DeliriumsRealm.com

Evil Intentions vs Natural Disasters

posted by Krista | 6/14/2007 10:01:12 AM | Permalink | Stumble It!

You've probably heard the phrase "evil intentions" before. That is because when we think about what evil is, we usually think about intention - did someone deliberately intent to hurt us by performing or not performing an action? Take, for instance, these three stories.

Example 1 - Earlier this year, Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA during two attacks on the campus. He first shot two people in a co-ed dormitory. He then mailed a package of writings and recordings to NBC News. When he was done, he walked across campus to another building, chained the entrance doors shut and opened fire on students and faculty members.

Looking at what we know, it's pretty clear that Cho intended the events to unfold similar to how they did. He intended to mail his bizarre package to NBC. He intended to shoot and kill as many people as he could in that second building. And presumably, he intended to die in that building.

Example 2 - Contrast this with the coyote problem in New Jersey. Just recently, I read about how wildlife experts are equipping teams with night-vision gear to track coyotes. Recently, a pack of coyotes in Middletown have started attacking kids. In April, a coyote attacked a 20-month-old boy and in May, a 5-year-old was bitten.

Example 3 - This is a story I recently heard while waiting for a flight earlier this month. An older woman told the tale of how her home in Mississippi was flooded because of Hurricane Katrina. The woman and her husband heard on the news that there was a flood watch, but in all the 20-some years they lived in their home, it never flooded, so they thought they were safe. Unfortunately, around 1PM in the afternoon there was a storm surge and in a matter of minutes they found their home flooded with eight feet of water. The couple had to climb out a window on their top floor and swim upstream to escape. They lost virtually everything in the house, but they and their dog managed to escape without harm.

Let's take the first two incidents first. When you compare these two examples, both involve predators, but people are much more likely to consider Cho's deeds to be "evil" over the coyote's. If you look at the media frenzy surrounding the Virginia Tech massacre, the press was obsessed with trying to figure out Cho's intentions, his mindset, and possible influences that triggered the event.

With the coyotes, in all likelihood the coyote was looking for food or felt threatened. On some level, we expect that type of behavior could happen from a coyote. We don't assume that they deliberately intent to hurt us for the sake of hurting us.

In example 3, it's pretty safe to say that a hurricane doesn't have intentions. The water that flooded this woman's home didn't intend to destroy everything it touched, unlike Cho, who did intend to kill a number of students.

Chances are, you find Cho's actions far more "evil" than the other two, though flood waters (and coyotes, I suppose) have the potential to kill just as many people, if not more.