According to the book, Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty, the author Roy Baumeister states, "Many instances of profound evil begin with a small, ambiguous act that crosses a fuzzy line and then escalates gradually into ever greater levels of evil." In many cases evil starts small and little by little amasses over time which can lead to true and inherent evil. So we are not born evil, but through situations and things that happen to someone during their life.

In No Country For Old Men, Anton Chigurh is inherently evil and the question what caused it? The book never reveals why, but in many cases true evil is a sickness or pleasure from seeing people suffer the ways they have suffered themselves. Cormack McCarthy makes him feel so real because there are people who are just as evil as him in real life.

In the book Roy Baumeister states, “Most people who perpetrate evil do not see what they are doing as evil.” People who are purely evil cannot see what they are doing wrong, because to them they are not doing anything wrong. Most normal non-evil people think of such acts unthinkable, because we are not like them and never could understand the truth behind true evil.