Comments on: Understanding Evil http://dangerousintersection.org/2006/10/17/understanding-evil/ Human Animals at the Crossroads of Culture, Science, Religion and Media Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:35:08 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.5 By: Jason Rayl http://dangerousintersection.org/2006/10/17/understanding-evil/#comment-4434 Jason Rayl Fri, 20 Oct 2006 15:25:05 +0000 http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=652#comment-4434 It is easeir for people to personalize--or should I say Personify--something like evil because it puts it in the realm of the manageable, however illusory that may be. As Hannah Arendt so ably described in her book EICHMANN IN JERUSALEM, evil seems to be more an emergent property of systems put in motion, which catches people up in them as actors who obligingly play their part. Certain ideas may be evil. Certain conditions may be. The problem is teasing apart the volitional element from what is actually the case. Because of the story of the Fall, "disobedience" has been the starting point of most exigeses on evil, but it gets complicated by moral dissent issues, where disobedience becomes a heroic element. Evil seems to me to be a kind of meme that floats freely and contributes to certain actions in such a way that bad things occur as consequence. Beyond that, it may be a kind of insanity--Hitler could easily be defined as evil, but not in all aspects of his life, apparently. But he was also pretty obviously cracked in some fundamental way. It's possible to posit a condition of so-called "bad wiring" that converts otherwise "normal" pay-offs for certain actions into reinforcing rewards where for most people the action would be repugnant. But how do you describe such a condition in moral terms? Wiring is wiring. It is easeir for people to personalize–or should I say Personify–something like evil because it puts it in the realm of the manageable, however illusory that may be. As Hannah Arendt so ably described in her book EICHMANN IN JERUSALEM, evil seems to be more an emergent property of systems put in motion, which catches people up in them as actors who obligingly play their part.

Certain ideas may be evil. Certain conditions may be. The problem is teasing apart the volitional element from what is actually the case.

Because of the story of the Fall, “disobedience” has been the starting point of most exigeses on evil, but it gets complicated by moral dissent issues, where disobedience becomes a heroic element.

Evil seems to me to be a kind of meme that floats freely and contributes to certain actions in such a way that bad things occur as consequence. Beyond that, it may be a kind of insanity–Hitler could easily be defined as evil, but not in all aspects of his life, apparently. But he was also pretty obviously cracked in some fundamental way.

It’s possible to posit a condition of so-called “bad wiring” that converts otherwise “normal” pay-offs for certain actions into reinforcing rewards where for most people the action would be repugnant. But how do you describe such a condition in moral terms? Wiring is wiring.

]]> By: Erika Price http://dangerousintersection.org/2006/10/17/understanding-evil/#comment-4412 Erika Price Thu, 19 Oct 2006 19:56:33 +0000 http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=652#comment-4412 Calling someone "evil" dehumanizes them so it makes it much easier to, say, execute them, or even condemn them to a life of crime after a single offense. I think it also helps to rationalize "evil" acts that we cannot fathom doing ourselves. Even though an ordinary person can behave in a disgusting and malicious way, as in the Milgram and Stanford Prison Experiments, it seems <em>far</em> more comforting to claim that only inherently "evil" people commit such acts. Calling someone “evil” dehumanizes them so it makes it much easier to, say, execute them, or even condemn them to a life of crime after a single offense. I think it also helps to rationalize “evil” acts that we cannot fathom doing ourselves. Even though an ordinary person can behave in a disgusting and malicious way, as in the Milgram and Stanford Prison Experiments, it seems far more comforting to claim that only inherently “evil” people commit such acts.

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