Understanding evil
[NOTE: This is a slightly-edited repeat of a post first published in 2007. I came across it yesterday when responding to a comment, and I though it might bear repeating.]
We may not be able to define evil, but most of us think we know it when we see it.
Unfortunately, that leads to equations such as Bush=Hitler and Trump=Hitler, or the bumper sticker I saw on a car that said, “War is just terrorism with a bigger budget.”
And it also leads to the false notion that we can truly understand the genesis of evil, when sometimes it’s hard enough to simply recognize it, and to deal with it in an appropriate and timely fashion.
Hannah Arendt caused a hue and cry when she watched the Adolf Eichmann trial and described the defendant’s demeanor as showing “the banality of evil” (scroll down to #6, here). Suzanne Field’s piece on evil [the article linked to has disappeared now, unfortunately], in Real Clear Politics, refers back to Arendt and describes instead what Field calls the “frivolity” of evil. Although I think “frivolity” is a poor choice of words, Field is making a good point nevertheless:
The devil wears many disguises, and one of them is the appearance of normality, perhaps the most dangerous phenomenon of all, because it’s a disguise unto itself.
Evil is real, but evildoers are all too human. In the photograph we know of him, Mohammad Atta’s eyes may look as though all human kindness had been scooped out of him, but his family probably didn’t see him that way—although the Portland Maine employee who watched him go by and onto that airplane on that fatal day said that he looked like a “walking corpse.”
Hitler had a strange look to us, but the German people found him highly charismatic and appealing. Ahmadinejad, as Fields points out, has no evil aura:
His clowning, his weaving, his bobbing, his smiling on the podium at Columbia University lent an air of normality to his lies and deceitfulness. He looked silly at times, but he didn’t frighten anyone with his stage presence.
Our wish for the mark of Cain, or cloven hooves, or some other clear sign of evil originates in the fact that it is only by their works that we know them, and by then it can be too late.
Of course, evil is sometimes telegraphed way ahead of time by words, and this is true in the case of Hitler and Ahmadinejad. Why are these words so often ignored by so many?
It’s easy to say it’s all just bluster. It’s easy to think we are too powerful to be seriously threatened by these little people who sound so crazy. Those who made that mistake with Hitler lived to regret it.
But one of the most fundamental errors people make when judging evil is to think we understand it, when we don’t. The fact that Hitler was most definitely a human being leads us to think that if we knew enough facts about him, we could explain the etiology of his evil.
But Hitler’s evil seems to have been much more than the sum of his parts—the illegitimacy, the lousy childhood, the failed art career, the anger at Germany’s WWI defeat. Try as one might—and many have tried—Hitler’s evil can be described and detailed but never understood nor, ultimately, explained.
The other fundamental error people make when judging evil is thinking it is less evil than it actually is, and more amenable to persuasion, argument, or kindness. Because those who do evil are human, we think they are subject to the same fears and doubts, loves and anxieties, concerns and scruples, as the rest of us. Perhaps when they were children they were, although in the cases of sociopaths and psychopaths the notion is that they were born lacking something we tend to call a conscience. At any rate, by the time we know about them, something quite unusual seems to be going on in their psyches.
I think of the example of Stalin who said, on hearing that his son had tried to commit suicide but had only managed to shoot himself in the stomach and live, “He can’t even shoot straight.”
People such as Stalin or Hitler or Ahmadinejad or Saddam Hussein are about power. That is the coin of their realm, and power is their mother tongue, even though they can learn to speak secondary languages in order to give the appearance of reasonableness. Do not forget that it is a facade, and do not believe that you know them. As Field points out about Ahmadinejad:
We may think he was humiliated by the hostility he confronted at Columbia, but maybe he, like Hitler, understands how to play it out to his advantage against the gullible, the feckless and the frightened.
Shakespeare, who may have understood human nature as well as anyone on earth and could speak about it better than anyone on earth, had something to say about all of this, of course. And so I’ll close with his words:
One can smile and smile and be a villain.
