Famous Villains Even the best fall down; some famous examples of people who have turned evil include Jack the Ripper, a serial killer in London, Hitler, chancellor of Germany during the mid-1900s, and of course, Lucifer, the greatest angel who fell from heaven. Arguably, they can be thought of as monsters. The Stanford Experiment Good people can do things they normally wouldn’t do when they’re under pressure. During the Stanford Experiment (all articles linked below), 24 students were assigned to be an officer or a prisoner in a simulated prison. The experiment quickly escalated to constant conflict between guards and prisoners, similar to the struggle seen in Abu Ghirab prison. “Within days the "guards" had become swaggering and sadistic, to the point of placing bags over the prisoners' heads, forcing them to strip naked and encouraging them to perform sexual acts” (Schwartz, “The Stanford Experiment”). Why would any person allow himself or herself to become a monster? They weren’t born that way, right?
The Lucifer Effect Dr. Phillip Zimbardo explores the idea of this transformation. He says “The ‘Lucifer Effect’ describes the point in time when an ordinary, normal person first crosses the boundary between good and evil to engage in an evil action” (Zimbardo, “The Lucifer Effect”). This article defends the idea that there is a significant time when something or someone nice and normal turns into a monster. It follows specifically the story of Lucifer, but can be applied to any person in history who became a monster.
Do We Create Monsters? In “Our Monsters, Ourselves,” Timothy Beal explores what it means to be a monster and how we regard people as a monsters. He says explains how, “We meet monsters at those points where our boundlessly confident, ever-expanding consciousness shudders and freezes in its tracks” (Beal, “Our Monsters, Ourselves”). This reinforces the idea that we fear what we don’t know. More importantly, it explains the idea that we create monsters based on our own ideas of evil.
Monsters Come From Inside of You All observations come down to a final question. In this case, it is “Are monsters created or discovered?” Based on the information found in all three articles, monsters are created by our minds. It is our own brain that defines what we are scared of and what a monster is. There is no concrete example of a monster; what one may find scary, another may find encouraging. It is up to the beholder to determine what is a monster, not society.
Wow, the font is beautiful. But it’s also really, really hard to read. I think the font would be great to use for your headers, but for the rest of your text, please use a more generic font. Pretty please. :)