We Need a Better Definition of 'Evil'
The dictionary version just won't do…
Yesterday’s post, Stop Making Excuses for Evil, has been up for less than 24 hours and it is already in my top ten three. I guess it struck a chord!
In order to understand today’s post, it is best to have read that one first, as this is a followup. I will try to keep today’s as short as I can.
First, a quick note on yesterday’s…
The “razor” I offered in response to Hanlon’s no more explains every event than Hanlon’s does. Some things are the result of stupidity and incompetence. The point is that just as Occam’s razor is not always correct (sometimes, the more complex explanation is the correct one), neither is Hanlon’s. Neither ought to be used as a cudgel. Or as a way of covering for evil, as Hanlon’s clearly is.
A big (and quite sensible) question that immediately came up in yesterday’s comments is this: yeah, but how do we define “evil.”
I offered a few thoughts as to potential definitions, as did many commenters. So let’s see if we can nail one down upon which we can agree.
Before we get there, let’s take a quick dive into the types of evil behavior out there. (Even without a definition for evil, we, like Justice Harlan, “know it when we see it.”)
In my book of the same title as my stack (installments of which I am in the process of releasing here), I identify five categories. See what you think of these, and let me know if you think anything is missing:
Personal gain & the seven deadly sins
Lust. Gluttony. Greed. Sloth. Wrath. Envy. Pride.
People locked in the thrall of one or more of these emotions take certain actions and don’t care who gets hurt in the process. Or they intentionally hurt people because of one or more of these emotions.
I believe this is the most common cause of crime and day-to-day evil behavior, and it does not require much explanation, really. (Especially since I am trying to keep this short.)
Ideology and “the end justifies the means”
The quintessential example here is the communists. They have this ideological program that they believe is “good.” Executing the program requires a lot of evil, but they convince themselves that it is necessary to break eggs in order to make the omelet.
There are a zillion other examples of this, both large and small. You’re a smart crew—you get it.
“I was just following orders…”
Imposition of power, authority, totalitarianism, or any ideological program requires a hierarchic enforcement system. Most people below the level of “architect” of such a system are just following orders. Doing the bidding of their superiors. Just “doing their job.” The Nuremberg defense.
But this does not apply only to officials. Average people are highly programmable. Milgram and related experiments showed that people will do horribly evil things to a random stranger just because an authority tells them to. Asch and related experiments demonstrate that people will go along with the crowd, even when the crowd is clearly insane.
All of this amounts to Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil.”
Nature gone wrong
A lot of the darkest stuff is done by psychopaths.
But as it turns out, according to neurological research, psychopathy is often directly related to the improper function of certain brain structures. Important emotions—compassion, empathy, forbearance, remorse, etc.—are mediated in particular locations in the brain. In psychopaths, these structures are often under-functioning, improperly functioning, or damaged.
Also…
Nature also gives us certain traits that are meant for our survival: strength, anger at injustice, competitiveness, and many more. These are good in general, but in an act of natural misfeasance, they can go wrong or be abused.
Lord of the Flies
Everyone knows children can be quite mean to other children. Most grow out of it, though a few obviously go on to be among life’s jerks, criminals, and psychopaths.
This is a comparatively minor form of evil, but given the cruelty and the damage that it causes, and given how it appears to be endemic to the species (since we see it across many, if not most, cultures), it seemed important to include it.
My personal theory (donning my armchair evo-psych hat for a moment):
Children are running an extremely simple version of the animal dominance-hierarchy program. How can I climb in the status hierarchy? I know—by knocking a comrade over and standing on him.
Okay, so there they are. Obviously each one contains many different subcategories covering a lot of ground. And certain types of evil overlap many. War, for example, involves elements from the first four (and the fifth too, if you assume that at least some of the pathological behavior of adults can be traced back to experiences in childhood).
Okay, so recognizing the implied subcategories, and the possible overlaps, am I missing anything there?