Ricardo Montelban Describe the secret of how he was able to nail the kahn character so well was he treated him not as evil with someone who thought that they were doing something righteous and unfortunately that probably applies to most evil people
There’s quite a bit of push back on the Arendt’s analysis of Eichmann. Here’s a quick hit. I believe there was a more thorough academic study done by someone I don’t recall that suggested that Arendt bought into a carefully crafted tissue of lies that Eichmann spun on the witness stand. That author, if I recollect correctly, found many documented writings and witness statements that proved the overt evil and non-banality of Eichmann during the war in direct contradiction to his testimony.
I watched a documentary on Ted Bundy adapted from dozens of hours of taped interviews by a journalist, and am in the middle of a fictionalized film account of Andrew Cunanan. Both suggest extreme narcissism, though the latter can be discounted because of the fictional nature.
The interesting thing with Bundy, in his own words, is that as a teenager he felt entirely separated from society and people who might have been his friends, so he consciously studied how to fake all those things that might make him appealing to others.
Tommy Jay:
That last paragraph about Bundy describes what sociopaths and/or psychopaths typically do. They can often fake it very well. I’ve written about that here.
There are many, many people in the world with a propensity for evil. Most of these are harmless and clownish. It is only when granted real power that these monsters become a real problem.
But, how do we know? We don’t. And that is why no one man or woman should ever be given ultimate power.
That Suzanne Fields article, “The Frivolity of Evil”, can be read here.
Such a timely topic, for America may now stand on the cusp of Obama’s intended transformation to a governmental system based upon doing evil, yet most those promoting it believe it good.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, because of his & his countrymen’s firsthand experiences with evil, may be the perfect one to comment:
“As a survivor of the Communist Holocaust I am horrified to witness how my beloved America, my adopted country, is gradually being transformed into a secularist and atheistic utopia, where communist ideals are glorified and promoted, while Judeo-Christian values and morality are ridiculed and increasingly eradicated from the public and social consciousness of our nation. Under the decades-long assault and militant radicalism of many so-called “liberal” and “progressive” elites, God has been progressively erased from our public and educational institutions, to be replaced with all manner of delusion, perversion, corruption, violence, decadence, and insanity. . . . Those of us who have experienced and witnessed first-hand the atrocities and terror of communism understand fully why such evil takes root, how it grows and deceives, and the kind of hell it will ultimately unleash on the innocent and the faithful. Godlessness is always the first step towards tyranny and oppression!” [read Solzhenitsyn’s Templeton Address, “Men Have Forgotten God,” here: http://orthochristian.com/47643.html
Our Christian Bible says evil comes from Satan (“a murderer from the beginning…. a liar and the father of lies” – John 8:44), and from within ourselves (“For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly” – Mark 7:21-22). Dang, we can’t just blame our misdeeds on Satan (“the devil made me do it!”).
Andrew Klavan, the contemporary satirist, says that, “Politics is downstream from culture,” which seems very true. Things that were once beyond the pale are now promoted by politicians as good (eg, infanticide). Solzhenitsyn saw America abandoning God as our culture changed. America’s road to hell, should we take it, truly is paved with good intentions.
It’s not that our culture doesn’t talk about evil by ignoring it, but instead it shapes a narrative misdirection about what and who is evil. In flipping through the lists of shows on Netflix the other day, I noticed that there are many shows about the evil Nazis & their evil leaders, yet no shows exist on Netflix about the evil of communists & their evil leaders (eg, Stalin & Mao). Communists good; Nazis bad is the subtle shaping. America’s youth are being lied to by our culture; Solzhenitsyn is forgotten, Stalin is again “Uncle Joe.”
This is a cultural war between good & evil for America’s soul. Solzhenitsyn framed it correctly.
Another apt quote from Solzhenitsyn: Russians think that socialism is a dead dog. Americans think that it is a live lion.
I know I’ve noted this before…but it bears repeating…both here in discussing evil & I ought to cross-post it in that discussion about AOC & her new green dictatorship.
