So, considering this is Lemmy I’ll clarify. I’m not talking about your neighbor who voted for Trump or your uncle who’s always been a dick. I’m talking about coming in contact with a deep down evil scary human. I’ve only met one that I can think of. When I was 12 or 13 I spent a ton of time at my best friends house. He lived on a big beautiful rural property with his dad, a few brothers and always one or two random dudes. His dad was a good electrician and a biker. So, he always had friends/associates hanging around. So one day I was staying over for a long weekend and we met a new guy his dad was housing for a week or two. Dude was a real full fledged nazi. Had a swastika under his eye and tats all over most of his body. He was from California I guess. He was “working” with my buddies dad for awhile. Anyway, the main interaction I had with him was when he pulled my friend and I in for a sermon. We were going to go hunt squirrels and do rural kid shit. He stopped us outside and had us sit on the porch. Spent about 20 minutes explaining all the things youd imagine a nazi explains. Moslty about catholics, jews and blacks. My friends dad came out after awhile and told him we didn’t need to hear that shit. He sent us away, but, I never forgot the look this dude had in his eyes. It was like the look of complete bordem mixed with extreme anger all the time.
I knew a guy in grad school who was a hard-core Trumper back in 2015/16 who thought I was too because we both owned guns and were white I guess.
Anyway - I was talking to him one day about an epidemiological analysis I was leading a team on for HHS. I’m a geographer, and our group was analyzing the demographic, spatial, socioeconomic, and temporal distribution of cases of gonorrhea in a major metropolitan area.
I explain that we’re doing multivariate analysis on the demographic stuff because of all the issues caused by covariance showing “fake” correlation between gonorrhea and other variables. I explained that while the strongest indicator of gonorrhea in univariate analysis was whether or not you were black, that was actually an artifact from the fact that being black had a strong covariance with other variables like low income status, low employment rate, low education level, high population density, poor access to preventative healthcare, etc, and that when you took all the covariance into account there was no actual statistically significant correlation between gonorrhea and being black.
He then said something that was etched into my memory:
“It’s just you and me here, [chilie]. You don’t have to be all PC about thisbshit with me. We both know that just like how there’s stupid breeds of dogs, there are stupid breeds of people, and it’s a fucking disgrace that you can’t study that honestly here.”
That racist motherfucker has a Master’s degree.
yeah i dated a woman who was a Art professor at a liberal arts school. She was native Korean. I stupidly assumed she was liberal and progressive…
She was incredibly fucking racist. She would talk about how all asian men should be rounded up and shot. She hated black and hispanic people.
She was a white supremacist. Straight up told me how she loved how tall and pale my skin was. And how much she loved asian/white people because they had so much moeny and the other races were all poor pieces of shit. It was creepy as fuck.
Broke up with a few days later. She also threatened to beat the shit out of me when i broke up with her and I basically had to threaten her with violence… that shut her up real fast.
a lot of people we assume are not racist and ignorant… are deeply racist and ignorance. they just understand they can’t be public about it without ruining their careers. i’ve also dated other so called ‘progressive’ women who were racist as fuck towards black/brown people, but not of the white supremacist variety. most the ‘those people are scary’ variety. but they saw nothing wrong with their own fear/hate of minorities in their personal life, as long as they lectured other people about how oppressed they were. it was so weird.
I’ve lived in the southern USA almost my whole life. I am accustomed to racism, unfortunately, but Asian racism hits different. It’s wild.
It seems to me that racism is an easy thing for any human to fall into if they are not conditioned out of that from an early age by their family and by their social environment. Fear and hatred of others not like ourselves seems like it could be potentially be a “default” and may have even been an advantage early on when everyone outside your tribe was seen as an enemy. I haven’t read anything about this but is just my impression. Also, you’d be surprised by how racist many countries and cultures are, especially those that are very racially homogeneous and that have less contact with people of other races.
There’s definitely subsets of idiots but they come from all cultures loool
There are smart people and stupid people but it has more to do with education and experience rather than breeding.
I knew a guy who was, by all objective standards, a musical genius. Brilliant songwriter and lyricist, prolific, could master an instrument in weeks, took to sound production and engineering like a fish to water. In a sane world, he’d have easily flourished in the music business and possibly even made it big, as he had the drive. He had a razor sharp wit and a relentless sense of humor, and in his lucid moments, was a blast to be around.
