Since the beginning of time, one of the main purposes of human life is to be together.
People continually seek out friends, peers, and acquaintances who share similar interests and values. One of the greatest characteristics searched for in others is genuine goodness. It is typical to want to be surrounded by good people. Are all people either good or evil? While everyone has good and evil intentions within themselves, whether the evil tendencies present outwardly is determined by the people that individuals are surrounded by. This is demonstrated by how the population behaves in discrimination towards minorities, with lack of authority, and with an imbalance of power in groups.
One human tendency is to act out upon evil desires when …show more content…
Their tormentors have been accused of “bullying them to death”. An article states, “As the girl walked home, a car full of students crept close. One kid hurled a crumpled soda can out the window… the girl had gone home after the soda-can incident and killed herself… “mean girl” tormentors charged with felony crimes”
(Source 3). Because Prince and Clementi were already bullied and Clementi was a gay male in college, the bullies deemed it acceptable to act out on their evil desires. Some may argue that,
“Their suicides are evidence of deeper problems than bullying…Clementi’s bullies cruelly exploited that social prejudice, but they did not cause in” (Source 5) but this is easily denied.
Many courts are trying to decipher whether the bullies caused the deaths. The problem lies in that whether they did or not, they believed it was okay in the first place. The mentality that the individuals receiving the negative action are already bullied or are minorities and therefore that makes it acceptable to lash out is the reason the people we are surrounded by influence our evil actions. Another main idea as to why people influence whether the execution of heinous acts is that there is a tendency to act upon evil desires because there is little authority or …show more content…
When they arrive, the boys feel as though they can do anything and Piggy asks, "Are there any grownups at all?" and Ralph replies, “I don’t think so” (Golding 8). By the end of the novel, two boys are killed and the main character Jack, a boy who has let the evil overcome him, says, "Do our dance! Come on! Dance!" (Golding 151) and starts a chant circle to kill another boy. Another example of this lack of authority is seen in our everyday lives. When an actual teacher is gone from a class and there is a substitute, it is clear to see that people become enveloped in the need to act out and misbehave. This can be countered by the observation that,
“The vast majority of people…dismiss their instinct for aggression and domination” (Source 6).
While this rings true, ultimately, whether people succumb to their evil tendencies is determined on other people and the situation of having a lack of authority.
The last point as to why others influence evil actions is that the environment of the surrounding people is one of which where the feeling of power is so great that the evil actions are completed. This is best described by Phil Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment. Conducted to see how people would conform to different roles, randomly selected males were selected