I absolutely agree with your advice to consider the self-interest, loyalties and prejudices of both sides in an argument about assignment of blame or judgments about the degree of evil of a particular action or policy. There is no question that "bad" actors generally have at least some "good" reasons for the harm they do (except perhaps for the deluded or psychopathic actor). But you have skirted the issue of whether any action can be deemed wholly evil; or to put it another way, whether "evil" can be objectively defined, regardless of intention. Or is it possible to fully define moral goodness without reference to evil?
The last paragraph really made me reflect - "Hamas is not a team of Ted Bundys". Recently, I watched the series Adolescence on Netflix, and It reminded me so much of an awful case that happened here in Ireland, where two 13 year old boys assaulted and killed a 14 year old girl. When I hear something like this, I always assume the perpetrator must have some kind of mental illness like anti-social personality disorder or the likes (too hard to comprehend that someone with a “normal” brain could do such a thing) but I can never wrap my head around how *two* people could do such a thing. What are the chances of two psychopaths? and it makes me think how often "evil" things happen including many people, not just one "psycho". Just the way many people participated in the Holocaust, or how many people could actively support Israels actions etc. What are the chances that a group of peoples brain's are wired completely differently? So it makes me think, what drives the justification of "evil" in groups? It makes me think of Hannah Arendt's "Banality of Evil".
Interesting thinking. For me, from a neuroscientific point of view, and paired with group psychology: it could be more probable that the perpetrators will go through with whatever happened.
The framework of what happened to the person before (a second, a minute, … a week etc.)? If we would know these facts we could parse together why sone behavior happened.
Sometimes other people will stop a behavior, and sometimes the opposite happens.
Paul’s point here is a good one and it is well made. But it doesn’t go nearly far enough.
What is evil really? The answer is quite simple. It is a word used to describe people or acts that we personally abhor. What are those acts? Usually they are acts that violate the values or interests of the speaker and often those interests are largely tribal The Israel/Hamas conflict is essentially a zero sum tribal conflict. Each side believes the other is evil incarnate and they label each other as evil to stake out the moral high ground.
That brings us to the next question What are evil acts? Unless you are a moral realist who believes in the fairy tale of objective morality, evil acts are almost invariably acts that are self-interested. And that’s the reason no one ever thinks that they themselves are evil. They judge what is evil based on their own personal interests or cultural values. So in that sense they can never believe themselves to be an evil person because they are just doing what they want or value. Trumpets think the January 6 insurrection was good not evil because it expressed their own views and interests. So how could they think it wrong? If you ask them, they might say "What, me evil?
There is no reason to dance around moral relativism here. Morality is always subjective, contextual and relative to self-interest. By definition, morality is a set of rules that exists within a particular social group. It takes at least two to develop a moral system and that system is always a compromise between individual interests and the interests of the particular group or tribe. Moral rules enhance group cooperation and they are different in every group. In a village populated entirely by evil twins of Ted Bundy, everyone would be focused on how to cooperate in maximizing the number of murders the village residents can commit and get away with. In such a group murder what be called good and evil would be outsiders who try to apprehend killers.
This is the way drug cartels work. They have their own morality but it is the opposite of the morality of the society as a whole.
Remember, There is no law anywhere in the world that makes “evil” illegal. What is illegal are specific acts that the society elects to prohibit. If you just outlawed “evil” no one anywhere would have a clue what acts were legal or illegal.
Even the assertion that universal moral law does not exist implies a universal principe and thus commits to a moral law based on individual preferences, which implies contradiction on at least two levels (argumentative and nomological), therefore, there is a universal moral law that is not reducible to individual preferences, and every law is a law only insofar as it has objective consequences. One is of course free to deny it and thus violate it, and see what happens.
Your position also implies that there is nothing essentially wrong with the Holocaust, or with rape, or murder, or torture, and these are only social conventions that can be violated if one can legally get away with it, which matches precisely the psychopathic position.
This was a good post and I generally agree with what you’re arguing. Still, I’d like to offer some mild push-back on your implication that people are either psychologically like you and me, or psychologically abnormal (in which case the "one simple trick" becomes misleading). In some cases this may risk overestimating psychological similarities and underestimating the flexibility ideology has in shaping our modes of operating morally/socially.
