The line between good and evil is permeable and almost anyone can be induced to cross it when pressured by situational forces.
Interpretation
People can be influenced to act against their moral beliefs under certain pressures.
This quote by Philip Zimbardo highlights the fluidity of moral boundaries, suggesting that the concepts of good and evil are not rigid but can be affected by external circumstances. It implies that anyone, regardless of their inherent nature, has the potential to act against their values when placed in challenging or coercive situations, emphasizing the importance of context in moral decision-making.
In practice
During a lecture on psychology and ethics, to illustrate how moral dilemmas can affect behavior.
Before I knew that a man could kill a man, because it happens all the time. Now I know that even the person with whom you've shared food, or whom you've slept, even he can kill you with no trouble. The closest neighbor can kill you with his teeth: that is what I have Learned since the genocide, and my eyes no longer gaze the same on the face of the world.
Boys' brains are being digitally rewired for change, novelty, excitement and constant arousal. That means they're totally out of sync in traditional classes, which are analog, static, interactively passive.
Evil is knowing better, but willingly doing worse.
Time perspective is one of the most powerful influences on all of human behavior. We're trying to show how people become biased to being exclusively past-, present- or future-oriented.
Many cults start off with high ideals that get corrupted by leaders or their board of advisors who become power-hungry and dominate and control members' lives. No group with high ideals starts off as a 'cult'; they become one when their errant ways are exposed.
Heroes are Ordinary People whose social action is Extra-Ordinary/ who ACT when others are passive, who give up EGO-centrism for SOCIO-centrism.
We hunger to understand, so we invent myths about how we imagine the world is constructed - and they're, of course, based upon what we know, which is ourselves and other animals. So we make up stories about how the world was hatched from a cosmic egg or created after the mating of cosmic deities or by some fiat of a powerful being.
Fear of the future is worse than one's present fortune.
I tell you what's really ridiculous--going into a bookstore and there's all these books about yourself. In a way, it feels like you're already dead.
And in England there has always been something deeply pro-Arab, of course, not among all Englishmen, and anti-Israeli, in the establishment. They abstained in the 1947 UN partition resolution... They maintained an arms embargo against us in the 1950s... They always worked against us. They think the Arabs are the underdogs.
Six feet of dirt make all men equal.
We need not fear life, because God is the Ruler of all and we need not fear death, because He shares immortality with us.
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