Some thoughts on evil I found on
the net and found interesting drunk
I have described evil people as those who reverse the
process of coming to moral judgements.
Instead of moving from facts and moral principles to
moral judgements, they start with moral judgements and
find facts and moral principles to back up their judgements.
I use "find" in a loose sense. They often fabricate facts
and selectively use moral principles in an inconsistent
fashion. This understanding of evil raises some
questions. Are
some people really like this? How
could people be so messed up?
Are they
deliberately like this or blind to their evil? What
about people who do evil deliberately? I will address
these questions here.
Main Topics
Top of article: What is evel etc.
Are some people really like this?
Are there really people who move from
moral judgements to rationales for their judgements? I believe
there are. This theory of mine is drawn from observing people I
regard as evil. Of course, there is still the fact that I didn't
use telepathy to find out what was really making them so weird.
So my interpretations of their behavior might be mistaken. So I
will bring other facts to bear. The process I have identified with
evil people is related to something you learn about in Psychology
101: rationalization. When you rationalize, you are seeking to
justify something you've done or want to do in order to get around
your belief that it is wrong. For example, you may "borrow" something
from someone on the grounds that you need it more than he does.
I think we normally think of rationalizing as trying to convince
ourselves that we are somehow exceptions to general moral rules.
This seems benign compared to what I'm describing as evil. But
evil is related.
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Evil is a pathlogical form of
rationalization.
Evil people rationalize not only
by making themselves exceptions to rules. They delude themselves
about what is true and conveniently ignore moral principles
when it suits them. For example, an evil person will jump
at the chance to condemn other people for moral faults but
not apply to herself the same principle she has used to condemn
others.
How could a person be so demented?
What could account for a person
being as demented as I imagine the evil person is? It is difficult
to fathom. I'll begin by describing circumstances that might
make it easier for a person to become evil. One of the hallmarks
of the evil person is the tendency to fabricate reality. This
is difficult for people who are grounded in the scientific
method. But not everyone is grounded in the scientific method.
People often base their beliefs on authority, on intuition,
on tradition, etc. All over the world, countless people have
their beliefs rooted in religion. Let's say you want to do
something bad and have no grounding in the scientific method.
How might you find justification for what you want to do?
You could shop around for an authority who advocates what
you want. You could interpret the words of an authority to
support what you want. You could search for something the
authority has said, which supports what you want. If the authority
hasn't always been consistent, this becomes easier. If you
use intuition as a guide to truth, it isn't too hard to trick
yourself into having intuitions that favor what you want to
do. If you believe in God, you can convince yourself that
your intuitions come from God, giving yourself a divine sanction
for tailor-made intuitions.
Klippoths Evil may also
be enhanced by brain damage.
Satanists Tani Jantsang and Philip
Marsh have described in various articles a sort of brain damaged
person they call by the names klippoth, cruxtoid, and xtoid.
In her article "Cruxtoids and Brain Damage," Tani Jantsang
lists some characteristics of the cruxtoid. Here are some
that may be relevant to behaving in an evil manner. 2. Lack
awareness of feelings and emotions as DIRECT PERCEPTIONS of
bodily states. Feelings and emotions are NOT associated with
bodily organs, but exclusively with external objects, words,
faces, etc. which evoke them. Feelings and emotions are mere
qualifiers in life for them, not REAL THINGS. (Hence when
the feelings rule them (as they rule others) they are UNAWARE
of it: unconscious mind.)
If someone is unaware
of her emotions, her emotions may lead her to make moral judgements
without her being aware that this is going on.
5. The body is never used as
a yardstick or guage for knowing and measuring the world.
This frame of reference is MISSING in them. Some external
reality or idea is used as a ground reference for constructions
of the world and reality. (their knowledge is OUTER, never
INNER or CARNAL.)
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Without an inner or carnal
reference of knowledge, people are less grounded in reality.
9. Sense of responsiblity to
the self and others is impaired. (The Devil made me do it;
it's the fault of some imaginary conspiracy of people who
are NOT IMPAIRED and make well.)
This makes it easier to selectively
use moral principles.
10. Inability to orchestrate
one's survival at the command of one's own free will. (Hence
they seek the HEAD to guide them: fascism, religion, etc.
practical Jesus e.g. Hitler, Stalin.)
