Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Friday, March 29th, 2024

How the Social Evils Originate?

It can be easily observed in our society that whenever a person does something wrong, his parents are blamed for it, his family background is held responsible and the nourishment and teachings of the parents are questioned. All these lead to the misconception that parents are responsible for all the evils that erupt in the society. One of the main causes of such a conception is the tribal thinking. In a tribal setup, family plays an important role and is considered as the center of all the activities. All the attributes that are developed within a personality are thought to have roots in the family. People are recognized as per the name and status of their families. Therefore, their actions are judged in the similar fashion. The evil-doers are thought to have learnt the evils from their families and their parents. This sort of thinking is really narrow-minded and fails to understand the whole truth. It only sees one of the aspects of the fact while getting blind towards most of the others. 
It is important to have a scientific and rational understanding of the issue, though it would be a bit difficult for those who have been greatly influenced by tribal thinking and have the habit of jumping to the conclusion without going through the details. The formation of a personality is highly dependent on various institutions; from family to political system, there is a long list. Though family is the basic one, the institutions like schools, social, cultural and religious institutions and ceremonies, offices, sports and others have their undying influences. All these institutions have different practices and there are different personalities in them that imprint their marks on a person’s psychology. It is difficult to say that a particular behavior within a person is the outcome of the family or the parents alone as there are different factors involved at the same time.
Parents’ nourishment, their care and their neglect have influence on the children, this cannot be rejected. It is believed and believed rightly that a mother’s lap is the first academy for a child. But there is a long journey between how a person is treated by his parents and his choice to commit an evil. Moreover, the imprints of parent’s behavior on the minds of the children are not like reflection in a mirror – it does not come back in the same form; or it is not like the input and output in the computer, where the output is as per the demands of the users. If it was so, parenting would not be difficult at all, but it is not so and the parents living in our society are the witness to it. The love from the parents will not necessarily result in a good conduct of the children – observations show that children with great love and attention from their parents have committed crimes and evils that have made history; similarly, their neglect does not necessarily result in the children becoming evil-doers. There are many children in our society, who are the victims of their parents’ negligence, yet they show great values and behavior and even hate evils. Simply, human behavior and psychology is not like mathematics where two plus two is equal to four.
The evils that we see in our society are, in fact, the responsibility of the society as a whole. As Henry Thomas Buckle had said, “The society prepares a crime, the criminal commits it”. This suggests that there are many socio-economic conditions that are involved in the preparation of the crimes which are the biggest evil in our society. The social injustice, the economic disadvantage, the political corruption, the religious intolerance, all these factors and many others play their roles in motivating the criminals and the evil-doers to commit them. Suppose a person steals money and becomes a thief. There are certain possibilities, all of which towards the role of the society in it – the person stole money because he was compelled by his economic conditions. He might have had financial problems and have been incapable of providing basic requirements of life to his family members. He might have a patient at home, waiting to be cured, which is only possible in today’s society through money as health services have become a great business. Thus, there are so many social factors that have nothing to do with the parents alone and which even compel the parents to nourish and guide their children in a certain way. In fact, if we see from a wider perspective we will soon realize that parents themselves are among the effected, how can they be the cause? The vicious circles of the unjust economic and political systems have bound the people in such a way that they have no way out and no clear idea what to do except blaming each other. That’s why we find parents blaming the children and children blaming the parents, and many others blaming both of them, when in fact both are innocent. However, as mentioned earlier, to understand this concept a wider approach is required while many people are just peeping through the lock hole to see the whole room, which does not assist them in any way to see the whole truth.