This article is about a 13 year old boy who came to school in the morning with an assault rifle.
I believe that this shows that even those we see as harmless are capable of doing evil and morally wrong things. The age of the child I found particularly interesting because I think that it shows that any person of any age has the ability to do evil, therefore evil must be in all of us. I think it comes down to whether or not our rational thinking deems something to be evil or not in our own minds. I doubt this kid felt what he was doing was wrong, in his mind what he was doing was fine. His ideas of right and wrong are most likely rooted in society and nurture.
Would this be an example of how society and our surroundings create evil in people?
Monday, October 09, 2006
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I think it has been made abundantly clear that those people we see as harmless can do evil in many harmful ways. I'm not so sure the age means that evil is in all of us - that's a pretty broad statement, since the boy is a teenager. If the boy would have been 5, then I would maybe agree that evil is in all of us - but think, at 13, he understands a lot and can probably comprehend more then we realize. He had manuals and directions about the gun and bomb making. Any child that has access to the internet and a tv can find that stuff, it's all a matter of how they use it that's important. I agree that his ideas of right and wrong are rooted in how he was brought up - clearly he was taught something, or learned somewhere that his plan was ok to do. Granted, if he studied columbine, he would know that many people disagreed with him. I know people who own firearms and don't go into a locked safe and take guns to school... so I think in this case what this boy knows of society has led him to act out like this. Maybe his parents should be blamed for letting him know the code to the safe... maybe they aren't watching him enough... maybe he's on the internet too much or hangs out with the wrong kids... all these maybes - and if it is society... how do we stop it? I was thinking about this over the weekend... instead of places which breed hate, more places need to be found that instill feelings of belonging and happiness. I was at the eagles game and go figure I started to think about all this stuff. Even at the game fans would yell at other fans to take their phillies apparel off... or diss TO... or call cowboys fans bad names ... even in a place with so much spirit do you still find so much negativity. and that is so disappointing... because the energy and intensity was amazing, and the feeling of community - which made me think that such places are perfect to combat evil. but then some fans had to ruin it - are those fans just bad apples? can someone's love be so great for something and so passionate that it can be viewed as evil? how do you combat that - when someone really truly believes in something - it's sort of like fighting a cultural and religious battle ... and some people say education is the answer... but such things take great amounts of time, and with all thats going on in the world, we don't have much time to waste.
Technically according to the law 13 is still too young to assume the human being has the ability to properly asses what is right and wrong. While in this situation there were extreme measures taken I'm still not sure that we can he had a full grasp on what he was doing. After taking Dr. Dicklitch's Evil vs Good class it seemed that even those who we consider evil did not consider the consquences. I'm not saying this boy or his parents are/are not to blame---but I'd just like to ask anyone who has heard of the "repto-mammal"--that which lives inside of all of us & can be released if under certain circumstances--could this situation be this boy's reptomammal?...
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