This impairs their ability
to come to moral judgements in the normal way.
11. Inventive of tales with no
foundation except one's own FANCY in regard to the self (fantasy,
LIES; their selective amnesia as to the deeds they've really
done.)
This is getting at the heart
of the evil person. The evil person fabricates lies and believes
them.
15. A value system exists and
can be utilized in abstract terms, but it is unconnected to
REAL LIFE situations. Decisions are minimally influenced by
past experience (they never learn) and old knowledge. CAPRICE
REIGNS. (Civilized "values" -- wear clothes, cut down trees,
act polite and stuffy.)
This makes it easier to selectively
use moral principles. Evil people will often use moral principles
for condemning other people rather than for guiding their
own behavior.
18. Defects in reasoning intelligence
is only glaringly apparent in the late stages of reasoning
close to the points at which their choices and selections
are made, responses that affect one's personal and social
survival. (Sounds logical, but is illogical as hell; looks
like a house, but it is a house turned upside-down with no
foundation).
It's easier to rationalize and to convince yourself of lies
when you have a defect in your ability to reason.
20. In reasoning, all options
are equal, none are value-highlighted over others. Decision
making landscape for them is FLAT.
This makes one less inclined
to guide her decisions by her moral values.
27. Memory is capricious: it
fails where you would expect learning to have occurred, but
it succeeds suddenly on a peripheral subject and often in
great detail. (Repeat the same errors.)
Capricious memory makes it
easier to selectively apply moral principles.
31. They lack and connot construct
appropriate theories of other people's minds, or even their
own minds. (They never know the EFFECT they have on other
people and how other people SEE THEM)
An inability to know how others see them makes it difficult
for them to evaluate their own behavior, thus contributing
to their selective use of moral principles.
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Are they deliberately like this?
Are evil people deliberately evil,
or are they blind to their evil. In answering this question,
it is important to understand something of how the mind works.
Contrary to Descartes, the mind is not a single stream of
conscious thought activity. The mind behaves in a modular
fashion. Different tasks are handled by different parts of
the mind, and what one part is doing another part might be
unaware of. Brain science shows this, and so does my own experience.
For example, while having breakfast one day, I brought my
glass to my mouth to take a drink of water. While I was doing
this, I looked down and noticed my glass wasn't on the table.
I started wondering where it was and began looking around
for it. All the while my glass was in my hand. This is just
one illustration of the modularity of the mind. What's important
to bear in mind is that mental activity is modular.
The modular conception of
the mind allows us to think of a person as, so to speak, a
set of different people, a government,
if you will. Decision making is
a process that involves different mental modules interacting
with each other. There are different ways in which they may
interact with each other to make decisions. In healthy decision
making, the modules are all listened to and given due consideration.
In unhealthy decision making, some of the modules are not
listened to. Just like a person who isn't listened to, mental
modules will employ tricks and tactics to manipulate the decision
making. This is the basis of self-deception. One part of the
mind is denied its rightful role in decision making. So it
seeks power through dishonest means. It deceives the part
of the mind which makes the actual decisions.
One of the distinctive things
about the klippoth is the inability assimilate carnal knowledge.
Thus in a klippoth, the body,
which is as much a part of the mind as the brain is, will
engage in all kinds of machinations to secure its part in
the decision making process. As one example, Paul of Tarsus,
who is perhaps the world's most famous klippoth, complained
that his body regularly made him do sinful things that he
didn't want to do. Speaking as someone who is not a klippoth,
I don't have this same experience. My body does not make me
do sinful things I don't want to do.
Getting back to the general principle,
unheeded parts of the mind will resort to manipulative tactics
to secure their role in decision making. When decision
making is healthy, all each part of the mind needs
to do is present the facts as it knows them. When decision
making becomes unhealthy, a mental module may employ
deception to further its agenda. One of the grander
deceptions is to pretend to be the voice of a deity. Julian
Jaynes talks about this in his book on the bicameral brain.
In Charismatic Christian churches today, there is a lot of
talk about the Holy Spirit talking to people. With this idea
floating around, it becomes easy for an unheeded part of the
mind to manipulate the larger mind by pretending to be the
Holy Spirit. Thus, part of the mind gets its agenda through
through chicanery and deception.
