REL S411-01:Understanding Evil - Omega

For the main post, I am looking for at least 350 words, but more is great. For the peer response, a minimum of 150 words (but more is lovely). Feel free to keep discussing after you reach the requirements. Please remember that I am looking for you to include, use, and blend in all of our modules so far. I have provided you all with a vocabulary of philosophers and theologians, psycholgists, sociologsts, and their theories, types of evil, lectures about power, authority, religion, and so forth, so you can use them to do your analysis. Please cite using any style of paraphrase and include an end reference for the work you use to support your answers (this is part of our requirement) prompt: Using all of our material, discuss the philisophical and theological definitions of evil, being sure to include Nietzsche, Agustitine, and Soltzenitzy, but also incuding others from my lecture or if you like, from one of your other classes. Which one (or combination of these) do you find the most convincing and why? (350 words) reply to peer (150 words): Through this lecture particularly, it is evident that institutional culture contributes to abusive behavior based on the hierarchical framework institutions have, along with the different bystanders and biases that these systems carry. Institutions that are led by a singular force of power are more likely to abuse as they have a group complying with orders and guidelines. This can occur through physical or emotional abuse, humiliation, unequal reinforcements, and many other actions that degrade an individual (Lecture 2). Similarly, when there is arbitration carried out in institutions and lack of detail, it is easy for those who follow the orders to lose ground whether or not abuse is occurring. In the instance of the My Lai Massacre, the soldiers followed the commander's orders without knowledge or background of what real deed was occurring. They used tactics such as naming this abuse, "pink-ville," rather than including the name of the massacre to debunk the horrors they were enumerating. The commander's demands to the troops brought me to connect his actions to theorist Thomas Aquinas (Lecture 1). To begin, Aquinas believed that good is done with good intentions and knowledge upon what the results would be. In the case of the My Lai commander and many other military personnel, it is apparent that war actions have to be done for the desirable outcome of protecting the US and its allies. However, it is clear that even with this perspective of understanding the intention and result, the two get blurred through those who abuse their job as a position in power. Moreover, depending on the level of institution, individuals can be held accountable through performance reviews and subordinate levels of authority checking to make sure there is no use of abuse occurring. For example, Commander Calley was eventually charged with premeditated murder from a bystander after the massacre. If there were subordinate levels of authority checking these positions of power, I believe many institution individuals would not issue the same levels of abuse with the checks being there. Though this is unrealistic to some extent with money and state laws, it would be valuable in reforming institutions if it was issued at a national level. In the same way, large corporations and institutions have laws to follow when it comes to specific matters, such as the election, it would be beneficial to impose these regulations and checks on the staff and people that make up the institutions.