Moral blinders and the Banality of Evil. What you don’t ponder won’t disturb your conscience.

Who does more damage, A) mean-spirited people or B) "normal" people acting thoughtlessly? According to Hannah Arendt, the answer is clearly B. I would agree. Why? Because we serve as our own gate-keeper as to what what aspects of the world are relevant, usually oblivious to the fact that the "gate-keeper" of the flow of "relevant" facts is our sycophantic enabler, and that the gatekeeper is often willing to help us express our deepest darkest instincts. How is it that “normal” people so often behave (and vote) as moral monsters? In Eichmann in Jerusalem (discussed below), Arendt has written that the "banality of evil," the failure to think, leads to monstrous deeds--the road to hell is mostly paved with a lack of intentions. I largely concur with Arendt, but I would explain the source of most evil in terms of the psychological concept of attention: human animals have limited attentional capacities, and ghastly things can happen when this scarce human resource (the ability to attend) is diverted (often self-diverted). Moral monsters self-train themselves to pre-filter their sensory perceptions so that they don't need to attend to anything in the world that challenges their preferred viewpoints. The trick to becoming a banally evil person is to allow yourself to dwell on limited viewpoints and experience. To grow your evilness, stop being self-critical, stop being skeptical and stop exposing yourself to viewpoints that challenge the way you currently live your life. When you become a professional at selectively attending to the "things" of the world, you can feel the rush of becoming a self-certain--you'll become so certain of your beliefs that you won't hesitate to impose your narrow intellect onto everything and everyone you encounter. And even when you are incredibly wrong-headed, you won't realize it, thanks to the Dunning-Kruger effect. That is the great power of the ability to selectively attend to one's favorite parts of the world. It takes courage to expose one’s self to information that challenges one’s pre-existing beliefs. Humans are intrinsically able to be self-manipulative--being skeptical requires much more work than running with the types of believes and conclusions that have pleased us in the past. That is also the nature of the confirmation bias. Most of us, most of the time, sub-consciously (or semi-consciously) selectively expose ourselves mainly to the types of information that will substantiate our preconceived notions and motives. We’ve all seen this with the many dysfunctional people who use the Internet selectively. They seek out only web sites that are compatible with their pre-existing bigoted, consumerist or shallow life-styles. If you put on blinders that allow you to see only a limited slice of the world around you, you can spare yourself the need of emotionally reacting to desperate needs of humans around you. Most of us constantly blind ourselves to the plight of starving children in Africa. Out of sight, out of mind. It’s merely a matter of diverting our attention to something else, something not so disturbing.

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What do you say to someone who prefers that real children die so that stem cells can live? Notes on Proposed Missouri Amendment 2

An evangelical acquaintance recently wrote me a letter arguing that the pro-stem cell research proposal (Missouri Amendment 2) A) is geared to financially enrich its sponsors, B) that it will invite reproductive cloning and C) that poor women will result in poor women selling their eggs.  She urged me to oppose the Amendment and oppose various promising forms of stem cell research. 

For information on the proposed amendment, see here. 

Even before receiving this letter, I knew that my acquaintance believed that a one-minute old fertilized human egg in a Petri dish is a baby that deserved full legal protection and priority over the children with horrible illnesses who occupy hospital beds. My acquaintance indicated that she was part of an organized effort to defeat Missouri Amendment 2. 

I am not thrilled with my response (see below), but I couldn’t think of anything better.  If anyone has any ideas as to a more effective way to deal with those who oppose stem cell research on religious grounds, I’m all ears.

Dear [Acquaintance]

I realize that you feel hurt and attacked by my previous email.  In this e-mail, I will attempt to put our recent exchange of e-mail in perspective.

The technology for making insulin is currently based on recombinant DNA techniques; the human gene which codes for the insulin protein is cloned and then inserted in bacteria.  I want you to assume for a moment, though, that my religion holds that both the cloning of genes and recombinant DNA …

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Continue ReadingWhat do you say to someone who prefers that real children die so that stem cells can live? Notes on Proposed Missouri Amendment 2

Another “excuse” to live healthfully.

With the obesity epidemic at its current rate, we can easily conclude that a lot of people have a lot of truly excellent excuses not to eat properly and exercise. In my experience, two particular excuses take the cake, so to speak: "I don't have time" and "I can't afford…

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Focus of religious organization: Ban all birth control

All forms of birth control are immoral, according to many Christian conservatives.  We’ve previously written about this absurd position here and here. The Chicago Tribune recently reported on a formal conservative effort to prohibit all forms of birth control: Emboldened by the anti-abortion movement's success in restricting access to abortion, an increasingly vocal…

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Demi-gogs R Us

I wondered recently, during an idle conversation, whatever became of that monumental media presence Rush Limbaugh.  Now I know.  He's been upstaged.  Check out the following quote: "They're almost always biologists—the "science" with the greatest preponderance of women. The distaff MIT "scientist" who fled the room in response to Larry…

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