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This is the sort of thing
that I'm describing as evil.
What at one level is seemingly
irrational fabrication of facts is at a more basic level simple
and straightforward chicanery. If we think of chicanery only
in terms of what a person deliberately and consciously decides
to do, evil makes no sense. But when we think of separate
parts of the mind as autonomous units, evil begins to make
sense. In an evil person, one part of the mind is conning
another part.
It is obvious how the inner intrigues
of the mind account for the fabrication of facts. But what
about the selective use of moral principles? Can it account
for this? So far all I have mentioned is outright deception.
There are other tactics at the disposal of the mental modules.
The conscious part of the mind suppresses other parts, and
that it why they resort to tactics. Well, they also have the
ability to suppress different parts of the mind. For example,
they can suppress the conscience, letting it be heard only
when it serves their purposes. They can also deceive the conscience,
thereby manipulating it into becoming indignent at other people's
actions and oblivious to one's own misdeeds.
All of this will be clearer
if we postulate a few mental modules and describe interactions
between them.
Since it is only for the sake
of illustration, I won't worry that the classification isn't
exactly correct. I will speak of the shadow,
the ego, the ego ideal, and the conscience.
The ego is the conscious part of the mind. The ego ideal consists
of those parts of the mind which the ego recognizes as part
of itself. The shadow consists of those parts of the mind
that the ego refuses to recognize. The conscience is the part
of the mind concerned with right and wrong. It is
wholly possible that in some people the conscience belongs
to the shadow.
How can this be? How
can the conscience be part of the shadow? Wouldn't
anyone naturally include the conscience in the ego ideal?
No. If we realize that the shadow is just
the unrecognized part of oneself, not someone's evil side
as the popular imagination has it, we can begin to see how
the conscience may become part of the shadow. Christianity
teaches us that we are naturally sinful and that our desires
are corrupt and ungodly. If a Christian who believes this
hears the voice of his conscience, he may assume that it is
coming from God rather than from himself. I have come across
an idea among Charismatics, and perhaps it is common among
other Christians, that God convicts us when we do something
wrong. What this means is that God lets us know that we did
something bad. This has never happened to me in all my life.
God has never convicted me. But my conscience has convicted
me from time to time. The voice of God doesn't guide me in
my moral decisions, but my conscience does. So I believe that
many Christians mistake the voice of their conscience for
the voice of God.
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What is the consequence of
this?
What does it matter whether someone
thinks his conscience is his conscience or thinks it is God?
It matters a great deal. When you recognize that your
conscience is part of you, you will take measures to cultivate
your moral sensibilities. You will want to know right
from wrong. You will want to try to make consistent moral
judgements. You will want to cultivate your empathy, and so
on. This is all because you recognize the responsibility is
yours to make correct moral decisions. But those who
mistake the conscience for the voice of God will place the
responsibility for making the right decisions squarely on
God's shoulders. When I told Carisha that her actions
toward me were immoral, she told me that if she were behaving
immorally, God would convict her, and she added that God had
not convicted her. That is how she morally evaluated her action.
She waited for a word from God that she was wrong and received
none. She completely shirked her responsibility to judge her
actions by the application of moral principles. She shirked
her responsibility to use her conscience consciously.
I believe that Carisha's conscience
operates unconsciously. It is part of her shadow. As a result,
it is poorly developed, and it doesn't guide her actions well.
Her ego will listen to her conscience when it supports the
ego, for example when it says that she is in the right and
someone else is in the wrong. But her conscience is less able
to guide her actions. It is not finely honed, and it lacks
the strength to make a firm impression on her ego. This describes
one way in which someone may use moral principles selectively.
A conscience that is in the shadow has a hard time making
itself heard. It is more likely to be heard when it has the
backing of other parts of the mind.
When the different parts of the
shadow are in agreement, the shadow becomes stronger and can
more directly control the person. For example, suppose that
someone has been repressing pain caused by the actions of
someone he loves. Let's say he has also been suppressing his
conscience. But after a while he feels not only hurt but wronged.
His pain and his moral sensibilities both agree that something
has gone wrong. This may lead to outbursts of anger, directed
by the shadow, which includes his hurt feelings and his conscience.
He may then condemn his love for things he never thought to
condemn himself for, even though his conscience should have
guided him away from similar behavior.