I would argue that culture or ideology can be more or less moralizing, and on one tail end of that it it elevates a sort of anti-moral ideal of raw unconstrained power. Specifically the online right has sometimes been analysed through this lens, offering an escape from the frustration demands of morality, total freedom. See for example inexplicably popular figures like Andrew Tate. What he’s ”selling” is not an alternative morality, he’s not saying he’s a good guy. Instead he’s saying: ” I am strong. I drive expensive car. I fuck much pussy. You should look up to me for this.”
Even Trump himself sometimes plays with this angle. The fact that he probably cheats on his taxes was rebuked with ”that makes me smart” during his debate with Hillary Clinton 2016. For some people, stuff like that are central to his appeal.
Now, I am fully aware that this way of thinking is pretty far away from the average MAGA mom in the audience of a Trump rally. Most people in that movement are driven by a recognizable moralized outrage. But it is also a current that clearly does exist in the MAGA movement, seemingly without creating too much friction. (indeed so little friction that there appears to be no significant PR damage from pressuring a foreign government to fly Tate to the US so that he can escape the same sexual assault and human trafficking charges he brags about online). My point is that I don’t think this current within the online right is abnormal psychology, but also that it shouldn’t be modelled as ”they think they’re doing good”. They don't. They think doing good doesn't matter. That it's "soy". Be selfish. That's the appeal of the ideology, which is something that can psychologically speak to people that aren't (yet) anti-social nihilists.
Thank you, what a thoroughly well put forward argument, I cannot disagree with any of it. Oh, that there were more people with your capacity for understanding.
Many years ago, I came to the conclusion, that most people are neither rational, or logical, and that they lacked the facility of self reflection. It seemed to me, that they cling to their beliefs like a child to a security blanket, and will hate you for making them change or challenge their minds.
Thank you. The logical opposite of evil is good. The human opposite of evil is wisdom, which partly consists in awareness of one's own capacity to do evil. In my efforts to live wisely, I have found it helpful to think that judgements are for actions, not actors.
I agree with you that we all have our biases when evaluating other moral positions. I also agree that Trump is no Ted Bundy and that his voters are not evil. We all suffer from "my side" bias, and we should try to understand the other side’s position. These are political disagreements, however harsh they may become. They are not on the same level of explanation as the Hamas atrocities. We all know people who have voted for our political opponents, but most people do not know anyone who has gleefully murdered and raped others. No reasonable person can understand or identify with that. I think that religious motivation or brainwashing that leads to such acts is more closely related to an army of Ted Bundys. As an Israeli myself, I can understand why people say they might join a resistance to the occupation, even Hamas, but I doubt that, in a clear state of mind, they would do anything similar to the 7/10 attack.
Many of the murders of Palestinians in Gaza were also face to face. There are reports of people being shot point-blank and stuffed into mass graves. There are first-hand accounts from IDF soldiers about driving a tank over 100s of bodies and hearing bones cracking and blood spurting out. It made him become a vegetarian. I suppose your own biases are clouding your judgement of other people's biases. Anyway, I respect your opinion a lot and hope you can educate yourself better on these things, away from your own biases, however ingrained.
I'm sure I have biases, but your example isn't convincing. Of course, I'm aware of such reports, and was so careful to write: "... MOST of the deaths in Gaza caused by Israel were at a distance." Which is correct, right?
Yes, that is correct. But I wonder if the absolute number of hand-to-hand deaths in Gaza exceeds 1200. In which case, there is moral equivalency there, at least in terms of that subset of Palestinian deaths. Deaths-from-a-distance near 50,000. So I don't think it would be surprising if the number of hand-to-hand deaths were around 1000 or so.
Why would the number of hand-to-hand deaths lead to a moral equivalency with a horrifc terrorist attack on innocent people. Israel is at war with a death cult who would prefer it if innocent Palestinian civilians died. How are you supposed to defeat a genuinely harmful enemy that wants to exterminate you, who also wants their own people to die, so uses them as literal human shields and prevents them from leaving areas that you've told civilians to leave. I have no idea, and yet, using the most liberal estimates of deaths in Palestine (those from the Gaza health ministry) still shows that Israel have had the (or one of) fewest civilian casualties for each combatant killed in any guerilla warfare of the last 40 odd years
Hard to address this because many “facts” you stated in here are provably false. Israel is actually the one using human shields. They often made Palestinians enter into buildings that were armed with high probability just to test them out. And also Israel does not care about its civilians. Its civilians are mostly safe and yet they left 100s to die as hostages. Hamas may have issues but it actually doesn’t use human shields. That has been debunked.
