Evil by Numbers
There was an article on a movement by forsenic examiners and
psychiatrists criminal pathology to consider evil as a label in their
work. This was in the New York Times a few weeks ago New York Times > Health > Mental Health & Behavior > For the Worst of Us, the Diagnosis May Be 'Evil'.
There are few areas where psychiatry or psychology have lurched further
astray than in examinations of the criminal mind. I don't find use of
the term adds much to any discussion, and I've been held up by a man
who was willing to kill me for my wallet, he wasn't evil he was pathetic and he had a gun. I often stop and examine articles that point to a burgeoning cultural use of evil.
The particulars here:
-- Dr. Michael Welner, an associate
professor of psychiatry at New York University, has been developing
what he calls a depravity scale, which rates the horror of an act by
the sum of its grim details.
-- Dr. Michael Stone a prominent personality expert
at Columbia University has published a 22-level hierarchy of evil
behavior, derived from detailed biographies of more than 500 violent
criminals.
Three things seem to stand out. The scales - integer level
data - are graduated measurements of intensity of perversity, of
multiple infliction of harm with evil assigned to the far end where
understanding fails. A deliberate seeminly goaless infliction of pain,
suffering, fear terror. Along with this adding to the level of
perfididy seen is these individuals residual ability to behave normally
at times and remain in society. Psychological pathology giving way the
moral plane of guilt and blame. Do we have deontological ethics
problem, a plain bad, or does a trace of teleologic still lurk here.
A brief appeal to authority. From Franz Kafka : "nothing can
be more evil than the thought of doing evil." From Shakespeare: "like
flies we are to wanton boys they mock us for their sport." What would
be the nature of evil is we decide it does exist. There would be those
who would have an evil nature. We could say they were morally
reprehensible to an absolute degree. Essentially they are different
from us because they commit evil acts and cause, harm, sorrow, distress.
Consider the word Shakespeare choose to use wantonness: it can mean
untrained; the connotation is those who were not brought up right, were
not taught how behave how to exist in society. It also can mean those
who inflict suffering for sport or pleasure. Shakespeare did not have
the word 'sadist' available to him, and might not have used it
anyway.
There is a basic problem with evil. It seems to presuppose a
cosmic evil, a particular evil is allied with. This makes it a
theological issue. If evil exists; either God isn't almighty, or God
isn't all good. Misfortune implies the latter to some, willfulness the
former to others. It's a category problem I have with the term evil -
what goes in it, that can't (also) go elsewhere.
Looking at practical problems in evil. This behavior, as a
pathology which often denotes a self destruction, does it represent
weakness, a dis-ability? Or does it represent strength, a preternatural
ability? Can it scale from the individual level to group -
instutionalised group such as the state? does it affect things is we
regard it as opinions and acts of one vs. the many or the few vs. the
many? Can it be judged at the time - in its time or only when the
party's over as a "collective thoughtlessness" Again from the article
In Nazi prisoner camps, as during purges in Kosovo and
Cambodia, historians found that clerks, teachers, bureaucrats and other
normally peaceable citizens committed some of the gruesome violence,
apparently swept along in the kind of collective thoughtlessness that
the philosopher Hannah Arendt described as the banality of evil.
The author of the piece notes this as suggesting "how much further people can go when they feel justified."
In a further quote just down from this is reiterated: "Evil is
endemic, it's constant, it is a potential in all of us. Just about
everyone has committed evil acts," said Dr. Robert I. Simon, a clinical
professor of psychiatry at Georgetown Medical School and the author of
"Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream." After this you might ask can a group
proceed pathologically while the members proceed normally -
blamelessly? If the leader is evil/pathological are or are not the
followers? Can a leader issue a pass ticket on latent evil in us so
that if it becomes an active evil, we are not responsible. Can a theory
of evil survive admitting these. That moral culpabilty beyond
redemption exists, but dissapates when it passes beyond the
individual. Is anything pathological that obtains its end? Does
it make any difference when that end pursued in a sembalance of
rationality admits to no fellow feeling.
11:31:02 PM  ;;
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