When it comes down to things,
evil and the shadow are related. It is wrong to say that evil
is just the promptings of the shadow. There may be good things
repressed in the shadow. The shadow may include the conscience,
a love of life, the desire to dance, etc. These are not bad
things. Evil results when the conscience is put in the shadow.
It is not having a shadow that makes someone evil. It is what
goes into the shadow that makes a person evil. That is what
makes evil people moralistic without being moral.
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Recognizing the conscience and
saying "so what?" to it.
No conscience What about people
without any conscience? Do such people exist? Are they evil?
I believe everyone has a conscience. I understand the conscience
to be that part of the psyche which evaluates goodness and
moral worth. To some extent, everyone evaluates. It is hard
for me to even imagine a person who does not evaluate anything.
The best example I have is the protagonist of Camus's novel
The Stranger. He was fairly indifferent and lackadaisical.
He might be an example of someone with no conscience. But
he did seem to evidence some conscience. He went for a walk
with a friend who, if I recall correctly, was drunk, and he
offered to hold onto his gun for safe keeping. This shows
concern for his friend, himself, and those around them. Yet
when he accidently shot an arab with the gun, he let himself
go to the gallows without even caring what was happening.
Anyhow, I believe that a person who lacks a conscience, if
such a person exists, will be like Camus's stranger, lackadaisical
and uncaring. When someone cares deeply about something, he
has a conscience. Consider Dracula, as portrayed in the recent
movie Bram Stoker's Dracula. When his wife died, he allied
himself with the forces of evil to reunite himself with his
wife. This shows the value he placed on his wife. It wasn't
lack of a conscience that led him to choose evil. It was his
conscience, perhaps an underdeveloped conscience, but a conscience
nonetheless, that motivated his choice.
When we accuse someone of having
no conscience, I think we mean something other than what I
have been describing as a conscience. We will usually think
that someone lacks a conscience when she does something so
atrocious we think that anybody's conscience would have stopped
them. For example, some people probably think that Susan Smith
has no conscience, because she did the unthinkable, she deliberately
murdered her own children. It is certainly true that most
mothers have a conscience that stops them from killing their
children even when they are really aggravated with them. That
does not mean, however, that Susan Smith lacks a conscience.
All it implies is that her conscience, if she has one, is
not like the conscience of other mothers.
Consider this. People often accuse
others of not having a sense of humor. For example, I once
came across the joke, "Socrates' last word: I drank what?"
I thought it wasn't funny and said so in some on-line forum.
Someone else accused me of having no sense of humor. Now I
know that accussation is completely false. I laugh loud and
often at various things. The reasoning of my accuser was that
I didn't appreciate a joke he found funny, so I must not have
a sense of humor. I believe that similar reasoning is employed
by people who accuse Susan Smith of having no conscience.
Some mother notices that Susan Smith did something she would
never do in a million years, so she concludes that Susan Smith
has no conscience. This is just bad reasoning, and it sheds
no light on what a conscience really is.
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It does, however, shed light
on a common misunderstanding about the conscience.
The misconception is that the
conscience always knows right from wrong. The conscience does
not always know what it right, and sometimes it is wrong about
what is right. For example, a boy who was raised in the Ku
Klux Klan might make friends with a black boy and feel pangs
of guilt because he doesn't hate him. The pangs of guilt come
from his conscience. But his conscience is messed up. Perhaps
Susan Smith just has a messed up conscience too.
It must be understood that
the conscience is not some mystical barometer of right and
wrong. It is the part of the psyche which makes judgements
about right and wrong. Whether
it makes the right judgements depends in large part on how
developed it is. The conscience needs to be trained, educated,
and exercised. The conscience can be twisted toward evil,
it can be undeveloped or deluded. The conscience can be a
very dangerous thing. It can convince people that the evil
they do is morally right.
Treating the conscience as
an infallible barometer of right and wrong is a way of disowning
it. Instead of recognizing
the judgements of the conscience as one's own judgements,
the person who disowns his conscience in this way mistakes
the judgements of his conscience as perceptions of right and
wrong. This is the mistake committed by intuitionism. Intuitionists
such as Moore thought that they could immediately intuit what
is good. But they can't really. What they intuit as good is
more or less what they have been brought up to believe is
good. For example, Moore's intuition would probably tell him
that it is wrong to eat the flesh of dead relatives after
they pass away. My intuition certainly has a hard time with
this idea. Yet there have been people who think this is a
way to honor their dead and whose intuitions tell them that
it is wrong to cremate the dead. In our society, we don't
find anything wrong with this. This is just to illustrate
that our intuitions are informed by what we believe.
