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Suppose an experiment was to be carried out in which a child was, from birth, set in an environment where it received every thing and anything it asked for the instant it asked for it. Along with that the child would never face opposition from anyone or anything, was never yelled at, made fun of, or hurt in anyway and given plenty of love and had many friends. If these actions were to be maintained throughout the childs life until death, would the person ever feel aggression, or hatred, or fear, or skepticism? Would it ever know discouragement, or sadness, or suspicion? No, it wouldnt know or ever feet any of these things.
In fact, the child would grow to be a very kind, caring and compassionate person. So what was the purpose of this experiment? To show that man is not born with evil, rather it is learned from the environment that man is subjected to. A person has a sense of wholeness if their needs are met. If their needs are not met they will do what it takes to meet their needs.
In the process they will only focus on them selves and their satisfaction, disregarding any damage they may do to another person. In the novel Lord Of The Flies, written by William Golding, a group of young boys are stranded on an island after a plane crash without any adult presence. Throughout the novel the boys become increasingly aggressive and the savagery continues to grow on the island. Where did this behavior come from?
Children need adults to establish a sense of safety and security. Since there were no adults that could take over and lead, the boys were faced with a situation that they had never experienced before and were forced to be responsible for and take care of themselves and each other. From these new demands on the boys came great amounts of stress, resentment, and anger. And from the stress came homesickness. This is most easily summed up by Piggy's statement, I wish we could go home. (148) The boys just needed to be at home where they could play and be taken care of like they used to.
It has been proved that adolescents are prone to group behavior because they need to be accepted. The heard mentality can swing to either good or bad in these groups. However the more dynamic people in that group act, the rest of the group will follow their example. In the novel when Simon is killed, all of the boys participate in the dance because they don t want to feel left out.
And not only do adolescents need to be accepted by their peers, they also need to be accepted by adults. The ones that are not embraced by their peers or adults are the really scary ones. Since they received rejection from both groups they have feelings of anger and worthlessness. These can be very dangerous feelings.
In all of the recent school shootings, the boys that were involved were all outcasts or ciphers. They took out their anger that had built up from teasing and rejection in a horrific manor. I find it hard to believe that a person could be born with those intentions without ever having been treated badly by those people. If they had just been left alone they never would have had feelings or mind set to perform such an act. Evil is learned from the environment. From the beginning of our existence we learn by example and mimicking.
As infants and young children we learn to walk and speak by copying our parents. We also learn values from our parents and other firm influences. As teenagers we experiment with things on our own because we want to be independent like adults. From the very beginning we rely on our environment to learn new things.
To know evil, you must first know good.
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Research essay sample on Learned From The Environment Boys