“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
For if crime and disease are to be regarded as the same thing, it follows that any state of mind which our masters choose to call ‘disease’ can be treated as a crime; and compulsorily cured.” — CS Lewis
I was always struck by how kind and loving Bin Laden’s eyes looked, like he could have been singing Cat Stevens’ songs.
Andrew Klavan, the contemporary satirist, says that, “Politics is downstream from culture,” which seems very true.
Magnus: I believe that was the late, great Andrew Breitbart.
I noticed that there are many shows about the evil Nazis & their evil leaders, yet no shows exist on Netflix about the evil of communists & their evil leaders (eg, Stalin & Mao).
It is a drag how rarely films explore the evils of communism, its genocides and gulags. There are a few exceptions:
“The Way Back” directed by Peter Weir
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_Back
“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Day_in_the_Life_of_Ivan_Denisovich_(film)
“The Way Back” is good and based (somewhat) on a true story.
I’ve never run down a copy of “Denisovich” though I would like to see it. Of course it is based on the famous short novel by Solzhenitsyn.
huxley:
Don’t forget one of my absolute favorite movies, “The Lives of Others.”
I suppose you could also include “Doctor Zhivago”? How about “Nineteen Eighty-Four”? I know it’s about a fictional totalitarian dictatorship, but the reference is recognizably Communism. Of course, the film wasn’t very good—it’s the book that’s a masterpiece.
neo: True.
I’ll have to re-view “The Lives of Others.” I approved the message, but found it disappointing. It didn’t live up to the hype, such as W.F. Buckley’s “I think that is the best movie I ever saw.” I can barely remember watching it.
I loved the “Dr. Zhivago” scene where Dr. Z returns to his family home and discovers he is Comrade Zhivago and entitled only to a small room with Lara.
There was a Stalin film in which Robert Duvall played the dictator with small, cat-like grace, though still horrifying. I could definitely watch that again.
Neo: “Mohammad Atta’s eyes may look as though all human kindness had been scooped out of him, but his family probably didn’t see him that way—although the Portland Maine employee who watched him go by and onto that airplane on that fatal day said that he looked like a “walking corpse.”
In 2002 my wife ad I saw two Middle Eastern men eating in a Safeway deli. They looked at us with such looks off hate it was downright frightening. My wife whispered to me that we shouldn’t leave the deli until they were gone and in their car. They were that scary looking. And the best phrase to describe them was, “dead men walking.” That encounter showed me the face of Islamic terrorism. Men filled with such hatred and religious zeal that they exude it from their pores. However, they do us a favor by letting us see their evil intent.
I recently read the O’Reilly/Dugard book “Killing the SS.” One of the interesting things to me was that most of the SS men who escaped from Germany at the end of the war were men who knew they had committed crimes. Several of them, when finally captured, uttered some variation of the phrase, “I’ve been expecting you.” Thy were resigned to their eventual capture and punishment. Eichmann, as bad as he was as an SS man, was living very simply and rather poorly in Argentina until his capture. His captors were surprised at how poor he was and how easily he accepted his fate. It would be easy to describe him at that point as banal.
The C. S. Lewis quote by John Guilfoyle is, IMO, a good description of those politicians and religious zealots who believe they are doing GOOD and KNOW WHAT’S BEST FOR YOU. They aren’t really sociopaths but are willing to do awful things in the name of “helping others” or “building a better world.” They are very scary because so many people can be taken in by their schemes.
Evil can have many guises. So, it’s hard to detect sometimes.
Evil baffles me. I tend to think it is a garbage category into which disparate people and things are dumped as double-plus-ungood but there is no unifying principle beneath it beyond we don’t like what we call evil.
” noticed that there are many shows about the evil Nazis & their evil leaders, yet no shows exist on Netflix about the evil of communists & their evil leaders (eg, Stalin & Mao). Communists good; Nazis bad is the subtle shaping. America’s youth are being lied to by our culture; Solzhenitsyn is forgotten, ” – Magnus
I have seen that discrepancy noted before; the usual explanation, with which I agree, is that the Nazis were enemies of Communism and can be safely vilified, especially since the Left has managed to rebrand Hitler as a Rightist and hence a Conservative and hence a Republican.