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What bearing does all this have
on the repressing of the conscience?
When a person represses his
conscience, his conscience may take control of his actions
without him realizing
that this is going on. That is how the shadow works. Although
the things in the shadow are unacknowledged by the ego, they
still affect behavior. If the conscience were just an infallible
guide to right and wrong, a repressed conscience might still
be a good thing. After all, it would make a person do what
is right even if he weren't aware of it. But the conscience
is not infallible. It is as prone to error as any other faculty
of the psyche.
When something is repressed into the shadow, it doesn't grow
and mature. It can even deteriorate. So when someone has his
conscience in the shadow, he doesn't grow morally. He doesn't
becoming better at telling right from wrong. He leaves his
conscience undeveloped. So when his conscience takes control
of his behavior, it is often to make him do what is wrong.
Although it is a conscience, it is an untrained and undeveloped
conscience, and it often makes bad decisions as a result.
Furthermore, when the shadow
causes some behavior and the ego notices this behavior without
knowing what its source is, the ego will often make up a story
for itself to believe that somehow justifies the behavior.
This is one reason why evil people will make moral judgements
first and then come up with reasons for their judgements.
What is happening is that an undeveloped conscience in the
shadow makes some moral decision for reasons unknown to the
ego, then the ego makes up a rationale for the judgement.
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Are people deliberately evil?
Are people deliberately evil?
In a sense they are, in a sense they aren't. People are deliberately
evil in the sense that there own choices create their shadow.
In choosing what to repress, a person is responsible for becoming
evil. But what about people who deliberately choose to become
evil. I don't mean people who choose to be whatever it is
they identify with the word "evil." There are different concepts
of evil, and someone choosing to be "evil" might not be choosing
to be what I have described as evil. What I mean is deliberately
choosing to repress one's conscience. I think that when anyone
understands what repression is, he is not going to choose
to repress his conscience. Rather, he will try to integrate
it into his psyche. However, not everyone understands the
ramifications of repression. Some people imagine that repressing
something is almost as good as getting rid of it. Thus, someone
might choose to repress his conscience because it keeps him
from having fun, from getting ahead, or whatever. Because
the conscience can get in the way of various desires, people
sometimes want to free themselves from the conscience. That
is one of the reasons people will drink alcohol for. They
want to become uninhibited, free from their conscience. Dr.
Jeckyl wanted to free himself from his conscience. People
trained to become torturers will take progressive steps to
dull their consciences. They will start by hurting animals
and move on to humans. So people sometimes actively choose
to repress their consciences, which is to become evi
This sort of activity has
been referred to as doubling. Doctors
who worked in Nazi concentration camps had to repress part
of their conscience in order to do their jobs without breaking
down or feeling extremely guilty. The doctors developed for
themselves a second persona. At home they would be kind and
caring and stuff, but at work they would become heartless.
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The repression of the conscience
is a common way to run away from guilt.
Many people are uncomfortable with
feeling guilty. Whole religions have arisen to release people
from this discomfort. That testifies to how unpleasant guilt
is to many people. The proper way to deal with guilt is to
use it as a spur to becoming a better person and for doing
better next time. This involves accepting the guilt and living
with it. But it is usually easier to evade the conscience.
Thus people are strongly tempted to evade the conscience,
and many people succumb to this temptation. When they do,
they take a step closer to being evil or sink further into
evil.
For many people, the choice
they perceive is not between being good and being evil but
between feeling guilty and being evil. Given
this choice, it is less surprising that some people choose
evil. They are not deliberately evil if this means deliberately
choosing evil for its own sake, but they are deliberately
evil if this can include choosing evil for the sake of escaping
the discomfort of guilt. Bear in mind that most evil people
do not think of their choice in these terms. They are focused
more on what they are escaping from than on what they are
turning to. But they are still turning to evil by their own
choice, and that makes them deliberately evil.
