penalty...because if someone kills someone you love or this or that, why shouldn't you be able to kill them yourself. Like if someone killed my boyfriend, why shouldn't I go kill them..but with current laws I'd be considered a murder to in that hypothetical because I killed the killers. That said I always look for the best in people, like even if they are a horrible person 'now' maybe they will learn why what they are doing is wrong...and try and change it. I mean I wouldn't get involved with a nazi or anything...but if they came to realize they were wrong I'd not cast them out...granted if a nazi tried to harm me I would defend myself to the death but if they realize their errors I'd be more sympathetic.

Part of why I am disturbed of that murder of two guys trying to stop a guy abusing muslim women.....like in that situation I may have got up and confronted the piece of sh*t to and died for it. I mean I can just picture seeing a couple muslim women minding their own buisiness maybe chatting a little...and some guy comes up just screaming profanities and racial slurs at them...I mean I wouldn't have just sat there and watched it I would have had to say something to....and apparently you can get killed for that. I admit it is concerning.

I almost think I should get a taser or some pepper spray something that could disable a potential enemy for enough time for me and the crowd to stop them. Like imagine if someone had a weapon on that bus aside from the killer...maybe he could have been taken out before he killed anyone. Maybe keep a hammer with me if I need to smash a head to survive and/or help others. I mean if that is the time we live in I have no intention to walk around completely unarmed at least a hammer is nice...perhaps I should even practice throwing it so I could throw it and smash a terrorist in the head with it.

Anyone is free to demonstrate love -- positive action rather than negative emotion -- toward enemies as well as toward anyone else and for any reason, of course, but Scriptural commandments such as "Love your enemies" and "Do good to those who do evil to you" are about rising above mere emotions controlling our actions in order to bear witness of grace (unmerited favor) and willingness to forgive and try to help heal.


That would be like the so-called "Wild West" of a couple of centuries or so ago when far too many arguments were being setting with guns. There would be too many injured or dead lying around in parking lots everywhere for the EMTs or coroners (who would likely have to be armed with assault rifles themselves) to ever be able to keep up.

yeah that did occur to me...but I kind of like the idea of the wild west, I mean if someone f***s your life you can kill them I just really like the thought. But also I had a peice of crap assault my sister when I was a little kid, and I always envisioned him getting killed.....like yes I think some people should get terrible deaths depending on the nature of the crime.

Granted i will also say some consent laws are crap and just ruin lives of people between 16-25 just because. Like really a 17 year old has sex with a 16 year old and you scream rape...I mean in effect we have children charged as sex offenders because they got naughty with a classmate. WTF?

I regard them as nothings. In fact, for an average person I couldn't IMAGINE subjugating one to torture or pain, but for some of these lowlifes (sociopaths and the like) I don't really have any feelings towards them. I would put them in hell and watch them suffer for eternity, day after day, given the most painful and most torturous practices imaginable. They would be screaming their heads off. I just love the thought.

No I'm not a sociopath, I'm just someone who has a MASSIVE dislike for their whole species. They aren't human, they don't deserve our world. I like staring right into their curious, calculating, empty little eyes and imagining the worst possible thing I could do to them. Their facial expressions enrage me, their confident happy bouncy little personalities, which suddenly turn into a nightmare of whining and annoyance, both equally irritate me.

Otherwise most people are just hurt or misunderstood. Sociopaths and Psychopaths are nasty horrible people under ALL circumstances right out of the womb, but most people who aren't them are just injured on the inside. We should help these people, and do away with the "unfixable" bad people.

I have found this concept difficult to understand also, and just assumed it required a normal emotional makeup.
Hate makes about as much sense to me as love. None.
I agree completely with the perspective that everyone should be treated well, regardless of what they are like, what position they are in, or even what they have or have not done to me or anyone else. Which is why hierarchy makes no sense - I do not treat people in positions of power any more respectfully than I would anyone else. The idea is to treat all creatures well, equally.
I too find it really weird that "normal" people make these kinds of judgements, and can go from reasonable and equitable to holding these vindictive, hateful responses towards others based on their own personal, arbitrary moral judgements, and actually wish harm on another creature based on these judgements. It seems completely inconsistent and contradictory. Weirder still is normal people seem to believe this kind of hatred is completely justified.
Your idea of equity reminds me of the metta bhavana meditation practice, where the goal is to wish others well in life, may they have happiness and freedom from suffering, regardless of whether you like them or not.

That seems inconsistent - you can't exactly claim to feel nothing for this subset of people, then start calling them "lowlifes" and espousing how much you would love to watch them suffer. This is what the OP is talking about, in my understanding - you have characterized these people as "bad people" and therefore, feel and display hatred towards them and wish them suffering based on that judgement.