Communists are still hoping to take over the world, and their fellow-travelers still dominate Hollywood, much of the government, and now academia.
Never forget that Joe McCarthy, although uncouth and “without a sense of decency,” was also correct.
Ann on February 7, 2019 at 2:26 pm at 2:26 pm said:
That Suzanne Fields article, “The Frivolity of Evil”, can be read here.
* * *
Thanks so much for resurrecting the link. I was struck by the timeliness of this observation, substituting current names for the old ones:
JJ, what do you mean when you say they aren’t really sociopaths? I am actively working to understand some specific people who act like sociopaths in their quest for power, and seem to be perfectly willing to do evil, but don’t seem like sociopaths. So what do we call them? More to the point, what is happening there?
Sara Rolph: “So what do we call them?” Possessed by the Devil. The only remedy is killing them like rabid dogs. Or burn at stake, like in old good days. What is happening there? A mental epidemic. Like in Germany in 1930 or in Russia ten years earlier. The cost of such outbreaks runs in dozens millions of murdered people. That is why it is completely justified to respond to it by well ordered and organised mass terror, imposed by the government. Short of it, use vigilante death squads.
Communists are still hoping to take over the world, and their fellow-travelers still dominate Hollywood, much of the government, and now academia.
Communism has persisted while the Nazis are gone because Communism sounds good. It tells us that Utopia is just around the corner. Fascism and Nazism are too focused on nationalities and narrow goals. We have quite a bit of Fascism on the left these days as the Democrats have enrolled the rich, especially the tech rich and the money lender rich. “Crony Capitalism” of the type that Jeffery Immelt brought GE. He was on the “Sustainability” and “Green Energy” bandwagons quickly after taking over from Jack Welch in 2000.
Welch preferred internal, or “organic” growth and benefited from long-term US economic trends that buoyed his major business lines. In particular Welch’s tenure benefited from the economic expansion during the Clinton Administration which ended immediately before Immelt became GE’s CEO. The US economy faced a number of shocks after Immelt became CEO: the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the USA and the 2008-09 financial crisis.
Immelt’s governance has taken a different path, differentiating him from Welch in both substance and style. On the one hand he has eliminated or reduced GE’s involvement in a number of businesses from the Welch era, with moves in the Plastics, Appliance and GE Capital businesses. On the other hand, he has seized the growing international nature of commerce to expand GE’s operations overseas.
Immelt did not do much for GE but he did a lot for himself.
Sarah, many of the do gooders don’t fit the sociopath mold. Sociopaths have no empathy or conscience. Many do gooders have an over developed sense of empathy or conscience. It’s what drives them to “help” others. I have observed this on a small scale in homeowner’s associations. The do gooders often rise to power based on the good things they want to do for others and their willingness to work very hard within the organization. Like in government, what ensues is a rise in HOA dues – much like tax increases in government. Often to the point that some people have to sell out because they can no longer afford to pay for all the “good” things instituted by the HOA.
Sociopaths can be very good at concealing their coldness, and some may seem to be empathic and kind. A sociopath would try to gain control of an HOA because he/she wanted to loot the treasury or do vindictive things to homeowners they disapprove of. I haven’t seen that. Most HOA do gooders I have observed are women or husband and wife teams who believe they know best and think they are doing good. It is maddening because they are convinced of their rightness. They are typical of most liberals who favor big government, thinking it a good thing.
I hope this helps.
Communists are still hoping to take over the world,
The ones who are are comical figures a la Dogbert
and their fellow-travelers still dominate Hollywood, much of the government, and now academia.
All of these places have their own problems. Infection with old school reds isn’t one of them.
Sergey:
Are you aware that the killing of the civilian Jews (and of many other civilians in Eastern Europe) by the Nazis was “justified” by the Nazis saying all those people were Communists and leftists and dangerous agitators.