I've often made the point that the vast majority of "evil" acts are done in the pursuit of some greater good on the part of the perpetrator. A lot of people aren't ready to hear this.
The British TV series Utopia is the example I often reference, even though few Americans have seen it. It depicts a cabal of scientists who develop a virus that will wipe out 90% of the human population, with the justification that this is the only way to avert climate disaster. Their zealous belief that this is the only way to prevent mass starvation and war led them to commit horrendous acts of torture and murder to see their plot through to the end.
I like this example better than pointing to Stalin or Mao's utopianism because it is disconnected from ideologies and historical events that people have strong opinions about, and the fictional story is able to examine the motivations, rationalizations, and backstory of the scientists in a way that we cannot do with historical figures. It makes clear that these people who are trying to perpetuate history's greatest genocide truly believe in the righteousness of their actions.
I would also say that whenever you label an outgroup as an "enemy" the seed of evil deeds is planted. The only way to counter this is with a fundamental belief in the unity and intrinsic worth of all people. Understanding that evil is just good from a different perspective helps a lot.
This is really great. Even better is realizing Robert Sapolsky (and, in this case, Sam Harris) are correct that there is no uncaused cause.
I find it most difficult with young male a$$#oles who "tune" their cars to be ear-splitting, and then run red lights as though the rules don't apply to them. And the "rolling coal" folk - don't know how they think they are "good people."
I'd frame that those two examples aren't good/evil questions. Aren't they just simple immaturity of experience, lack of knowledge, lack of reason/consequences? It's unnecessary to sort out how to frame their actions as good.
I suspect the use of the word evil delivers us personal advantages (less cognitive load, tribal identification, less uncomfortable uncertainty, the joy of believing ourselves to be right) that have nothing to do with its reliability in moral judgments or finding a way to articulate an objective fact. I think the more interesting question is not “is there evil?” but what are the limits to our abilities to excuse an action that causes harm and what are the conditions that expand those abilities.
I absolutely agree with your advice to consider the self-interest, loyalties and prejudices of both sides in an argument about assignment of blame or judgments about the degree of evil of a particular action or policy. There is no question that "bad" actors generally have at least some "good" reasons for the harm they do (except perhaps for the deluded or psychopathic actor). But you have skirted the issue of whether any action can be deemed wholly evil; or to put it another way, whether "evil" can be objectively defined, regardless of intention. Or is it possible to fully define moral goodness without reference to evil?
The last paragraph really made me reflect - "Hamas is not a team of Ted Bundys". Recently, I watched the series Adolescence on Netflix, and It reminded me so much of an awful case that happened here in Ireland, where two 13 year old boys assaulted and killed a 14 year old girl. When I hear something like this, I always assume the perpetrator must have some kind of mental illness like anti-social personality disorder or the likes (too hard to comprehend that someone with a “normal” brain could do such a thing) but I can never wrap my head around how *two* people could do such a thing. What are the chances of two psychopaths? and it makes me think how often "evil" things happen including many people, not just one "psycho". Just the way many people participated in the Holocaust, or how many people could actively support Israels actions etc. What are the chances that a group of peoples brain's are wired completely differently? So it makes me think, what drives the justification of "evil" in groups? It makes me think of Hannah Arendt's "Banality of Evil".
Interesting thinking. For me, from a neuroscientific point of view, and paired with group psychology: it could be more probable that the perpetrators will go through with whatever happened.
The framework of what happened to the person before (a second, a minute, … a week etc.)? If we would know these facts we could parse together why sone behavior happened.
Sometimes other people will stop a behavior, and sometimes the opposite happens.
Interesting! Reminds me of Robert Sapolsky’s idea on determination - what happened right before, week before etc
Paul’s point here is a good one and it is well made. But it doesn’t go nearly far enough.
What is evil really? The answer is quite simple. It is a word used to describe people or acts that we personally abhor. What are those acts? Usually they are acts that violate the values or interests of the speaker and often those interests are largely tribal The Israel/Hamas conflict is essentially a zero sum tribal conflict. Each side believes the other is evil incarnate and they label each other as evil to stake out the moral high ground.
That brings us to the next question What are evil acts? Unless you are a moral realist who believes in the fairy tale of objective morality, evil acts are almost invariably acts that are self-interested. And that’s the reason no one ever thinks that they themselves are evil. They judge what is evil based on their own personal interests or cultural values. So in that sense they can never believe themselves to be an evil person because they are just doing what they want or value. Trumpets think the January 6 insurrection was good not evil because it expressed their own views and interests. So how could they think it wrong? If you ask them, they might say "What, me evil?