Except he was an irredeemable and unapologetic pedophile. He had previously done ten years for making and distributing cp by the time I had met him. When I brought it up he vehemently defended himself and his vice as being completely normal and natural, and even bragged about his “work.” He insisted that he did nothing wrong and seemed to genuinely not understand why people didn’t accept it.
Shortly after we parted ways, I learned that he got caught again hoarding thousands of pictures and videos. He’s currently in prison and will spend the rest of his life there.
Yeah he could be killed and the world would be better off.
I wonder if he was himself sexually abused as a child, since I think I’ve heard that being a victim of pedophilia makes one much more likely to become a pedophile themselves.
I had a nazi say to my face that they wanted to kill me and hang me from a wall.
I suppose that counts to be a real pos.
From a wall? Maybe they thought you were a painting?
I knew a kid when I was growing up that was evil. He would talk people into doing things that were not okay, and then he would immediately turn on them and get an authority figure to get them into trouble, all while laughing and then retelling the story to anybody who would listen. He repeated this pattern throughout the entire time I knew him (many years), only escalating the entire time.
I’m guessing he’s probably caused a death or two in his life by now, either directly or indirectly.
I’m guessing he’s probably caused a death or two in his life by now, either directly or indirectly.
Or been killed himself in retribution.
Nope, he has a cushy job.
My older brother used to run around with a young man that was raised by racist bikers. The guy killed someone during a house robbery. And still I’m not sure that that person was irredeemably evil.
But I’ve also done time in prison. And was celled up with an old man that hurt a little girl. No acknowledgement, no remorse. Smiling, outgoing. But at the time I had no idea what he had done. And I had no idea that he was a sociopath until he opened up to me about cutting crow’s tongues when he was young, because he had seen a talking crow at a circus. No empathy. As ‘nice’ as he seemed.
Looking back, he had that same look in his eyes that you can see in cult leaders and other sociopaths. When I watched the Nixium documentary with my partner, it was like that. A charismatic predator.
I see American and Canadian politicians on TV news every day (I’m Canadian by the way)
The epitome of evil to me is in watching a group of wealthy affluent, influential people doing their absolute best day in and day out to keep their money and the money of those with way too much away from those who need it just to have a little bit of a life. They work to make us all miserable in order for them to keep having everything and to take even more from everyone else who have little or nothing.
Watching TV and sitting across from someone are two very different things.
I have sat and met with some mid level regional politicians and provincial politicians in the past. They’re all the same. There is something pathological with wanting to achieve a high office and then regardless of your political affiliation (I’m socially left and I always vote and support the New Democratic Party, left of the top Liberal left party in Canada) they all act in the best interests or influence of money and monied interests. I know they have to survive politically to do anything but at the same time, they’ll support monied interests even if it means the suffering of hundreds or thousands of people.
There is something fundamentally wrong with our modern mentality and social conditioning if our world is entirely based on the accumulation of wealth against everything including human comfort or even the right to life.
And that’s not even talking about the political figures who are conservative, very conservative or ultra conservative … they would rather dump entire segments of society if it meant it would advance their agenda.
It’s not fully evil … but it is a lot closer to evil than anything.
Are Canadian politics dominated by money like American politics are? If they are, that could explain at least some of what you’ve noticed. In a system where money wasn’t such a huge factor needed to win elections, I think we would see a lot more people who genuinely wanted to help people run for office and win. The problem when you introduce money as such a major factor to win is that unless the candidate is already independently wealthy, they will have to kowtow to wealthy people and money interests in order to win. A system like that will select for people who are willing to compromise their principles for money, even if they deep down would genuinely like to help people.
I’ve thought about this occasionally, and feel that it’s a tragedy that there are probably many politicians who get into it for the right reasons but at some point (maybe from the start) compromise that by justifying that they can keep helping people even if in some minor fashion if they go along with this.
Which is why I look at it as a Plutocracy, a government run by money and the wealthy … rather than a democracy, a government run by the people.
It’s democratic (which is still a stretch) during an election.
But for the rest of the time, which is all the time, it’s Plutocratic
We like to play with definitions and we easily are critical of other nations but we never want to admit what our own systems actually represent. We are so blinded by our own status that we never consider that we don’t live in a democratic system ourselves.