And now, moving on to a suggested definition…
In replies to comments yesterday, I came up with a version which, overnight, I decided needs to be simplified. Please tell me what you think of this:
Evil is
Any act, regardless of intent, that forcibly turns any unwilling person into the means to any other’s ends.
The first question regarding the definition, then, must be to ask whether that covers all the bases. Are there any categories of evil that it does not cover?
And then, we must ask whether the definition is adequate and accurate. I did try to choose the words very carefully:
Any act,
“Act” places the matter where it belongs—on outcomes.
regardless of intent
While intent matters, and the most evil acts usually involve intent of some sort, we cannot make intent a part of the definition, for two reasons: First, because plenty of evil is done by people who “mean well,” and second because we cannot start punishing thought. It is outcomes that must be the focus.
that forcibly turns
Coercive force—force initiated to achieve some purpose (to control, dominate, tyrannize, acquire resources, etc.)—is the foundational morally impermissible act. This is the act that violates human self-ownership, which is the basis of all rights.
any unwilling person
This introduces the necessary concept of consent. There are plenty of things that you can do to one person if they consent (spar in karate, have sex, etc.) that are moral and legal crimes if you do them to a person who has not consented.
into the means to any other’s ends.
In the aforementioned book, I say this:
Sadly, when we look down the long and muddy track of human history, we see a practice that has always been with us—its blood-stained footprints stretching back into the mists of primordial antiquity: the act of some being forced to become the means to others’ ends. It takes many forms, from slavery and serfdom to expropriation and systemic injustice…from wealth redistribution to wars of conquest to theft, rape, and every form of criminal exploitation. Though varying in degree of severity, the core is always the same: one person is subjected to force so that another person can get what he wants. This act lies at the core of most of “man’s inhumanity to man.”
The act of using force to make one person into the disposable means to another’s ends is the signature human evil. If you play it out, I think you will find that it describes all the activities in all five categories. The evildoer always has an objective, and they make you the means to that objective.
Okay, so now it’s time for swarm intelligence. Y’all tell me—did I miss anything?
I applaud your effort, but am of the mind that defining evil is a road that ultimately doesn’t lead anywhere. Legions of theologians and others make valiant attempts, but I think the inscription on the Gate to Hell had it right: “Abandon every hope, you who enter.” That said, I’m happy to trod alongside for a bit and offer some observations.
On this road I’m afraid there is no suitable “why.” You are right to apply a discount to intent. Primo Levi recounted his first experience in Auschwitz: “Driven by thirst, I eyed a fine icicle outside the window, within hand’s reach. I opened the window and broke off the icicle but at once a large, heavy guard prowling outside brutally snatched it away from me. “Warum?” (Why?) I asked him in my poor German. “Hier ist kein warum” (Here, there is no why), he replied, pushing me inside with a shove.”
As you noted, describing the cause of evil is an elusive (I think impossible) task. It’s far easier to describe behaviors and consequences. Evidence of evil, of course, is replete. You seem to focus more on form rather than the motive force that produces impious acts. That illustrates the difficulty of describing an irresistible power that resides in an absence (of good). Karl Barth used the term “Das Nichtige,” (The Nothingness). He ascribed no positive existence to it, but deemed it a parasitic force of negation, chaos, and disorder. Aquinas explained that odd paradox (nothingness, yet with menacing power) best, I think, when he equated it to blindness: “Evil is to goodness as blindness is to the eye.” A nothing that is something — an absence that menaces, impedes, hinders, frustrates, and takes pleasure in inflicting injury.
