The Ignorance of How WE produce Evil (punishment, experience, Articles)

[GeneCosta]

A good article on how child abuse, and perhaps even corporal punishment, have reared a thousand generations of people we think of as Evil. Studies by some of the most reputable experts are completely contrary to the common opinion "spare the rod, spoil the child."
http://www.alice-miller.com/articles...&nid=47&grp=11

Today there can be no possible doubt that evil exists and that there are people who are capable of extremely destructive behavior. Any lingering doubts on this score will be swept away by an evening spent in front of the television. But the fact this is so is no confirmation of the widespread assertion that there are people who are born evil. On the contrary. The deciding factor is the reception they were given when they came into the world and the way they were treated later. Of course they have the genetic blueprint they inherited from their parents, and it may determine what kind of temperament a child will have, what inclinations, gifts, predispositions, but character depends crucially upon what a person is offered soon after his birth and over the first years of life.

Children who are given love, respect, understanding, kindness, and warmth will naturally develop different characteristics from those who experience neglect, contempt, violence or abuse, and never have anyone they can turn to for kindness and affection. Such absence of trust and love is a common denominator in the formative years of all the dictators I have studied. The result is that these children will tend to glorify the violence inflicted upon them and later to take advantage of every possible opportunity to exercise such violence, possibly on a gigantic scale. Children learn by imitation. Their bodies do not learn what we try to instill in them by words but what they have experienced physically. Battered, injured children will learn to batter and injure others; sheltered, respected children will learn to respect and protect those weaker than themselves. Children have nothing else to go on but their own experiences.

Why are we so anxious to find innate evil tucked away in our genetic make-up? Quite simply because most of us were beaten when we were small and fear nothing so much as the revival of the pain caused by the humiliation we went through. At the same time, we were told that it was all for our own good