‘Evil’ is merely a social construction based on folk psychology. There is no rational empirical definition of evil- it is not a part of the natural world, merely a convenient crutch for people not willing to consider what is really the case.
What is considered ‘evil’ changes from culture to culture and from era to era with no predictability.
It’s true that concepts of what is “evil” (I won’t even say definitions vary from one era and one society to another.
And yet I do think (and imagine that many would agree with me, even people in other times and other cultures) that conscious indifference to other people’s suffering, and certainly willingness to inflict suffering for reasons other than protecting oneself or another, is evil.
That doesn’t really have anything to do with what causes people to think and behave this way. Certainly I am tempted to conclude that it is a difference in the brain–and yet I know perfectly well that I can choose and have chosen to ignore other people’s feelings or distress, even to hurt people’s feelings or cause problems for them by my actions. I feel bad about it later and it’s in small things, but that’s only a matter of degree separating me from those I believe are evil or who have done what I think of as evil acts.
I have met and talked with a fair number of people who have done evil things (mostly along the lines of torturing or even killing their own kids or kids in their charge). Most of them were pretty obviously mentally ill, a lot of those cognitively deficient–but still most mentally ill and cognitively disabled people don’t behave this way. A lot of them were sorry for what they had done and often described just reacting to the child’s bad or frustrating behavior, then losing control.
A few were rational, of normal or better than normal intelligence, but simply believed that it was their right to punish their kids however they saw fit, and that if the punishment didn’t achieve the desired result to inflict more and more pain. Again, the temptation is very strong to say that the lack of empathy must be something abnormal and innate (or at least learned in early life). I’m inclined to think that way myself, but recognize that it does provide a way to distance myself and avoid the thought that I could ever be the least bit like them.
One society’s evil is another’s normality. Even with that caveat, evil has no operational definition. What is the difference between a person ho kills their kids because of command voices in Schizophrenia, and one who kills their kids becasue their genetic inheritance and upbringing rob them of the very human ability to empathise. Both are caused by deterministic brain events. There is a distinction without a difference.
That wasn’t really what I was trying to address, though I think there’s a huge difference in that we know schizophrenics can have such distorted experiences of reality that their reactions can’t be assessed based on more normal perceptions. As to the other category (though I agree with you that it likely is a category) the extent to which biology/upbringing contributes, how much if any volition is involved, and even how such things affect behavior is largely supposition. We just don’t know enough to do more than guess in many cases.
And certainly those differences are (or will be when we understand them) important in terms of social policy, treatment, and the law.
But what I was really getting at is that the assumption that evil behavior results from some abnormality is one that is enticing for some of the same reasons that it is tempting to label people as evil by choice–it certainly does reduce the desire to punish severely/execute these folks for revenge, but it serves to make them “other” and less like people who may behave like us but on a different scale.
The question becomes interesting when it is put forth as whether it is worse to kill one person horribly or to take the material possessions away from 1000 people.
I’d rather have all of my possessions taken away than be killed but I’d also rather a stranger be killed than lose all of my material possessions.
People have been musing over those kinds of questions for thousands of years now. So I don’t think that’s why we have labels like good and evil.
1) Ted Bundy As best I understand, a sociopath is someone who acts like he doesn’t believe in good and evil. It’s a philosophical difference rather than an illness.
2) Child molesters That’s difficult. I guess that’s what they mean by “God is the only true judge”–only someone who can look into someone else’s head and see how much temptation they’re up against can really say if they could have been expected to fight that much temptation. Those of us aren’t all-knowing mind readers are just guessing whether “I couldn’t help myself!” is more than a lame excuse, and the guess is usually influenced by our own anger.
Oh, it’s not my anger; it’s just that – well, you see, when I hear that someone has done such a thing, I can’t help myself, is all. I assure you it’s more than a lame excuse; when it comes to whether I’ll treat such people as evil, I’m simply up against an amount of temptation you can’t expect me to fight.
Works for me.
Note that sometimes the situation is somewhat more complex: you have people who want to do something, know that society consider it wrong, but at some point meet others who share their desires - and as a group, they indulge in that desire. Having met others who share it help make it “ok”. They may all be nuts, but
And btw, I’m specifically thinking of child molesters. I’ve never been much of a fan of García Márquez, but I recognize him as a superb writer; I started reading his autobiography and had to drop it when I got to the part where his brother used to take him to a brothel and eventually the whores introduced him to sex at an age that’s jailbait in every country that has an age of consent. He writes about it as having been done a favor; he’s been told that was supposed to be too early, but doesn’t see why. Both the story and the considering it a good turn are way too close to my child-molester grandfather’s own stories and lines of reasoning: those who want to know how a child molester thinks may want to read it.
