Derek Liebert
November 2007
Evil: Is It In You?
York Country, South Carolina, a 911 response unit arrives on scene to a house engulfed
inflames. Hours later, the house is extinguished and investigators begin work on scene. The
bodies of a 10 and 14 year old child were found intricately on their beds, throats slashed and
ensconced in combustible liquid. Parents Denis and Marbely Meza were found on the other side
of the house, the wife showing knife wounds as well. Throughout history, humans have shown
the ability to commit, what the public’s eye would consider, an evil act. Regardless of personal
feelings of regret or satisfaction attributed from their actions, an act of destruction, indecency or
simple sin against human nature has occurred. Those humans who use this inherit ability to
commit evil become overwhelmed with the sense of power and control that it gives them over
others; these urges and feelings for power and control are desires that have been inherit to
humans since the creation of man.
Power: the possession of control or command over others; authority. Control: to exercise
restraint or direction over; dominate (Dictionary). From your very first days as a child to the
ending years of your life, the desire for control over people or situations is evident in your
everyday routine. With children, you see their want and nature sense to try an attain more out of
a situation presented to them. When a baby doesn’t like the food it is eating, it will smack the
spoon away, spit the food out or use evasive maneuvers to get away from the spoon. These
children have no knowledge of evil, power or control; what they feel, yet do not understand, is
the instinctual feeling to resist opposition and strive for what you want. It is these inherit senses
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that carry on throughout a human’s life and, in the worst of circumstances, they are consumed by
the rush of feelings received by obtaining power through all means necessary.
In the summer of 1971, an experiment initiated by Social Psychologist Philip Zimbardo
put the inherit nature of humans to the test. In the basement of a Stanford University building on
campus, a mock prison was set up. After clinical interview processes, 24 “normal” test subjects
were selected to participate in the experiment which would last two weeks while being paid
fifteen dollars a day. By means of a coin flip, the rolls of prison guard or inmate were selected.
“The researchers were initially concerned that the subjects wouldn’t take to the experiment
seriously enough” (Levine). To the researcher’s astonishment, the test subject sprung into their
roles within the first hour with the utmost enthusiasm and heart towards their performance. The
reality of the situation hit the subjects and the researchers in less than 36 hours into the test,
when the first inmate was released due to “extreme depression, disorganized thinking,
uncontrollable crying and fits of rage” (Levine). After another three days, four more inmates
were released for the experiment for similar or even more severe symptoms. On the other side of
the judicial system, the guards took to their position of power with great enthusiasm. The guards
would continuously torment the inmates, obey trivial, inconsistent rules, perform tedious duties,
made to sing, laugh, stop smiling, clean toilets with bare hands and endless pushups. Due to the
response of the test subject, the experiment was aborted after only six days (Levine).
The most astonishing piece from Stanford case study was learning that the guards were
not given instructions to do any of those acts, and the inmates were not told to follow the orders
of the guards. The guards in this experiment received power and control just because that had the
flipped one side of the coin; with that power, they used it to their advantage and exploited to the
weakness of the inmates. For the guards to instinctually abuse their authority says a great deal
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about the human character: It says that when given the power and control, no incentive is needed
to take that power an instantly use it to benefit themselves and/or exploit others. The inmates
were just the opposite; when they were stripped of all power and control, they became weak and
vulnerable to the point where most completely broke down and lost it.
Some believe that evil is committed by those in a mental state different from that of the
normal human being. Stories such as Rose, written by Andre Dubus, prove other wise that a
person with now history of violence or aggression can simply snap at any given time. At two
points in the short story the main character, Rose, commits and doesn’t commit actions in
scenarios where more justifiable thought would have sufficed. The first event occurs when Rose
is cleaning dishes in the kitchen and hears a ruckus in the living room; knowing full-well that her
husband was about to inflict pain upon her oldest son, she did nothing. Rose continued on,
cleaning the dishes, and even tried to stray her mind off reality to avoid the conflict right in front
of her. For a mother to stand alone, realizing the seriousness of the situation and do nothing to
protect her child says a lot: it says that she is more concerned about a fictitious world, created
within the constructs of her own mind, and not the welfare of her own child. Only a sick, twisted
and evil hearted person can block out a young, innocent child in a time of need. The second
action that Rose commits, extrapolating her evil soul is when, just out of anger, she decides to
run over and kill her husband in the presence of her children. “in one quick motion, she lifted her
foot from the clutch pedal. He was gone as she felt the bumper and grille leap through his
resistance. She stopped and looked back … He lay on his back” (Dubus 229). Impulsive
decisions are made all the time; some have positive results and some negative. To go into a
situation, put zero thought into the repercussions of any action can create great risk. For Rose to
not fully realize, nor care about the extent of her actions when seeking to inflict pain or even
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death upon another shows more than an evil in her mind just that one time, it shows an evil soul,
neutral since birth, waiting to released.
