THE CONCEPT OF "EVIL"

[drlynch]

[A comment on both a Times arthicl about the great psychologist Philip Zimbardo who has done great work but also is known for the "most unethical experiment and about J. Atlas comment below.]

[It always amazes me to recognize that scientists can be so unaware or shallow or callous in their descriptionso fhte "evil" they set in motion to study. Zimbardo's answers show him to be that. Yet, he's considered a contributing figure to ur understanding of how humans can descend into evilness rather easily when give permission to or the atmosphere encouraging it. Milgram anyone? J ATLAS]
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April 3, 2007, NYTimes
A Conversation With Philip G. Zimbardo
Finding Hope in Knowing the Universal Capacity for Evil
By CLAUDIA DREIFUS

http://brianlynchmd.org/affect/viewforu ... f5dcdffa3a Brian






My comment/observation is that one problem might be our use of the word "evil". Seneca's "Nothing that is human is foreign" is or is not true. I do not believe in "evil". I think it a worthless term. Either we are all born with the same biology or not. We start with the same apparatus. True we all have different abilities but evil calls up some "other" source for our feelings and actions.

I go with the simplest explanation is the best until proven otherwise. Why posit this "evil" in 2007 when we have plenty of material to work with in which to explain this "evil".

Zimbardos' callousness is, if we use the concept of "evil", just as "evil" as what he creates and part of the reason he is able to do it is he sets up an "other". Other is not me, "other" is "evil" but I am not evil or capable of evil albeit in the end he realizes that he is capable of "evil".

It seems to me then, if we are to engage in science we have to take seriously "nothing that is human is foreign" and realize how little we know. Over and over I find in my thinking that one of our greatest problems as humans is always presuming we know a lot more than we do. In that light I have been telling patients, just in the last week, or reminding them that the only real "truth" we have is through science. The scientific method, as bad as it can be sometimes, is the only method humans have come up with to get to some shared "objectivity" and the more we do the more we find how hard it is. That said, again, it is all we have.

But in order to get "there" to objectivity I am afraid also we have paid a very high price and that is we have for some 3000 years been on a course of disengaging reason from emotion (affect). We objectify the world more and more and more and more are dissatisfied with it on many levels. There are many explanations why we have developed this ability to disengage ourselves ( much said in the recent article discussion about why we find religion necessary and the development of the human brain).

Zimbardo comes to his senses how? He comes through the intervention of, interestingly, a crying and distraught colleague: Emotion awakes and engages reason!

So it seems to me that thinking that we know more than we do we forget that we know little and we have a long way to go in explaining these experiments.

The best I have come across in explaining anything in human behavior is the admonition to pay attention to the enter play of reason and emotion.

And I believe feeling(affect, emotion) is always the motivator of our actions.

Zimardo uses the world "evil" yet goes on to explain the behavior matter of factly as "boredom". In fact I agree that this in part is the answer.

But I believe that a full understanding of our emotive system is necessary and within that an understanding of shame and humiliation. This I have put forth a number of times in this space (and BTW note the recent posting of the article concerning humiliation). I only offer that I have spent much time with these two words and suggest to anyone that almost everyone is confused by them and really have not taken the time to get to know "shame" and "humiliation" and yet they turn out to be, to me veritable lynch-pins to most human behavior. I am free in spouting such thoughts as I take credit for contributing none of great work in explicating these ideas in the last few years, I only feel lucky in coming across the information.