There is no reason to dance around moral relativism here. Morality is always subjective, contextual and relative to self-interest. By definition, morality is a set of rules that exists within a particular social group. It takes at least two to develop a moral system and that system is always a compromise between individual interests and the interests of the particular group or tribe. Moral rules enhance group cooperation and they are different in every group. In a village populated entirely by evil twins of Ted Bundy, everyone would be focused on how to cooperate in maximizing the number of murders the village residents can commit and get away with. In such a group murder what be called good and evil would be outsiders who try to apprehend killers.
This is the way drug cartels work. They have their own morality but it is the opposite of the morality of the society as a whole.
Remember, There is no law anywhere in the world that makes “evil” illegal. What is illegal are specific acts that the society elects to prohibit. If you just outlawed “evil” no one anywhere would have a clue what acts were legal or illegal.
Very good point. The idea of evil presupposes the existence of a universal morality but no such thing exists.
Even the assertion that universal moral law does not exist implies a universal principe and thus commits to a moral law based on individual preferences, which implies contradiction on at least two levels (argumentative and nomological), therefore, there is a universal moral law that is not reducible to individual preferences, and every law is a law only insofar as it has objective consequences. One is of course free to deny it and thus violate it, and see what happens.
Your position also implies that there is nothing essentially wrong with the Holocaust, or with rape, or murder, or torture, and these are only social conventions that can be violated if one can legally get away with it, which matches precisely the psychopathic position.
Correct.
This was a good post and I generally agree with what you’re arguing. Still, I’d like to offer some mild push-back on your implication that people are either psychologically like you and me, or psychologically abnormal (in which case the "one simple trick" becomes misleading). In some cases this may risk overestimating psychological similarities and underestimating the flexibility ideology has in shaping our modes of operating morally/socially.
I would argue that culture or ideology can be more or less moralizing, and on one tail end of that it it elevates a sort of anti-moral ideal of raw unconstrained power. Specifically the online right has sometimes been analysed through this lens, offering an escape from the frustration demands of morality, total freedom. See for example inexplicably popular figures like Andrew Tate. What he’s ”selling” is not an alternative morality, he’s not saying he’s a good guy. Instead he’s saying: ” I am strong. I drive expensive car. I fuck much pussy. You should look up to me for this.”
Even Trump himself sometimes plays with this angle. The fact that he probably cheats on his taxes was rebuked with ”that makes me smart” during his debate with Hillary Clinton 2016. For some people, stuff like that are central to his appeal.
Now, I am fully aware that this way of thinking is pretty far away from the average MAGA mom in the audience of a Trump rally. Most people in that movement are driven by a recognizable moralized outrage. But it is also a current that clearly does exist in the MAGA movement, seemingly without creating too much friction. (indeed so little friction that there appears to be no significant PR damage from pressuring a foreign government to fly Tate to the US so that he can escape the same sexual assault and human trafficking charges he brags about online). My point is that I don’t think this current within the online right is abnormal psychology, but also that it shouldn’t be modelled as ”they think they’re doing good”. They don't. They think doing good doesn't matter. That it's "soy". Be selfish. That's the appeal of the ideology, which is something that can psychologically speak to people that aren't (yet) anti-social nihilists.
Thank you, what a thoroughly well put forward argument, I cannot disagree with any of it. Oh, that there were more people with your capacity for understanding.
Many years ago, I came to the conclusion, that most people are neither rational, or logical, and that they lacked the facility of self reflection. It seemed to me, that they cling to their beliefs like a child to a security blanket, and will hate you for making them change or challenge their minds.
Thank you. The logical opposite of evil is good. The human opposite of evil is wisdom, which partly consists in awareness of one's own capacity to do evil. In my efforts to live wisely, I have found it helpful to think that judgements are for actions, not actors.
I agree with you that we all have our biases when evaluating other moral positions. I also agree that Trump is no Ted Bundy and that his voters are not evil. We all suffer from "my side" bias, and we should try to understand the other side’s position. These are political disagreements, however harsh they may become. They are not on the same level of explanation as the Hamas atrocities. We all know people who have voted for our political opponents, but most people do not know anyone who has gleefully murdered and raped others. No reasonable person can understand or identify with that. I think that religious motivation or brainwashing that leads to such acts is more closely related to an army of Ted Bundys. As an Israeli myself, I can understand why people say they might join a resistance to the occupation, even Hamas, but I doubt that, in a clear state of mind, they would do anything similar to the 7/10 attack.