The road you suggest is perilous. The excuse of extra-judicial killing of people deemed dangerous is used as justification for many many vicious atrocities against innocent people.
I think that a very good case can be made—from everyone’s daily observations over the last several decades—that our society is less moral, and much more decadent than it was, say, around the time of WWII.
That an increasing percentage of people are less moral and honest in their daily lives and actions than they used to be several decades ago, in things both large and small.
Is a general decrease in moral, ethical behavior the gateway to higher, more serious, more prevalent levels of criminality and, then, on to Evil?
In line with former New York Mayor Giuliani’s “broken window” theory, it seems logical to me.
Criminality seems to be on the rise, seems to be all around us. There’s chum in the water, and the sharks are circling.
Listen to the guy on your cell phone tell you that you owe the IRS a whole buncha money, that you have already missed one court hearing, and that, now, “the IRS is comin’ ta git ya,” that their Agents are already on their way to your house to arrest you unless you fork over some money to the caller, right now (and after the example and circumstances of Paul Manafort and Oliver Stone’s recent arrests, who can totally dismiss the possibility of you being arrested too?).
Have someone call you, out of the blue, to inform you that their “Microsoft certified” company has somehow detected that your computer has a very nasty, destructive virus in it, and that if you will only pay them a fee for their “expertise” and, then, give them your password and other necessary information so that they can get remote access to your computer, they will fix the problem (which is actually a way for them to lock up your computer, and to force you to pay them ransom to get the code to unlock it).
Decades ago, in Ann Arbor, Michigan—45 minutes outside of Detroit—some banks used to have rather lengthy signs posted outside their doors, warning patrons—especially elderly patrons—of the common scams that they might be subject to as they entered, did business in, or exited these banks.
Talk to many people in an area where there is a large population of the elderly, and you will soon hear of examples of elderly men and women scammed out of thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars by various scammers.
(Of note is that I see no signs of a serious, nation-wide or international campaign to track down these scammers, to break up their operations, and to prosecute them. It seems as if this level of criminality is just accepted as “the new normal.”)
Or watch all of the Youtube videos as someone rolls up to a house, brazenly walks up to the front door, and steals the package that was just put there by the Post Office, UPS, or FEDEX; this crime of theft minimized (almost romanticized) by calling it “porch surfing,” or the thieves “porch pirates.”
No wonder that sales of the the new Ring Cameras are reportedly going through the roof—increasing “porch surfing” in many areas–especially urban areas–makes them almost a necessity.
Think of the issue of “Stolen Valor,” mentioned on this page a few days ago, and of just how rampant Identity Theft is.
Somewhat to our surprise, my wife and I were recently informed by the manager of a pretty ritzy high rise apartment building, located in an upscale part of Miami, not to leave anything in our locked car—parked a few floors up in that building’s indoor parking garage—“because people around here will steal everything.”
Think about how many people, these days, will likely put a note on your car window if they happen to accidentally hit your car in a parking lot or on the street.
Personal responsibility for one’s actions is waning, and immoral behaviors have seemingly grown both more widespread and have increased, as well, in their intensity and seriousness.
When I was in K-12, in the 1950s and early 60s, a “bad kid” might be a kid who was caught smoking in the boy’s bathroom. Think about what a “bad kid” likely has done to earn that monicker today. Or the fact that he probably wouldn’t even be called or be identified as a “bad kid” today—too demeaning, too harmful to his psyche, and probably “discriminatory”—and, really, “there are no bad kids, just misunderstood ones.”
Real Evil does not exist, the implication goes, and we don’t think or talk very much about it.
Say what you will about Christianity and all of its failings and sins, it did, at least, keep the ideas of Sin, Evil, Temptation, and personal responsibility in the front of people’s minds, as a subject–to one extent or the other–of some rumination and discussion, and it did outline and preach standards of moral behavior.
To some degree, we were forced to confront the notion of Evil.
And, no matter how honored in their breach, some moral standards were better than none at all.