Are evil people blind to their
evil?
Do evil people know that they are evil?
I think it is common for evil people to hide from themselves
the nature of the choices that made them evil. They
are often running away from guilt, and most people who run
from guilt imagine, i.e. delude themselves into believing,
that they are running away from evil and choosing good. So
if you ask the average evil person if he is evil, he will
usually say that he is really a good person who regularly
avoids immorality. What then are we to make of people who
describe themselves as evil? For some people, I think this
really is a way of becoming evil. Embracing "evil" may be
a way of convincing yourself that you don't really need to
feel guilty about anything. This is a way of escaping guilt,
and that usually involves repressing the conscience. When
that is going on, identifying oneself with evil is a way of
becoming evil.
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But other people who call
themselves evil might be doing something else entirely.
For example, identifying yourself
as evil may be a way of disidentifying yourself with a morality
you reject. Nietzsche called himself an Immoralist, which
is akin to calling yourself evil. But Nietzsche wasn't choosing
evil, per se, he was rejecting Christian morality. Some people
call themselves Satanists for the same reason. They believe
that Christian morality is sick and twisted and reject it
in favor of a "Satanic" morality. So calling yourself evil
can be a way of disidentifying yourself with self-described
good people you believe are really evil.
Calling yourself evil may
also be a way of rebelling or a way to shock people.
People might also describe themselves
as evil because someone has convinced them are evil, perhaps
by making them feel very guilty. If that is the case, such
a person is better than an evil person who runs from guilt.
Of course, such a person could become evil by running from
his guilt.
What about people who do evil
deliberately?
This may describe people who deliberately
choose to do something that is in fact evil. Or it may describe
people who deliberately choose what they take to be evil.
The first interpretation is easy to deal with. Evil people
may convince themselves that some evil is good. People may
also just be mistaken about what is good and evil. A scientist
who agrees with Descartes that animals are mindless automatons
incapable of pain might not be evil, yet he may still choose
to cut open live dogs to examine their circulatory system.
The second interpretation is what I really want to deal with
here. There is an attitude, decried by Ayn Rand and others,
that integrity is alright in theory but doesn't work in practice.
I believe all too many people
are willing to give up integrity for fame and fortune and
other goods. I have a
friend who moved to Hollywood after college, but she ended
up leaving Hollywood to preserve her integrity. This tells
me something about the integrity of the people who remain
there. In general, people often find themselves in positions
which at some time or other ask them to compromise their integrity.
For example, a person might lose his job if he reports something
shady going on in his business. Or a person might get a better
deal on something if he doesn't ask too many questions about
where it is coming from. Even in the supermarket, someone
may buy the cheaper carton of eggs without inquiring whether
free range chickens laid these eggs. These are all instances
in which people may gradually compromise their integrity.
These are all instances of
people doing what they know to be wrong or evil. But
they also involve rationalizing and self-deception. People
generally don't say to themselves, "Yes, I'm doing evil, and
I feel good about, damn it!" Rather, they say things to themselves
like, "Well, you know, what difference is this going to make
in the broad scheme of things? It's not really that bad. It's
just a little indiscretion." People will deliberately choose
evil to attain other ends, but they will try to minimize to
themselves the extent of their evil with platitudes like "Well,
we can't be perfect all the time." What this reveals is that
people become evil gradually. A good person doesn't wake up
one day and say to himself, "I have decided to devote my life
to evil, because it will be so much more profitable." Rather,
people make tiny little decisions that compromise their integrity,
and these decisions gradually repress the conscience further
and further. People become evil through a process that is
similar to erosion.
So people will deliberately
do evil things when they are small enough for people to find
some way to rationalize them. But
what about bigger things like killing people or destroying
people's lives? First of all, the size of an evil
is not the only factor that affects a person's ability to
minimize to himself its evil. Another factor is distance.
When you are distanced from the consequences of your actions,
it is easier to imagine to yourself that what you doing is
not so bad. For example, if you put a lot of people out of
work, destroying the economy of a town, you may feel less
guilty about it if you know none of these people. There are
also other factors. It may be easier to kill someone if you
kill a "nigger," a "gook," or an "injun" instead of a fellow
human being. For example, someone may think to himself, "Ah,
what I did ain't so bad. He was a Goddamn faggot and nigger
any way."