Many of the murders of Palestinians in Gaza were also face to face. There are reports of people being shot point-blank and stuffed into mass graves. There are first-hand accounts from IDF soldiers about driving a tank over 100s of bodies and hearing bones cracking and blood spurting out. It made him become a vegetarian. I suppose your own biases are clouding your judgement of other people's biases. Anyway, I respect your opinion a lot and hope you can educate yourself better on these things, away from your own biases, however ingrained.
I'm sure I have biases, but your example isn't convincing. Of course, I'm aware of such reports, and was so careful to write: "... MOST of the deaths in Gaza caused by Israel were at a distance." Which is correct, right?
Yes, that is correct. But I wonder if the absolute number of hand-to-hand deaths in Gaza exceeds 1200. In which case, there is moral equivalency there, at least in terms of that subset of Palestinian deaths. Deaths-from-a-distance near 50,000. So I don't think it would be surprising if the number of hand-to-hand deaths were around 1000 or so.
Why would the number of hand-to-hand deaths lead to a moral equivalency with a horrifc terrorist attack on innocent people. Israel is at war with a death cult who would prefer it if innocent Palestinian civilians died. How are you supposed to defeat a genuinely harmful enemy that wants to exterminate you, who also wants their own people to die, so uses them as literal human shields and prevents them from leaving areas that you've told civilians to leave. I have no idea, and yet, using the most liberal estimates of deaths in Palestine (those from the Gaza health ministry) still shows that Israel have had the (or one of) fewest civilian casualties for each combatant killed in any guerilla warfare of the last 40 odd years
Hard to address this because many “facts” you stated in here are provably false. Israel is actually the one using human shields. They often made Palestinians enter into buildings that were armed with high probability just to test them out. And also Israel does not care about its civilians. Its civilians are mostly safe and yet they left 100s to die as hostages. Hamas may have issues but it actually doesn’t use human shields. That has been debunked.
Baimeister Evil book is a masterpiece.
Ehud Barak, gurney Israeli PM said "had I been born a Palestinian I would've plausibly joined Hamas". it's in the public record
I've often made the point that the vast majority of "evil" acts are done in the pursuit of some greater good on the part of the perpetrator. A lot of people aren't ready to hear this.
The British TV series Utopia is the example I often reference, even though few Americans have seen it. It depicts a cabal of scientists who develop a virus that will wipe out 90% of the human population, with the justification that this is the only way to avert climate disaster. Their zealous belief that this is the only way to prevent mass starvation and war led them to commit horrendous acts of torture and murder to see their plot through to the end.
I like this example better than pointing to Stalin or Mao's utopianism because it is disconnected from ideologies and historical events that people have strong opinions about, and the fictional story is able to examine the motivations, rationalizations, and backstory of the scientists in a way that we cannot do with historical figures. It makes clear that these people who are trying to perpetuate history's greatest genocide truly believe in the righteousness of their actions.
I would also say that whenever you label an outgroup as an "enemy" the seed of evil deeds is planted. The only way to counter this is with a fundamental belief in the unity and intrinsic worth of all people. Understanding that evil is just good from a different perspective helps a lot.
What a wise perspective to apply to much of life
Such good advice, and so hard to consistently follow.
This is really great. Even better is realizing Robert Sapolsky (and, in this case, Sam Harris) are correct that there is no uncaused cause.
I find it most difficult with young male a$$#oles who "tune" their cars to be ear-splitting, and then run red lights as though the rules don't apply to them. And the "rolling coal" folk - don't know how they think they are "good people."
But I try to keep "Determined" in mind.
I'd frame that those two examples aren't good/evil questions. Aren't they just simple immaturity of experience, lack of knowledge, lack of reason/consequences? It's unnecessary to sort out how to frame their actions as good.
Robert Burns:
“O, wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion.”
I think this comes under: "The Crooked Timber of Humanity"!
I suspect the use of the word evil delivers us personal advantages (less cognitive load, tribal identification, less uncomfortable uncertainty, the joy of believing ourselves to be right) that have nothing to do with its reliability in moral judgments or finding a way to articulate an objective fact. I think the more interesting question is not “is there evil?” but what are the limits to our abilities to excuse an action that causes harm and what are the conditions that expand those abilities.