Being constantly mindful of—and on the alert—for your and each human being’s spiritual weaknesses, fallibility, and tendencies toward evil, uncomfortable as it is, is—I think—a good thing.
The idea that “we are all sinners” had a salutary, humbling effect.
Now, Gramsci’s “long march through the culture/institutions” has done it’s subversive and destructive work, Cultural Marxism is increasingly dominant in many spheres of our society, and with the waning of Christianity—eminent philosophers telling us that “God is dead,” and increasingly out of the way—and the rise of the idea that man is the center and unfettered master of everything, and the argument that standards of behavior—that Good and Evil—are merely artificial and arbitrary constructs—the cynical means oppressors use to get and keep power, and to keep the rest of us subservient to them, so we should ignore them—things have gotten worse.
As all sorts of people are arguing that many of the things formerly considered Evil are not—see VA Governor Northem’s statement, the other day, in which he saw nothing wrong with the idea that parents and doctors could end the life of a baby after it was born i.e. in effect, endorsing Infanticide.
The idea of the Devil (and, by extension, real Evil) being the province of ignorant, backwoods hell and damnation preachers, and their gap-toothed, mouth breathing flocks. We are all more urbane, educated, and sophisticated than to believe that true Evil, or that the Devil—in some form or incarnation—really exists today. Right?
All sorts of excuses are made for immorality and evil, with people saying that, if we could know all the details of a person’s life and circumstances, we could see how what they did was not really their fault.
They were unable to exercise any personal responsibility for their actions—they had no “agency,”—they were, in fact, swept away by an irresistible, all powerful current, they were like leaves, whirling this way and that on the top of the water, totally at the mercy of all sorts of overwhelming, omnipresent, impersonal social and economic forces, not really responsible; the real victims, actually.
Thus some of today’s arguments go.
Rant off.
Ann, thanks for the link to the article on “The Frivolity of Evil.”
Re: The FBI raid and arrest of Roger Stone I mentioned above.
Tucker Carlson had some of the video footage from Stone’s home security cameras of the raid on his show tonight.
You can see the CNN van arrive an hour before the raid, and an hour later the FBI agents–reportedly 29 of them–arrive, and swarm all over Stone’s property.
A couple of armored and heavily armed Agents entered his vestibule, (with one or more back up agents waiting just outside of the vestibule) banged on his door, and aimed their assault rifles, loaded with 30 round mags, at him when 67 year old Stone answered his door in bare feet, and they proceeded to cuff him.
What was new to this story was the footage of other agents coming at Stones house from the back, and the information that the FBI had even stationed a boat and a couple of agents in the water in the back of Stone’s house, shining their floodlights on the back of Stone’s house.
I assume in case the elderly Stone might have had a secret submarine lurking underwater, or was going to make his getaway on a cigarette boat like some James Bond villain.
All in all, massive overkill, and an obvious attempt at intimidation.
The Agents who raided Stone’s home and arrested him must be so proud.
P.S.–I assume that these agents were armed with real “assault rifles” i.e. ones that had the capability for fully automatic fire.
Thanks, JJ. Yes, that’s helpful, and a good clear example. The people I’m trying to understand are also do-gooders, on a larger scale; but the process by which they have gotten to their myopia is probably similar, work hard, care a lot, see that others around aren’t as focused as you so develop a certain coldness or exasperation that makes you feel justified for ignoring their concerns over the jacked-up fees, etc. There’s a loss of context, and an us vs. them mentality. And in the case I’m looking at, a belief that the ends justify the means; once you lose that context, you’re in trouble.
Thank you for the post. Very good and thoughtful. Comments on this column are especially good.
I have relatives who are quite liberal and feel they could talk to any terrorist and talk them out of it….. don’t think so.
Neo:
You can vote yourself into socialism but you have to shoot your way out of it. Once in power, socialists would never allow you another fair election. And the Second Amendment implicitly accepts the right of people for rebellion against tyranny. “Well-regulated militia” language also allows forming resistance shock troops for defense of communities.