It's really for my own closure really. They feel no pain, they have no emotions, no thoughts, no desires. They want power, domination, victory. It's really all the same, and they're all the same. All sociopaths have a similar foundation. However, they do horrendous and damaging things to the majority. I value myself and others who are like me (Yea, big flaw in that sentence but I'll keep going) because I'm capable of empathy, of caring for others. I can spot a sociopath from a mile away now, I've had to deal with enough of them to become this good. And trust me, they're totally empty. They will cause you NOTHING but harm. I'm certainly not one of those "normal" people you talk of, but I am capable of seeing the harm they do. Killing millions, burning down a house, destroying property, social manipulation and domination, and enjoying it. I may be irrational, but there are VERY few areas which I approach so brashly. Hitler did nothing to most of us, we weren't even alive when he did his stuff. So should we leave his actions to the past and stop caring? I think we should continue hating him. And I also become disgusted when someone does something bad, whether it has an effect on me or not. I also don't see why we should treat everyone well. If someone comes up to me and starts being an as*hole in a grocery store with a snicker on their face because their friends decided to have a bet then I'm going to punch them in the face and move on, because they deserve to be put in line. I wouldn't do that to someone who's not asking for it.

They are lowlifes because they cause immense harm, constantly and consistently. I haven't physically hurt anyone, and my hatred for them has been purely reactive. Watching them suffer would be graphic and horrible, but they would have no facial expression, they would demonstrate nothing. They lack any feelings but they're full of desire, to do the exact same thing back to us, and they wouldn't stop. I have certainly characterized them as this, and I will continue to do so until they are all gone, and I won't be the one to eliminate them but when they lack what makes one human it's hard to have the same empathy for them. I guess I can take back the enjoyment part, I wouldn't enjoy it, I would simply enjoy how much damage and stress I'm removing from the human race by picking out the bad people who are INCAPABLE of being good.

So I read over your response, the OP and mine, and I feel like I need to write it smaller and clarify, as mine is just a jumble of value statements.

Essentially, SOME of these "bad" people do not have the same sort of perspectives that we do. They don't have empathy, nor do they have an ability to exercise mercy and restraint. If you've ever met a Sociopathic person, they will come into your life full force and keep going until you find some way to isolate yourself from them. Even then, they will NEVER stop. You remain in their minds FOREVER.

You can walk down a street and the lower functioning of their kind will run at you and slash you without any communication, any limitation, or restraint. This is the kind of people they are. I don't hate them the way they hate us, I hate them because they lack the "People" part of the title. I also fear them, and fear what they can do. They can make anyone miserable forever.

How would you be wishing them well in life without it being at the expense of other people? (Especially at the expense of innocent people who have done nothing wrong unlike the "crap people".) This is what I find to be the big caveat in your idea.

So for example, you wish well for a serial killer. Their idea of good life involves killing others. (No, it's not an option that they magically change to be a normal person.) See what I mean?

Vengeance (and hatred, etc) is an evaluative function that actually has a practical function - not allowing people to continue taking advantage of you or of your family or other people.

Sure, everything was caused by something else earlier, so the way someone is, is the result of earlier interaction with their environment, but that does not matter, because this principle applies not only to the bad actions but to the good actions as well. This principle has to be applied equally to everything, no positive discrimination for people with bad actions.

Or put in another way, understanding how someone or something came to be a specific way only helps in problem solving in case the problem can be solved. In this case of people committing really serious bad things, it most likely is just a little piece of the puzzle, the whole puzzle cannot be put together and solved because that would require their involvement and other resources.

So you have to do what you can do with the limited amount of available resources at the moment. Sure, we can have a nice utopian idea about understanding these people better and gradually changing their environment and everything else in society for the better. But if that's even possible, is not going to happen right now and a lot more is needed for it than just seeing how someone came to be this "crappy way".

PS: I don't support the death penalty with possible very few exceptions because it's an irreversible decision which is a problem in case it was incorrect. Life sentence is OK though, reversible if needed.

OK posting more... too much to reply to, sorry.

Ideal is whole society's betterment. What's good for as many people as possible. So in that sense, we could strive to care about everyone, but only if it takes things forward on the whole. That is, if there was a way to change these people, then good. There is no known reliable way for that for now. So, basic human rights can be taken away from someone if there is a serious enough reason for that. Only then, though. Only if serious enough.




Them realizing their error isn't enough. That can be a sociopathic tactic, afaik. They'd have to prove first that they did change, and they have to prove it for long enough so that it's not worth for anyone to pretend for that long for some immediate enough or big enough gains in return (see, sociopathic tactic).