Bundy was a psychopath, not a sociopath. Sociopaths do not feel empathy and fear and other human emotions, but have no positive desire to harm others, and can be socialized to get along with others. They tend to do well in corporate environments. Psychopaths have a positive attraction to rape, torture and murder that makes them rather more difficult to socialize.
I suspect you are parodying the response you have quoted, but the attitude you express is common enough, and is one of the things wrong with our society. People who think like this are basically saying that satisfying their anger is more important than dealing with the problem, i.e., that jailing and tormenting child molesters is more important that preventing child molestations. Jailing and tormenting child molesters keeps those molesters who are caught off the street, but it does nothing to prevent nascent child molesters from becoming child molesters. If you really care about preventing children from being molested, you put most of your efforts into into studying and learning about child molesters, and locking them up is a secondary thing you do while you are working at preventing it.
That’s not how we roll, of course.
I’m not telling you that you have to invite Nava’s grandpa to your Labor Day barbeque; I’m just trying to answer the OP and tease out the nature of evil, which I don’t think has much to do with monsters in black hats twirling their mustache, as much to do with mental illness as it does with athlete’s foot, and everything to do with fear, desire, temptation, and the same kind of lies most of us tell each other and ourselves.
I’ve always seen the two used interchangably. So has Wikipedia.
I suspect you are parodying the response you have quoted, but the attitude you express is common enough, and is one of the things wrong with our society. People who think like this are basically saying that satisfying their anger is more important than dealing with the problem
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That’s odd; you just now quoted me as saying it’s not anger. I ruled out exactly one possibility when stating that I – possibly like most of society, as you hint; or like “most of us”, as coffeecat puts it – am strongly tempted to treat people who’ve done such things as evil. Why not believe me?
It’s also puzzling that you figure I said satisfying the anger (which, again, is a weird assumption) is more important than dealing with the problem. Why not assume I’m saying they’re equally important? At that,
Why not assume I find the latter equally important? Or possibly more important? Indeed, why are you so busy assuming in the first place, when you could ask questions instead of making statements? Are you gripped by some irresistible impulse?
But, in a larger sense:
And, likewise:
[QUOTE=coffeecat]
[QUOTE=The Other Waldo Pepper]
Oh, it’s not my anger; it’s just that – well, you see, when I hear that someone has done such a thing, I can’t help myself, is all. I assure you it’s more than a lame excuse; when it comes to whether I’ll treat such people as evil, I’m simply up against an amount of temptation you can’t expect me to fight.
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I’m not telling you that you have to invite Nava’s grandpa to your Labor Day barbeque; I’m just trying to answer the OP and tease out the nature of evil, which I don’t think has much to do with monsters in black hats twirling their mustache, as much to do with mental illness as it does with athlete’s foot, and everything to do with fear, desire, temptation, and the same kind of lies most of us tell each other and ourselves.
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Both of you replied the same way to my claim; I say I just can’t help myself when it comes to treating those who commit heinous crimes as if they were evil, and neither of you responded as if I were facing some irresistible impulse; you each just supplied with fine words about solving problems and looking at things from a different perspective.
Why is that? You wouldn’t try to briskly reason a child molester away from his heinous crimes, which I see as evil; why try to briskly reason me out of seeing his heinous crimes as evil? Why tease out the nature of evil as a matter of biology and desire if you’re not going to do the same for the nature of good? Why not assume that I and most of society are exactly as driven by our particular brand of prosocial sentiments as evildoers are by their particular brand of antisocial ones?
I’m not sure what you’re getting at here, Waldo. You seem to be saying that the need for revenge and punishment is the driving force behind jailing sex offenders, and I’ll grant you that has historically been the model, but at least since the 1800s there has been a counter-argument that we should attempt to rehabilitate and improve people whom we jail so they can return to society better able to fit in and less likely to re-offend. I’m with the counter-argument folks, I recognize that the need for revenge drives a certain amount of our justice system, but I argue that this is actually counter-productive.
Could you put your argument in clearer terms?
When I first read this, my eyes skipped over the bold part, which led me to think of some kind of freaky, overwhelming lust, not the intensity of feeling we all deal with. Well, anyway . . .
I replied the way I did because I don’t believe you. I don’t even believe you believe it–you just said it to make a point.
I certainly would try to talk a child molester out of molesting. I’d hope he did have some control.