Augustine deemed it the “mysterium iniquitatus” — the deeply puzzling and inexplicable nature of evil that is beyond the reach of human cognition. This enigma is further complicated by the behaviors you note. The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr said in 1946: “How much evil we must do in order to do good. This, I think, is a very succinct statement of the human condition.” G.K. Chesterton described efforts to account for the cause as akin to joining a “chattering monkey house of moralists;” the origins and mechanics simply cannot be fully grasped by human reason. It is unintelligible because it is anti-reason. Albert Speer was asked how it was possible to work with Hitler and not recognize resident evil; he replied “It is hard to know the devil when his hand is on your shoulder.” Self-serving, perhaps, but it points to evil’s mystery and deceitfulness. Dietrich Bonhoeffer told us evil can appear disguised as light, charity, historical necessity, or social justice, confirming the deceptive wickedness of evil. Lance Morrow has an apt metaphor in his book Evil, An Investigation: “I like the image of evil as a current that passes through the world, as it has, in one form or another, from the beginning, a sort of invisible electromagnetic flow through the globe, pole to pole. From time to time the evil force manifests itself in violent displays - moral hurricanes, earthquakes of pathology and slaughter.”
I do not think evil is the act in and of itself, as you describe, but rather the stimulus (the “current”) behind freely chosen immoral decisions. The act is freely chosen because the perpetrator employs his “libero arbitrio” (free will) in surrendering to this alien power. You sum it up neatly by, in essence, describing how the perpetrator prioritizes self-interest over moral law. Self-interest, of course, is in our DNA, and fertile ground for the incursion of evil. Gandhi noted that “Noncooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good.”
Evil may not always be expressed in a positive act; Elie Wiesel said the opposite of good is not evil, but indifference. Avishai Margalit said: “Evil, like caring, is a scarce commodity. There is not so much banality of evil, as banality of indifference. Yet one has to admit that the combination of evil and indifference is lethal, like the combination of poison and water.”
It may be the old soldier in me, but I have taken some solace in thinking of evil as a form of friction, in the manner of Karl von Clausewitz’s extraordinary description in On War. Clausewitz spoke of it as a those unpredictable, chaotic, and random factors that bedevil military opponents. If we apply the concept more broadly in the sense of evil as a structural feature of existence, evil is a menacing opportunist that always seeks to employ friction to exacerbate disorder (the first sure sign of the presence of evil). Evil in the form of friction surrounds us — it’s ubiquitous — but it doesn’t ‘surge’ until there is motion toward good and away from evil. Evil acts on the rheostat to crank up friction’s “current,” trying to drive us away from good — a corrupting parasite that makes trying to “do good to all men” a resistive element, and moral callousness and indifference a non-resistive element. It erodes moral sensibilities, and empowers psycopathy. It wears down willpower. It paralyzes and devitalizes the good. And its effects are compounding. As Tolkien said, “It does not create anything new, they can only corrupt and ruin what good forces have invented or made.” The more complex man’s machinations (e.g, in war, as you note), the denser the friction, and the more intolerable and inexcusable the harms.
Tolkien spoke of the “long defeat” wherein man is engaged in an ongoing struggle of good against evil. Man can combat the friction imposed by evil with the right lubricants (faith, reason, experience, community, family, leadership, judgment), but the guardians of good must be continuously on guard, while evil incessantly picks at the gaps in our armor. Constant vigilance is, of course, an oxymoron. That is why Tolkien characterized the often thankless task of good holding back the forces of darkness as “ever defeated, never altogether subdued.” The forces of good may suffer setbacks and partial defeats, but can never be completely subjugated or overcome by the forces of evil. Perhaps Aristotle’s sign on our road says it best: “Good is to be sought, evil avoided.”
"Forcing an unwilling" might be refined a bit. Some of the worst and most horrifying evil I see is using subtle means of mind control or manipulation, whether with drugs, persuasive propaganda that convinces the critically thinking impaired (which is actually created by our public indoctrination institutions,) mass media lies and omissions, and most horrifying, new high tech means of mental enslavement with nanotechnology, beamed brain coded signals, chemical substances that impair thinking or create emotional states that can be used to get obedience and cooperation with psychopathic "authority figures" and probably a few others I have missed, which can create the willingness without any obvious use of force.