Well said. Plutocracy / oligarchy.
that’s like… most people though.
most people are trying to do that. they want to grow their own wealth and are adverse to other people growing theirs. because life is a competition and those who have the most money are winning.
I’d agree in America most people want to grow their own wealth. Im not sure where an adversity to others doing the same comes from though. I do pretty well for myself (always a bigger fish), I’ve never wanted anyone around me to make less though. I don’t understand what mentality would want that. I’m a power plant operator, when I hear XYZ career makes XYZ much Im always like “hell yeah get that bag”. Anyone who wants other people to do poorly is a shitty person.
I mean yes. If youre a normal good person you want other people to succeed.
Until it means them building low income housing directly across the street from your house. Ill admit, I am in the camp that would hate this (i dont want my shit stolen, and i want to be able to walk my dog in peace).
Lemmy will crucify me for this but sorry its the truth. Just like bus stops (in my city) are only used by homeless and drug users and are not safe places to hang around. Thats just how it is, im not saying those people are evil or bad.
Not… really?
The US probably has more people trying to get more money than other places due to cultural issues; but even as many people as do want more money, it seems rare to want others to have less.
Speaking for myself, I just want money to make sure that food, shelter, and medical needs are taken care of for my family. Beyond that, I actually don’t want more than what I have.
Why did you say “not your neighbor who voted for Trump” and then provide an example who absolutely [would have] voted for Trump?
OP is saying voting for Trump is insufficient to qualify as an example. However, it’s not disqualifying.
Idiots and people with lead poisoning aren’t inherently evil. They’re just fucking stupid.
Malicious ignornace is malicious. Hell, ignorance implies access to information and refusal to engage with it. Ignorance is malicious.
Not sure why people try to justify shitty people, just accept that theyre shitty and move on, no need for labels. Do you really need to know the difference between hitler and your local catholic priest, or do you need to know theyre both dangers to society and should be treated as such?
Well, I get along well with my catholic priest. In fact the church is the reason we had heating oil two winters growing up and the food bank kept us from missing meals.
Well, I get along with my local catholic priest
My condolences
Edit:/jk, see below
if thats how you feel about catholic priests helping someone not starve or freeze id hate to hear your opinions on muslims or jews. good lord
Aight, thats on me i suppose. I figured my tone combined with the absurd reductionism of his statement wouldve indicated joking sarcasm, but I may have made an error in judgement. Ill add a /jk
It doesnt seem like it needs to be said that charity is good. But for one, the implication I was making was referring to child molestation, which is well documented amongst the group i refered to. Hence why I made a reductionist joke about the phrasing of their words.
For two, it would seem to me that the important thing there would be the charity, not specifically that it came from a catholic priest. Would that same charity from a local charity, organization, or individual not carry the same weight? Hence it seems quite pointless to bring up that priests do charity. So do a lot of other people. Its not their entire job either. The distinction lies in the fact that other charity groups arent known to engage in child molestation, nor have a systemic issues with covering up and protecting child molestors.
I’ll just make some statements and I’d bet we find common ground.
Catholic priests who molest children should be castrated then killed, as with any pedophile. Full stop.
The catholic church is the largest charitable organization in the world and has done a tremendous amount of good. They operate thousands of schools, hospitals and care facilities without incident.
Anyone who assisted in silencing victims or maneuvering offenders should lose whatever position they have and potentially be castrated and killed depending on circumstance.
Instances of horrific abuse (not strictly molestation) happen in MOST institutions at some point, especially ones that involve all ages. These should never be ignored.
I’ve never met a Catholic or general person who agreed with how the greater organization handled cases of abuse. It’s a horrible stain on an already stained institution and I hate that for everyone.
hold on now, let’s not conflate “ignorance” with “willful ignorance”
having access to information and refusing to use it is clearly terrible and a clear sign of some unhealthy mindset, but being ignorant about something doesn’t automatically mean that ignorance was sought out or valued
for example, I would say I am ignorant about more things than not by sheer quantity of information in the world, but I would be glad to learn if presented the opportunity, that doesn’t make me any less ignorant
there’s nothing wrong with being ignorant, only with trying to stay ignorant
Voting for Trump is not adequately explained by stupidity.
Well, all my uncles are dead. I figured having a dickhead uncle would resonate with some people.
