The sets overlap... but there isn't unity.

... boils down to a claim that there is no such thing as "evil".

And I don't go in for such moral relativism.

A Cultural History of Causality: Science, Murder Novels, and Systems of Thought

This pioneering work is the first to trace how our understanding of the causes of human behavior has changed radically over the course of European and American cultural history since 1830. Focusing on the act of murder, as documented vividly by more than a hundred novels including Crime and Punishment, An American Tragedy, The Trial, and Lolita, Stephen Kern devotes each chapter of A Cultural History of Causality to examining a specific causal factor or motive for murder--ancestry, childhood, language, sexuality, emotion, mind, society, and ideology. In addition to drawing on particular novels, each chapter considers the sciences (genetics, endocrinology, physiology, neuroscience) and systems of thought (psychoanalysis, linguistics, sociology, forensic psychiatry, and existential philosophy) most germane to each causal factor or motive.

Kern identifies five shifts in thinking about causality, shifts toward increasing specificity, multiplicity, complexity, probability, and uncertainty. He argues that the more researchers learned about the causes of human behavior, the more they realized how much more there was to know and how little they knew about what they thought they knew. The book closes by considering the revolutionary impact of quantum theory, which, though it influenced novelists only marginally, shattered the model of causal understanding that had dominated Western thought since the seventeenth century.

Others have addressed changing ideas about causality in specific areas, but no one has tackled a broad cultural history of this concept as does Stephen Kern in this engagingly written and lucidly argued book.

I'm running a little behind.

and what is not.
I put petty thieves in a completely different category from those that rape or murder.
A rapist can have nothing other than malicious intent. A murderer, a little less so-depending on intent.
Evil is a loaded term. We use it to describe those who do acts that deviate drastically from the norm, from what is acceptable.
I would say that anyone who gets excitement or satisfaction from rape or murder is evil-but I think they also lack something that most people have.
A problem with too much understanding about these things is the idea that they are no longer responsible for their actions. They are evil BECAUSE they have demonstrated they can do evil things.
At this point, we have to draw a line at personal responsibility.
This is, naturally, completely unfair on many levels-but I don't have a better way to do it.

I don't think that it is as simple as looking at the acts.
Dahmer gets more sympathy from me than does a degenerate murdering for money.
No one does what Dahmer did out of greed. Clearly, he lost the genetic lottery and reaped its benefits.
Not to focus on this one man, but--the idea that he was killed in prison by some other murderer--I would guess that, if I had to, I would rate who is worse--it would most likely be the dude that killed him.
I am saying that, the more we understand people, the more difficult it becomes to judge them in a simple way.
ALSO AGAIN-I can understand, but it all ends at personal responsibility. I see no better way.

I will assume that we agree that self-defense is an OK reason to kill and will not go in to that.
Can you imagine that you are physically impelled to eat human flesh? That you fight daily this feeling? That it becomes a nearly unavoidable desire?
What if, luck forbid, you happen to be one of the few that are attracted to young children? That would SUCK! And you can NEVER act upon that desire.

I do not advocate for cannibals or pedophiles, but it is too easy to judge.
I want them away from others, unable to do harm.
But can you imagine? I don't see this as necessarily EVIL, just an unfortunate unlikelihood on the bell curve we all inhabit.

I worked with adolescent sex-offenders for 13 years.
On the surface, it's easy---kid forces sex upon younger/weaker sibling. EVIL--that is where most people disengage.
Next step--look into the child's history--Oh boy---It turns out he was abused at a young age, as well.
It is about power at this stage. They lose the ability to to have power over the self. Despite their experience, they abuse and exert power.

We always would opine that the kids were in treatment and they would return to families that have not changed. We tilted at windmills.

We hated their parents--BUT--the parents were probably abused, by parents that themselves were abused. Obviously, someone started the horrible train-wreck in motion, but WHO?

What if I was raised in similar circumstances? Who knows?

But-again. It ends at PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. I know of no other way.

you can think about it all you want-there is a practical reality to deal with.

I decided upon personal responsibility 18 years ago.

I know, though, that that is just a quick fix. It does not give me any satisfaction.
I am certain that there is a better way-I'll know it when I see it.

Yes-the reason one does something makes all the difference. To think otherwise is, to me, crazy.

I got my concept of evil from John Steinbeck's "East of Eden"--one of my favorite books

From that very same book, is the reason my son's middle name is Cain. Because there was a long discussion in it about the story of Cain and Abel and choice.

Do you mean literally insane? Insane seems to mean a kind of total disconnect with reality. That can be evil, and it's definitely not good.

However, to me "evil" implies a kind of intent. Usually just a great selfishness, a belief that the world comes second to one's own whims.

Is that crazy?

Not really. Crazy isn't that calculating. And often it works out well for the evil one. So it's more like buying a lottery ticket and hoping you win, than buying a toilet so you can fly.

...I had a class that taught everyone is seeking a subjectively good goal, that the object of everyone's will is good. We perceive certain things as good (or less bad than other options) which others in general will see as evil due to our ignorance. In certain cases that ignorance can't for certain be planned for or overcome by the limited and fallible type of creatures that we are. Therefore, ignorance will fall into two categories: vincible and invincible. Vincible ignorance is well characterized by the phrase, "I should've known better."

I personally group folks as follows:
- the good folks who don't hurt others
- the evil folks who "should know better" but hurt people anyway
- the crazy folks (who can't know the difference) and hurt people unpredictably
- the crazy folks who don't or haven't yet hurt anyone