Tolkien-Orwell: Appealing to the Human Nature.

[Nuranar]

The people of the reformation believed that we, as humans are born with the capability to do evil. Not that we are evil, but we have the capability to become evil. It is society, laws, government, that keeps us in line, and keeps us from becoming that "evil."

I have a somewhat different impression of the reformation (assuming you're referring to the Protestant Reformation of the 1500s). Can you tell me in more detail what you mean, and where you learned about it? I'm always interested in more information about it.

phantom, thanks for writing about that experiment. I took a Principles of Social Research course a couple years ago, about constructing surveys and sociological experiments. My prof talked about it in particular, and I thought that's what Boromir was alluding to. If I recall correctly, the purpose of it was to see how far people would go when they were under orders. One of the things my prof said was that it explains some of the horrible things that happened at the concentration camps. Not all Germans were Nazis, much less rabid race-supremacists or sadists. But the experiment, although extremely unethical, showed how ordinary, reasonably decent people will inflict pain on others when they themselves are being ordered around. Keep in mind that whereas nothing was keeping the people in the experiment from simply walking out, German concentration camp guards would have faced very serious consequences themselves if they refused to follow orders.