I have two very irresponsible parents, and in one case they took a loan from my eldest brother (that I ended up helping them repay) because he involved a lawyer to compel them to act responsibly in paying him back.
I consider that a little bit evil.
I have another older brother. My parents signed their house over to him in exchange for $10,000 to pay some back taxes, on the verbal agreement that they can reside there until they pass away. (They’re elderly.) Fast forward five years, and now I have to beg for money via GoFundMe to help with their legal defense because he’s literally trying to render them homeless. (Thankfully we won.)
I consider him legit evil. Throwing your parents out into the streets is a legit evil thing to do, even if they are a pain in the ass. (And they are, they’re 21 months into me “loaning” them my car so they can drive for DoorDash.)
Wait so were your parents or your brother the evil ones with regards to the loan story? Because I think refusing to pay it back sounds kind of like the worse thing in this scenario, especially when you borrowed money from your own children. “Evil” doesn’t exactly sound right, unless the whole time the entire idea was to never pay it back in the first place but getting a lawyer involved because they are making no indication that they’ll otherwise pay you back seems like kind of a step that was tragically made necessary.
It’s complicated, but I see your point. My parents treat us like ATM’s sometimes.
But for me the distinction is intent. I don’t think my parents do any of this with the intent of not following through. They’re just pathologically irresponsible.
I also blame our culture and our country, because most first-world countries take care of the elderly as part of their social welfare system. Here, if you’re in your 80’s it doesn’t matter. Don’t work and society will find a way to put you on the street so a billionaire can add a fraction of a point to their dividends.
Never met what I’d describe as a truly evil person, but definitely a lot of narcissistic people whose selfishness and lack of self awareness have caused numerous instances of wondering if they were in fact just evil people.
I find these people evil (like my ex wife) because they are aware when they want something. When they don’t you are nothing to them.
However, it’s not like they are clubbing baby seals or killing infants at the border. They just have opinions on life that clash with mine in a huge way. They generally don’t DO anything different than I do. They go to their jobs and take care of themselves and don’t hurt other people other than the occasional stupid opinion.
As much as I think the psychology is evil their actions are totally normal.
I think it blends the line a bit the more you know someone. There are selfish things that you can do without it being narcissistic and everyone can get to a point where from the outside it looks selfish, but context changes that calculation.
Whenever someone is selfish and throws me under the bus or asks for far more than what they give I try my best to come up with excuses for them. Usually this is the right approach and saves me from making an ass out of myself and allows me to “be there” for more people who truly need it, but sometimes I’m searching for that excuse so long or gaslight myself into thinking up a good excuse and I end up as a narcissist’s host for a while.
Personally, evil has to be clear, even when devoid of nuance or context.
Someone called me evil in their suicide note once, and ever since then I’ve been wondering if they were right.
Nah evil people don’t worry about that. They were probably just really sick, it’s not your fault.
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I work in residential mental health and my boss is a progressive queer wiccan. I thought we’d get on great.
But then she started using an HR mistake i told her about to falsely bill medicare, and lied about not knowing in official emails. She tried to force me to pay for a company parking ticket and acted shocked when i wouldn’t.
When a staff was punched in the head by a resident in the evening she took hours to arrive on site, told the staff they had to finish their shift before going to the hospital, then let them drive themself after a possible concussion, and tried to get staff to reclassify it as a non critical incident.
Not truly evil, but sociopathetically dishonest in her dealings, and about who she is.
i’ve encounter a lot of that too amongst the vocally progressive types. massive hypocrisy.
i avoid anyone who bangs on about how progressive or queer they are now. it’s just not worth the risk.
She doesn’t really go on about it though.
There’s a kind of terminally online identity-yelling that’s easy to spot and definitely a red flag, but she rarely talks about her personal life at work, other than mentioning samhain and yule.
I found out who she claims to be from coworkers who use mainstream socials and stalked her.
oh I’ve had problematic co-workers that went on about their queerness to the point where it was sexual harassment. like loudly talking about the anal sex with a trans person they had over the weekend.
thankfully they got fired.
loudly talking about the anal sex with a trans person they had over the weekend.
Oh that sounds lovely.
If you say it was problematic in context i have to believe you, but i would happily take that over the advice a psychic gave them, obviously made up trauma dumps, or how the eastern orthodox church is the one true faith - all real examples from my current coworkers.
That field is filled with some of the most compassionate and truly saintly people. However, plenty of monsters hiding behind the “nice” facade too.