Nice idea but the "bad person" also has to want to heal. Has to be open for it. (Which isn't a trivial step.) Until then this won't work. Until then, this is the best environment for a sociopath/psychopath to take advantage of forgiving and naive people.

In an ideal world, there would be enough people who can demonstrate *some* positive action yet keeping boundaries for not getting taken advantage of and the "crap people" would understand that this boundary keeping is not action taken against them. That's the hard part (And then there are probably many other caveats too.)




If society doesn't have this approach integrated well enough (so people only do it for serious cases and not simply if they get upset enough about some silly s**t) then yeah. And I don't see how it would for now.

Haha I have the same instinct. I never had to deal with such people from close up but I do react instinctively to that sort of empty yet seemingly happy look they have. Dunno what that is. I don't react as strongly as you do but it invites distrust and avoidance strongly in me.




It doesn't make sense until you've actually experienced the emotion and lived it and saw what information the emotional evaluation provides to you. (It does provide you information that a purely factual evaluation does not. This is one function of emotion, it has other functions too.)

Btw, I find feeling hatred too draining and too terrible so I don't really feel it for longer than a second if ever, but I can act as if I hated someone - that is, I'm able to set the same limits and other rules for behaviour as if I emotionally truly deeply and consistently hated them. This approach I only do for serious cases of course.




Good luck with this attitude in the military. A military wouldn't be functional with a lack of hierarchy. Or a less extreme example, at the workplace. Your manager who has the power wants you to do something and you don't see the point of it but you still have to do it. The manager does not have time to argue with you all day to explain and convince you what the point would be, and you have no right to demand that either. Again, ignoring hierarchy is not functional here.

As for equal treatment of all creatures. You have to ensure it is not at the expense of others. So this is not truly possible. You can't even ensure the basic human rights to be kept for everyone unless you are ok with doing so at the expense of others who did not deserve being negatively discriminated.

For this, same/similar example to you as to the other poster: if someone is a serial killer, do you treat them equally, that is, the exact same as the people that are targeted in future by the serial killer, or, for bigger contrast, some other person who's saved many other people's lives? If your answer is yes, you've managed to compromise these other people by acting at their expense. "At their expense" here is meant in a completely factual way, no emotional judgment here. For example, you treat the serial killer equally well by not locking them up to ensure they can't kill another person. Let me know if you need me to elaborate if this isn't clear.

For me equal treatment at best means that the same law applies to everyone. That means consequences apply equally. That involves some not so nice treatment of some people, unfortunately. I can't advocate mercy and exemption from this law at the expense of other people.




What seems completely inconsistent and contradictory to me is if you want to treat serial killers or other "crap people" as the same as any other people. Reasons as above. Again, hate and desire for revenge are evolutionarily useful evaluations for quickly knowing who to keep away to avoid harm or getting taken advantage of etc. Wishing and ensuring actual harm to them is also sensible if there is no other way to stop such people.

Factual evaluation can also reach the same conclusion but emotions can provide a quicker evaluation and I'm not entirely sure if factual evaluation does not need the emotional evaluation on the side as additional information (treated as fact afterwards) to make the decision. See Damasio's research (e.g. at Wikipedia).

So yup, it's justified. Not arbitrary. As long as the evaluation does not have any factual errors in it. Which is also possible, of course. So best to have both evaluations working together.




The category of "bad people" can be a correct category. In that case it's not inconsistent but justified. I think I understood what was meant by not having any feeling towards them. No empathetic feelings, thus no connection, no involvement with them as people, just as objects. True, that excludes enjoying watching their suffering, too. I could punish these people and if I'm not able to feel anything towards them, I'd also not be able to directly enjoy their suffering, but I'd still see it as justified and perhaps enjoy feeling justified. Which I don't see anything wrong with, but I'm not a buddhist either




Interestingly enough, this is what most people in this thread don't seem to understand. That fair law will have negative consequences for negative actions. I thought that was a basic thing really...? I'm only different from you in terms of how I don't really feel disgust strongly or for long usually about most little ethically questionable things. It'd have to be very very serious for me to be able to feel that strongly and maintain the feeling. Then it comes from some strong instinct of mine. Until then nah, it'd be fleeting at most. I'd still know what behavioural limits to set though. And I can get angry fine too and I'd put the as*hole person in line too.

I do believe there is evil in this world, what else could you call the person that carried that attack out against children in Manchester? I believe it is just to extinguish this evil whenever possible, I believe in an 'eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth' whenever that is appropriate. I have no tolerance for violent and dangerous people, I see them like rabid dogs needing to be put done. I am talking about murderers, rapists, terrorists, child molesters, as true evil. My only problems with the death penalty is human error and the fact the appeals make the process much much slower than it need be, the truly damned & guilty deserve what they get.