People can choose to do great
evil by minimizing to themselves the scope of the evil and
then by convincing themselves that it is ok to be a little
bit bad. When they do this, they are being dishonest with
themselves. So they do evil deliberately but without realizing
the enormity of their evil.
People of the Lie My description
of an evil person has similarities with Scott Peck's. Is it
substantially the same as his? Is Peck's description just
another way of describing the same thing, or does he describe
something different. We should bear in mind first that I gave
two descriptions of an evil person, which in fact coincide
with each other. My first description got at the symptoms
of evil, and my second got at its essence. The
essence of evil is a disowned conscience. A
disowned conscience manifests itself in such phenomena as
backwards moralizing, the selective use of moral principles,
and the fabrication of reality. Peck describes an evil person
as someone who refuses to recognize his own sin, his own evil.
Is this something that results from a disowned conscience?
I believe it can result from a disowned conscience. One of
the functions of the conscience is to produce guilt feelings.
A person of the lie refuses to own guilt feelings. He disowns
his guilt feelings, which means he disowns their source, the
conscience. So my description of an evil person matches everyone
whom Peck's matches. Does it go the other way too? Is everyone
with a disowned conscience a person of the lie. I'm not so
sure of this.
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There are many ways to disown
the conscience.
One way is to refuse to acknowledge
it. People of the lie do this when it produces guilt feelings.
Another way is to imagine that it is something outside of
oneself, such as God. If you have a disowned conscience and
feel that God condemns you for something you have done, you
might feel guilty and not shove aside your guilt. That seems
to be something a person of the lie doesn't do. So my understanding
of an evil person may be broader than Peck's.
Is everyone with a disowned conscience
evil?
Is everyone with a disowned conscience
really evil? After all, there are many ways for a person to
disown his conscience. Some of these ways give the conscience
more influence than others. Some even make a god of the conscience.
Could someone who treats his conscience as a god really be
evil? I say that this is precisely what an evil person is,
a person with a disowned conscience. It doesn't matter why
or how that conscience is disowned. It is disowning the conscience
that makes one evil. What does it mean to disown the conscience?
To disown something is to refuse to acknowledge something
as one's own. It does not mean to lose something altogether.
With regard to physical objects, disowning something may result
in its loss. But disowning the conscience never results in
its loss. What it results in is the impoverishment, the lessened
power, and the stagnation of the conscience. The conscience
remains with the person. It is just unacknowledged as one's
own.
I grant that the conscience
may have more influence over the person if it is mistaken
for a god than if it is ignored altogether. But it still remains
impoverished. The person who mistakes his conscience
for a god neglects his responsibility to cultivate and educate
his conscience. Thus his conscience remains primitive, and
he follows it unquestioningly. A wise person accepts his conscience
as his own, cultivates and educates it, and even questions
it. This is good. What the conscience-worshipper does is evil.
Why is disowning your conscience
the essence of evil?
The Conscientious Nazi There
is an example that has been raised against Kant's ethics that
may be raised against my theory of evil for different reasons.
The example is of a Nazi who employs the categorical imperative
to sanction his persecution of Jews. He decides to act on
the maxim, "If someone is a Jew, you should persecute him."
He is willing to legislate this maxim to everyone. Even if
it turns out that he is a Jew, he will favor this maxim. That
is how dedicated he is to the Nazi cause. The problem for
Kant is that he has used the categorical imperative to justify
what is clearly immoral. The problem for my theory is that
it seems to illustrate a conscientious man who is evil. I
have described an evil person as someone with a disowned conscience.
So we may well think that the opposite of an evil person is
a conscientious person. That is in fact true in a sense. My
response is that the Nazi is not really conscientious. It
is true that he is using a moral theory to justify his actions.
So it seems that he is letting his conscience guide him instead
of doing whatever he wants. But that is not what is going
on. If anyone conscientiously examines Kant's ethics, he will
find that it comes up short and is not a suitable moral guide.
Since the Nazi was guiding his behavior solely on the basis
of Kant's ethics, that shows that he did not conscientiously
examine Kant's ethics. He just let the categorical imperative
substitute for his conscience, which is a way of disowning
the conscience. The drunken theory page has a theory relating
to this article. To read go to
the
drunken eye theory.
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