I’d say “influenced” rather than “driven,” but yes we are. I don’t pat myself on the back for not molesting children, because, besides knowing it’s wrong, I’m not attracted to children. It’s an easy crime for me to avoid.
I think there are limits to spiritual strength, just as there are limits to physical strength. I can handle things now that I couldn’t have when I was younger, because, through time and practice I’m stronger now. If someone just doesn’t have it in him to do something, the act may be good or bad, but the person isn’t because he couldn’t have chosen otherwise. If someone is strong enough to resist temptation, then you can praise or blame them for what they did.
Or, you know, the exact opposite of what he actually said.
I’m not following you. Later in the very post I’m now quoting via copy-and-paste, you copy-and-paste and respond as follows:
[QUOTE=coffeecat]
[QUOTE=The Other Waldo Pepper]
Why tease out the nature of evil as a matter of biology and desire if you’re not going to do the same for the nature of good? Why not assume that I and most of society are exactly as driven by our particular brand of prosocial sentiments as evildoers are by their particular brand of antisocial ones?
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I’d say “influenced” rather than “driven,” but yes we are.
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So – yeah, I don’t get it. If you agree that “yes we are” exactly as influenced by said prosocial sentiments as said evildoers are by their antisocial ones, then why the heck wouldn’t you believe me when I fire up the exact same I Just Can’t Help Myself phraseology? Why aren’t they mirror images?
So there you go: don’t praise me or blame me for my acts, as I lack the strength to resist temptation; I just don’t have it in me. Except instead of committing heinous crimes against small children, my thing is – treating people like that as if they were evil, blaming folks like them easy as praising folks like me.
::shrugs:: It’s a condition that apparently afflicts most people in society.
[QUOTE=Evil Captor]
I’m not sure what you’re getting at here, Waldo. You seem to be saying that the need for revenge and punishment is the driving force behind jailing sex offenders
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[QUOTE=Evil Captor]
I recognize that the need for revenge drives a certain amount of our justice system, but I argue that this is actually counter-productive.
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First you assume I’m out to satisfy anger, then you assume it’s a need for revenge – and along the way you assume a desire to torment is key. Why can’t it be some big-hearted combination of sympathy for the victims of heinous crimes, plus a noble love of justice and the rights of man, all multiplied by a healthy dose of enlightened self-interest? Or maybe shorthand that down to saying I’m under the influence of powerful moral sentiments?
The problem is, your self-interest is more than a little the opposite of “enlightened”. Negative reinforcement in the context of “justice” is almost always ineffectual as a means of behavior modification (punishing “bad” people rarely makes them less bad, often the opposite). So, if you are “enlightened”, you will not advocate treating people who do bad things as “evil”, because history shows such policy as unproductive at best, counterproductive at worst.
Only if you hold to a Marcionite opposition of Yahweh vs. Jesus.
Because the terms you use are a lot of noble-sounding bullshit that have always been used as cover for revenge? Let me make my position clear: I have little or no sympathy for malefactors who commit heinous crimes. The example I keep in mind was a man down in Florida who kidnapped Jessica Lunsford, a prepubescent girl, raped her, beat her half to death, and then buried her alive, where she died. I did not care after I heard about what he did about anything that might have happened to him, literally nothing could be too horrible. If I had heard he had been fed feet first into a wood chipper at a VERY slow rate of speed, I would not have cared. (He died of natural causes in prison after being sentenced to death.)
I oppose the death penalty, mainly because it’s so irrevocable and we kill so many innocent men. So I’d have been all right with the guy spending the rest of his life in prison. But I really don’t care about him, so long as he’s off the street. My concern is with the victim and with future victims. We learned nothing from this guy. We don’t know what made him do what he did, and so we don’t have any information that might lead us to understand how to prevent other men from becoming what he became. And what I would like first and foremost is to prevent others from going through what Lunsford went through. I think we should have mentally dissected the murderer, and found out as much as we could from him. Instead we just threw him away. We should do that with all who commit heinous crimes. We’ve already found out a lot about psychopaths, including a few early warning signs (such as torturing and killing small animals) that would give them away. Our primary aim should be to press on to learn more, so we can prevent people like the guy who killed Jessica Lunsford from happening again.
History shows that just calling people ‘evil’ and putting them in prison does little to reduce the incidence of heinous crimes, other than preventing that individual from repeating them. It’s not enough. And satisfying your sentiments, however nobly couched, is a lesser goal, in terms of human happiness and safety, than mine.