EVILICIOUS: Cruelty = Desire + Denial
Author: Marc Hauser
Published: 2013
Publisher: Amazon KDP
ASIN: B00FDXDZDI
Format: Retail Epub and Mobi
Reader Required:
Epub- Adobe Digital Editions, Calibre, MoonReader for Android
Mobi- Kindle app, Calibre, MoonReader for Android
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Cover from actual book file
It is a fact that humans destroy the lives of other humans—strangers, friends, lovers, and kin—and have been doing so for a long time. Most of these cases are unsurprising and easily explained: We harm others when it benefits us directly, fighting to win resources or wipe out the competition. In this sense we are no different from any other social animal. The mystery is why seemingly normal people torture, mutilate, and kill others for the fun of it—or for no apparent benefit at all. Why did we, alone among the social animals, develop an appetite for gratuitous cruelty? This is the core problem of evil. It is a problem that has engaged scholars for centuries and is the central topic of this book.
The idea I develop is that evildoers are made in much the same way that addicts are made. Both processes start with unsatisfied desires. Whether it is a taste for violence or a taste for alcohol, drugs, food, or gambling, individuals develop cravings but find the desired experience less and less rewarding, a separation between desire and reward that leads to excess. To justify the excess, the psychology of desire recruits the psychology of denial, enabling individuals to immerse themselves in a new reality that feels right. Whereas addicts cause great harm to themselves by indulging in excessive consumption or expenditures, evildoers cause great harm to others by indulging in excessive or gratuitous cruelty. Whereas addicts deny their drug dependency or their obesity, evildoers deny the moral worth of their victims or invent a reality that presents them as dangerous threats. The cruelty carries no moral weight because the victims have been dehumanized or conceived as dangerous. The combination of unsatisfied desire and denial is a recipe for evil. Like the addict’s search for ever more satisfying means of consuming or spending, evildoers search for ever more satisfying and creative ways of harming others.
This perspective, I suggest, explains not just the pathology of the sadist or the sexual predator but the actions of “ordinary” individuals who perpetrate unimaginable cruelties. It also illuminates the evolution of our capacity for evil, which, I will argue, evolved as an incidental consequence of our brain’s unique design.
To understand evil is neither to justify nor excuse it, reflexively converting inhumane acts into mere accidents of biology or the unfortunate consequences of bad environments. To understand evil is to clarify its causes: In some cases, understanding entails recognizing that a perpetrator suffers from brain damage or a developmental disorder and thus lacks self-control or awareness of others’ pain—mitigating factors that influence legal decisions and should influence public perception as well. In other cases, it entails recognizing that a perpetrator was sound of mind yet knowingly caused harm to innocent others and relished the act. By describing and understanding an individual’s character with the tools of science, we are more likely to make appropriate assignments of responsibility, blame, punishment, and future risk to society.
Scientia est potentia