A couple of them.
One, I met when we were both five years old, and I knew then he would end up in prison. He helped beat someone to death when he was 19 and went to prison.
Another I met when I was a child and he was an adult. I knew he wasn’t quite right, but I had no idea how bad it was. As a teenager, I had an encounter with him that almost turned violent. He later raped both his daughters and went to prison.
I ran into a curious individual.
He was bullying me because I was in his way (I did not move, the goal did). As soon as I was not in his way he would try to recruit me into bullying the next person who was.
I’d say he was a manipulative psycopath but he was so inept at what he was trying to do and calling him a psycopath would be an insult to psycopaths. He kept falling into the holes he dug for others.
It’s the only person I’ve felt joy when they suffered.
Side note: what do you call a person who is manipulative, no remorse, see people as something to step on to get where they want but are incredibly bad and keep getting caught, fired, dumped because of it? Psycopaths seems to be good at what they do, he was in his 30s and bad at it.
Your perception of what a psychopath is colored by media portrayals and what notable psychopaths have done. Not all physicists are like Richard Feynman, and they’re all at least reasonably smart.
What you’re describing is a psychopath who is stupid. They do stupid things because they are stupid, and they do psychopath things because they’re a psychopath. They aren’t going to lead the police on a chase across the country after a string of murders. If they kill someone, they’ll probably be caught the very first time. The reason they will kill will be somewhat less nuanced than an intelligent psychopath’s reasons, but that’s the smart vs. stupid difference - they’re both psychopaths. Neither will feel remorse, neither will feel any compelling need to achieve their goals by not harming someone else, and both would do it again if they felt the circumstances warranted it. One will just do it in a way where he might not get caught and the other won’t think that far ahead or will do such a poor job of it that thinking ahead won’t help.
That makes a lot of sense.
From what I’ve heard “psychopath” is in fact a disorder that makes a person worse at managing their own life, in addition to making things worse for the people around them.
As a psych nurse I’ve only met two people who actually unsettled me, both turned out to be serial murderers. I used to work forensics specifically (the “criminally insane”), so I’ve met lots of rapists, murderers, and a ton of pedophiles. Most of them are just either pathetic and trying to not go to prison where they’ll get their shit kicked in, or did something real stupid while not knowing their ass from a hole in the ground. As long as you follow some basic rules you’ll be fine (don’t be alone with them or within arms reach if you can help it, bring a buddy if you do, and never let them between you and the door, etc.) and honestly half of that is more for their safety than yours (you’d win the fight, but you’d be in a lot of trouble).
But both of these dudes just gave me an instant back of the neck prickle. All you can do is interact as little as possible, exit every situation as soon and as smoothly as you can, protect your newer workers who don’t know better, and hope the doctor discharges them ASAP. There’s no fixing that and all you can do is escape and hope they quickly go somewhere they can be contained properly (ideally a max security prison).
Funny, I was here to also tell a story except about a psych nurse. A “friend” of a friend. This actually happened recently. Dude was a cop, as was my friend(past tense is important here), they bonded over PTSD as well as both being on a psych unit. Well, dude tells a lot of stories about his copping days, and my buddy vouches for him as a date for a coworker. Turns out, guy is crazy, gets super possessive, crazy stuff like sending hundreds of texts a day, and violently rapes her. His whole backstory of being a cop was a lie, after digging, and finding close to double digits social media accounts, turns out he was separated for “administrative purposes” and moved here.
Most unsettling thing, for both me, and my friend, is, there weren’t really a ton of egregious red flags. Looking back, sure, but in the moment, absolutely not. He’s having a hard time trusting his judgment(insert quip about being a cop at one point). I truly believe that was the first psychopath I’ve met.
One of the boys we fostered over the years: he was ~10 at the time and pretty sure was bipolar or schizophrenic or something as his eyes / face would change suddenly and attitude would become extremely defiant, destructive and sometimes physically violent. Thankfully he never hurt his baby sister we also had. We managed to capture one of these episodes over phone with our social worker and was able to move him to a therapeutic home where he was the only child and able to get the help he needed. Kiddo was a chill, happy boy normally but “evil” is pretty accurate to how we felt during those episodes.
Kind of scary this just happens to people and is just a brain chemical imbalance.
Everything is brain chemistry
