A man who studies everyday evil
bbc.com
bbc.com
My review of it can be found here: http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1605
Short version: Baumesiter focuses on data, not imaginary scenarios, which he correctly identifies as profoundly misleading (which should be no surprise to anyone paying attention to the past 300 years of scientific history, which has basically been a monotonous repetition of "Your imagination is a terrible tool for knowing reality"). He defines and rejects the imaginary "myth of pure evil" and investigates empirically what causes evil and how it works in the real--not the imaginary--world.
The causes he identifies are fragile egotism, material gain, utopian idealism, and sadism (the last is the least, accounting for perhaps 5% of evil acts.) He backs his claims with data, not imagination, and anyone arguing against him must bring far more than "it just makes sense to me" as a counter.
I can't recommend this book enough. Is it the last word on the subject? Of course not: it is science, and therefore open-ended. But it is so much better than almost anything else you will read on evil that complaining about its shortcomings looks silly. It is certainly vastly better than the purely imaginary accounts of evil found in the Bible or the Quran or "A Treatise on Human Nature", to the extent that they are incidently but convincingly shown to be completely irrelevant as practical guides to human behaviour.
Even? http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_wor...
>If you had the opportunity to feed harmless bugs into a coffee grinder, would you enjoy the experience? Even if the bugs had names, and you could hear their shells painfully crunching?
No doubt their nervous systems transmit pain signals but whether bugs experience suffering seems like an open question to me.
And thus I can't equate indifference to the death of insects with sadism.
And since the question is open as to what the bug's experience is, there may also be a tendency for individuals to interpret their behaviours as being evidence of suffering or not depending on how sadistic they are. Non-sadists may tend to interpret the bug's behaviour in ways that suggest there isn't any experience of suffering. Sadists will do the opposite.
It's difficult to see what if any interesting issues the question of the bug's internal experience could bear on. It's our perception or imagination of that experience that would seem to be far more important in how the act should be classified for a given individual.
Why are you so certain? There seems to be plenty of debate on the issue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_invertebrates .
All of which underlines the false dichotomy of good and evil that Paulhus has been keen to probe.
For example, surgeons tend to lack empathy. People who are too empathetic would have a hard time cutting into someone. They would be too squeamish.
Soldiers are also a necessary and important role in the world where the work isn't "nice" in nature.
lacking and having control over are 2 different things. Former makes a psychopath, latter - a good surgeon.
Your suggestion simply does not fit with anything I have ever seen or heard. I would be happy to see data suggesting that your idea is true instead. Care to cite a source?
I have an ex husband with some less than lovely personal traits. Genes being what they are, he passed a few on to our children. So I have long had a keen interest in understanding constructive uses for less than lovely traits.
My ex was a soldier who served his country for more than 2 decades and was honorably discharged. He is an honorable man. But he's not very warm-fuzzy.
* "Empathy has many different definitions that encompass a broad range of emotional states, including caring for other people and having a desire to help them..."
Such people can be the worst of all. They would have no compunction against mass slaughter. Utopianism in general has led to great evil because it is inherently unrealistic, and because it defines itself as the paramount good, surpassing all other goals, it can be used to rationalize very evil acts.
> If you object to the political methods recommended because they seem to you morally detestable, if you refuse to embark upon them because they are, to use Ritter’s word, erschreckend, too frightening, Machiavelli has no answer, no argument. In that case you are perfectly entitled to lead a morally good life, be a private citizen (or a monk), seek some corner of your own. But, in that event, you must not make yourself responsible for the lives of others or expect good fortune; in a material sense you must expect to be ignored or destroyed.
> In other words you can opt out of the public world, but in that case he has nothing to say to you, for it is to the public world and to the men in it that he addresses himself.
> Once you embark on a plan for the transformation of a society you must carry it through no matter at what cost: to fumble, to retreat, to be overcome by scruples is to betray your chosen cause. To be a physician is to be a professional, ready to burn, to cauterize, to amputate; if that is what the disease requires, then to stop halfway because of personal qualms, or some rule unrelated to your art and its technique, is a sign of muddle and weakness, and will always give you the worst of both worlds. And there are at least two worlds: each of them has much, indeed everything, to be said for it; but they are two and not one. One must learn to choose between them and, having chosen, not look back.
> There is more than one world, and more than one set of virtues: confusion between them is disastrous. One of the chief illusions caused by ignoring this is the Platonic-Hebraic-Christian view that virtuous rulers create virtuous men. This, according to Machiavelli, is not true. Generosity is a virtue, but not in princes. A generous prince will ruin the citizens by taxing them too heavily, a mean prince (and Machiavelli does not say that meanness is a good quality in private men) will save the purses of the citizens and so add to public welfare. A kind ruler—and kindness is a virtue—may let intriguers and stronger characters dominate him, and so cause chaos and corruption.