What is your dangerous idea?

Evolution of Evil
Like Buss I have also thought about the fact that society labels people who murder as evil when they turn around and say that killing in war is okay. How many times are innocent people killed in attacks by the US when they are attempting to get terrorists? How many times are those “killers” tried? Are those innocent lives justified in the fact that it is a war areas where they were killed or because they were killed during fights against terrorism. Buss makes a very good point when he suggests that people have all these reasons that others are evil but when it comes to the out group that is affected those perpetrators are not always considered evil anymore. What is up with that?
I think that Buss is also right in suggesting that we make up all these reasons for a person’s “evil” behavior because we are afraid that we all have that ability in us and because that ability to do “evil” is perhaps a natural adaption for survival. There are many other species that kill, and maim each other and I think that we are much more like them than we suppose. Perhaps we’re of higher intelligence but can we really say that we do not have those instincts to do “evil”? I think we give animals too little credit and ourselves too much credit when we say that individuals are susceptible to “evil” but not our species as a whole. Maybe humans like other animals are programmed to kill, rape, steal or do other terrible things when it is profitable to them.
I think this reading and Buss’s portion really fits into this book quite well. It not only gives a different perspective that makes the reader uncomfortable, or at least it makes me uncomfortable, but it also presents something that high school students would not normally get to read. I think readings like this are more interesting just in the fact that they are relevant to what is going on now, and what might happen in the future. Not only is a reading like this interesting a little bit bazaar it also helps to open up the readers mind and think about things that they might not think about normally.