Asklemmy

I don't necessarily think people can be evil.

I know of some of my abusers that they were abused themselves. They knew what they were doing to me wasn't right but it gave them feelings of power in a world where they otherwise felt powerless.

For others, bullying me was a social sport, just something you did to "belong" to a certain group.

I think what they did was evil, but I don't think they were evil people. They were normal people with inadequate upbringing put into painful situations that resulted in bullying/abusing me being the only perceived "good" outcome for them. For almost all people who do evil things, this is the case.

I think we all possess the ability to do evil acts in response to certain stimuli, many are just lucky enough never to receive the set of stimuli that causes them to be evil, so they can allow themselves to think they are different, i.e. "good", and start labeling other people a certain way, i.e. "evil".

Conversely, I also think all the people who do evil acts are also able to do good acts in certain situations.

What we then call a "good" or an "evil person" is just a person where we perceive a larger share of behaviors attributed to that adjective. But are they evil or good people, is that a quality inherent to them? Or is the environment they grew up in evil or good? Or are humans in general evil or good? Is our perception of the share of each set of behaviors even right?

I think no one deserves for their whole self to be called evil. I think you can call actions evil, and some people may have a lot of these actions, and they're worthy of being avoided because of that, but I believe they're the same kind of person than everyone else, just put into terrible situations. So no, I don't think people can be evil.