Dark Side: A complicated concept of Evil





As with pornography, most people recognize evil when they see it. Reaching a universal definition of evil, however, is impossible. Evil is a complicated concept, akin to a thick rope of many strands in which philosophers and theologians become entangled.

 

 

For example, combatants frequently demonize their enemies as evil, even while each side is certain that God is on its side. The 9/11 terrorists believed that murdering thousands of innocent people would ensure their entrance into Paradise. Antiabortionists who kill doctors or other abortion clinic personnel contend that they are killing murderers. They all could not be more wrong. 

 

 

Evil is interpersonal. If you doubt that, read the Ten Commandments: their admonishments and strictures apply to the evils that beset our relationships with man and with God, but mostly with man. Evil is the exclusive province of human beings; it does not take place among animals. Harm directed at inanimate objects is not considered evil unless there is a concurrent element of human suffering.

 

Psychiatrists are medically trained in and wedded to the use of the scientific method, so they avoid applying the term evil to the aberrant or horrible acts they are sometimes called upon to understand and explain. Psychiatrists observe causes and effects in human behavior and try not to be judgmental about them. The determination that a particular behavior is or is not evil is a moral judgment, and what society may label as evil behavior the psychiatrist tries to understand within the framework of mental illness and the psychology of daily life.

 

The presence or absence of empathy is key to determining an individual’s capacity to maintain constructive, collaborative relationships with others; empathy is the ability to put oneself in another’s psychological shoes, to sense what the other may be thinking and feeling. But empathy without caring is empty. Psychopaths (remorseless predators) are very skilled at divining what other people feel and think, but they do so in order to manipulate them. They do not care one whit about other people, whom they regard as morsels to be consumed, with the remnants to be thrown away as trash. Serial sexual killers will unblinkingly take a life in order to have an orgasm.

 

The point is that in all cases of mass killings and sadistic acts, dramatic failures of empathy and caring must take place, and enormous excesses of projection of unacceptable thoughts and feelings must occur, to permit the perpetrators to perceive their victims as detestable human rubbish.

 

 

 

Acknowledgements:

The Police Department; 

www.politie.nl and a Chief Inspector – Mr. Henk van Essen©

www.aivd.nl      AIVD – Mr. Erik Akerboom ©

 

 

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