Central Park, 1986, the body of 18-year-old Jennifer Levin was found half-naked under a
tree (Buckly). Robert E. Chambers Jr. was found and taken into custody within hours for the
young adult’s murder, and was sentenced to serve 15 years in a Federal Penitentiary. Upon his
release, Chambers had several other misdemeanor charges, as well as spent 100 nights in jail for
drug possession. Now recently, Chambers has appeared in court, awaiting a sentencing for
cocaine and heroin possession and dealing. Doing his arrest, Chambers struggled with the
officers, managing to break the wrist of one and pushing the other; if convicted, he faces a life
sentence. The extent of the United States legal system tends to give criminals another chance.
Whether some serve their sentence or make it out on parole or bail, they are given another
chance. “His image as a cold-hearted killer was magnified after the trial with a tabloid television
programs release of a video showing him twisting off a doll’s head and saying, ‘Oops, I think I
killed her’” (Buckly). For a criminal to serve 15 years in jail and come out everything but a
changed man says that inside, he does not care for the his own like and certainly not for the lives
of others, a trait possessed by a sickly twisted, evil conscious.
Author John Kekes has an opinion, an opinion in which he wrote an entire novel on and
sat down and did an interview with Front Page Magazine about. In his new book, The Roots of
Evil, he discusses his interpretation on how evil in a inherit trait in which all human beings are
born with, and live with during their every day life. To further expand his views into the world,
he included contradictory remarks concerning the routes of evil to come directly from god.
Kekes discusses how Christians believe people misuse the freedom, given by god, to live life as
you wish. He goes on to explain how this contradicts to belief that god is the creator of all things,
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thus he must have made all or some people evil. For Kekes to approach this issue from the
religious stand point was the most influential piece of the interview. Believing that God created
man is the best place to start in dictating whether humans are or aren’t inheritably evil. Kekes
describes evil as having three components: “the malevolent motivation of evildoers; the serious,
excessive harm caused by their actions; and the lack of morally acceptable excuse for their
actions” (Glazov). Kekes means within each component that evil does not consist of just the
action itself, it has a cause and effect, a motivation and the lack of morals. The most important
statement made by Kekes is when he discusses human nature and how it strives for perfection.
This perfection that people try to attain will not work for every person in the world, thus when
emotions are too attracted, force is sometimes settle for to get people to follow their beliefs.
Several gruesome examples of inherit evil and personal goals of perfect were presented:
“Albigensian Crusade in which tens of thousands of Cathars were massacred… Robespierre who
was largely responsible for The Terror during the French Revolution …men, women and
children executed on the basis of the flimsiest and unsubstantial suspicions… Stangl, who was
the commanding SS officer of one of the Nazi death camps in which 900,000 people were
murdered… Manson who was responsible for the unspeakly cruel and slow murder of randomly
selected people… the dirty war conducted by the Argentinean military… victims numbered
20,000… a psychopath in Washington D.C. who was a drug dealer, a pimp, a thief, a time-bomb
waiting to explode, who did what he did because he was bored with his life” (Glazov). All six of
these scenarios contained similar characteristics such as mass, unjustified murder, the attempt to
eliminate opposing sides through force and gruesome, unwarranted results; these all also have
the most important piece in common, all are based on the principles of one person or group of
people that believe they have the perfect ideals or life styles and want to force it upon others.
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It was never proved which parent in fact cut the throats of there young children in York
Country, South Carolina. Both parents were found dead in their bedroom with a cause of death
from smoke inhalation and severe fire burns. In this murder-suicide, no criminal is being brought
to justice but speculation surrounds the situation since all neighbors agree that no motivation
would have stirred in the family. The evil that was committed on August 11th, 2004 was very
similar to that in the story Rose; a single impulsive action that leads to death and destruction.
These parents were not evil people, but possessed the power inside them to commit such an
action. They were a ticking time-bomb, waiting for that moment to be set off. This case may also
have been an issue with the parents struggling over power and control with their children as well
as themselves. They may have believed that one parent was taking to much control over the
family and wanted that power all to them self. In accordance to John Kekes, these parents had an
inherit evil to them since birth, potentially acted upon impulsively or it was due to family
members not doing as they are told. What cannot be determined is if the true murder had
survived, would this have been an isolated incident or would the power received by committing
such evil consume them into an inescapable world of evil. It doesn’t matter the situation, the
variables or the circumstance; an evil act is an act of evil, plan and simple. It may be in the strive
for perfect, power and control, or a single incident that makes you snap or a repeated act, it is
still evil; an evil that you are born with, live with and have the ability to use and conflict grave
suffering upon others with.
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