So once again a big problem here is that we think we know more than we do and I think we are impatient for answers so we say these young people are 'evil" or anyone is "evil". I say take a deep breath and realize there is much work to do and that humans are built in very specific ways that need to be understood much more. That said I do believe we have the information and techniques to intervene and prevent people from acting as such in the first place but we have barely tried to institute such preventive measures and probably will be a few hundred years in getting there, it has to start early and throughout a community, it seems to me. Further comments on shame and PH are @
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[drlynch]

[REPOSTED FORM ANOTHER LIST AND IN RESPONSE TO THIS:

There's something about ..... this.... piece, the idea of 'evil' versus 'mentally ill' (neither of which explain anything!) as explanations of someones actions that just seems hopelessly spurious to me! Surely people can only behave in ways that we end up calling 'evil' if the've experienced sufficient abuse coupled with insufficent ameliorating factors..... "
Hi,

I certainly agree the "evil" never explains anything. It is a boogie man. Why "mental illness" doesn't is certainly of interest to me. When you say "Surely people can only behave in ways that we end up calling 'evil' if they've experienced sufficient abuse coupled with insufficient ameliorating factors. Whilst such a personal history may 'explain' someone's actions it doesn't 'excuse' or exonerate them- Or am I being simplistic here?!" I do not think you are being simplistic but just tying yourself in knots such as we have in Western thought for ages and as have most all man for all existents. Over and over I hear various places and on this list such phases as the following: "Surely people can only behave in ways that we end up calling 'evil' if they've experienced sufficient abuse coupled with insufficient ameliorating factors." Yes! And why not leave it at that!? Is this not what we are about? Abuse without "ameliorating factors" causes people to do wako things, things they would not have done had they not been abused. Period.

What is it that we cannot accept that fact that we can be emotional messes and NOT responsible. That emotion can and does overwhelm reason? Is it that we are so fearful of "losing it" it ourselves? We are all so abused as to have had it drilled into us that it is ultimately "our fault"?

It mystifies me. Even the law recognizes "crimes of passion" and various degrees of murder but the man on the street is often much less lenient. I often tell my patients that "think about it" is not the "first degree" murderer who plots and schemes the murder for a year actually "crazier" than the guy who picks up the beer bottle in the bar? The guy who plots for a year, lets say has to have focused rage and that motivates him over all that time. It is dominating his reason for all that time. The "hit man" has been damaged over a life time not for a moment. It is not an "accident".

To "explain" something is to do just that. It is to explain it. We, or at least I am here to try and parse out some history in terms of some sort of "science" science as "expeancation" of how the world words. When I say a body bumps into another body due to gravitational forces I have given an explanation of the phenomena that is fulfills necessary sufficient criteria. I need not go beyond that. I certain need not "blame" the atoms for not choosing to get out of the way of one another.
Ockham's razor is a good guide. Use the most efficient argument. When I am told that Saddam Hussein's mother tried to abort him by killing herself, that he never knew his father, that his elder brother died of caner at age 12, that he never knew his father and that his stepfather was abusive I am not sure what more we need to set the stage for someone to be emotionally overwhelmed.
It is not only emotionally overwhelming. Where is the Deus ex maquina that plops the knowledge in this mans head to act rightly? How does he know to act rightly? What he knows his that his own mother tried to kill him that is what he knows.

This is a "data set" that within a "psychohistorical" context would seem to permit me to conclude that he might act as he did. But to do so, of course, he needed power. So such biographies must be seen in the context of power as much as anything else. That is 100,000 people could have done the same given the chance. They did not have the chance. What I don't need to do is go beyond the data set and call him "irresponsible" or say he could have "chosen differently" or that he is "evil". Now I have my explanation plain and simple in front of me and I can live with it.

The French have the phase "to understand is to forgive". Lets say to "understand is to understand, period" as inquirers. The word "excuse" too, seems useless. What does it tell us? Again if I really understand why you did something. If I really understand why you went into a rage and hit me, well, "excuse" seems such a pale and weak word to explain anything. No, in fact it imparts a harshness. A a hidden punitive parent; "there you go again trying to get out of it!". Now what I want to do at that point is to start over, to understand and be compassionate. Of course in the case of the Hussein's of the world we might indeed want to keep our distance yet I can have great compassion for him knowing how he got where he did and knowing what I know, know that he had now chance.

Best,

Brian