The question of whether humans were born evil or good has been around for ages. It has ranged from religion, to philosophers like Hobbes and Rousseau, to literature, like The Lord of The Flies by William Golding. In the novel, a group of English schoolboys are stranded on an island, and after attempting to set up a government and fail, they revert to their base instincts, to savagery. When civilization is stripped off from us, our true inner self is revealed, the savagery, and socially constructed ‘evil’ we decided to label. We as a society are ruled by our base instincts, and are only wearing a coat of civilization that keeps us sane.
In the documentary 13th, educated people all come together to call out the flaws in the United States government; pointing out its corruption, especially within the presidency. Presidents have been known to force mass incarceration (Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and even Bill Clinton), and there are bystanders there who allow such laws to pass. This Bystander Effect is the root of this evil. It is as natural as it can become, simply no action done to change an otherwise imperfect world. We look up to the government and always expect that it is doing the …show more content…
Jonah Lehrer’s article “How Power Corrupts” tells of several situations, ranging from political to social experiments, where those in power are complete and total hypocrites. Elaborating on the topic, Lehrer goes on to state that it is “the paradox of power”-the phenomenon that once someone rises to power, all of their promises that got them to that place disappear. Such is seen in Ralph’s persona in Lord of the Flies. At first he was a strong, courageous, and a leader, but once Simon rose to power, Ralph completely ditched these ideals and became a bandwagon; all those efforts became futile. It is an allegory to society