
The Intentionality of Evil (2005) - vincentstorme
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/intentionalevil
======
pan69
The world we live in is a super complex ecosystem of geopolitical, historical
and cultural relationships and differences.

To make sense of this complex world we create simplified narratives for
ourselves, whether through movies or daily new broadcasts, whatever. Its
easier to think in terms of good guys vs bad guys but in reality there are no
good guys and bad guys. As the article says "Nobody thinks they’re doing
evil". Ones freedom fighter is another ones terrorist.

We're pretty much all capable of being charitable/thoughtful while at the same
time regurgitate a false narrative to advance our political opinions/careers
or perform self serving interests or even criminal behaviour.

Humans self righteous beings.

~~~
colordrops
There are many people who intentionally choose to act purely selfishly and not
in good faith, to maximize personal gain. I met many of these types in SV, and
I imagine they get much worse on wall street and in military industrial
circles. Call it what you will, but these people don't have any illusions of
being benevolent or fair.

~~~
hinkley
The toughest one is when you see someone who, for instance, is living beyond
their means and because of it they 'have to' do something unpalatable at work.
They have walked into the trap and pulled the door closed behind them.

But I've also worked with many engineers whose actions and self-image don't
align. When time is tight they'll participate in hand-wringing over all the
tech debt we have, but the moment there's a gap in the schedule they "don't
know what to work on". If you really meant it when you said "if only we had
more time" then why don't you have a hit list? I don't think they're lying, or
evil. They're just deluding themselves about their principles.

~~~
dTal
> why don't you have a hit list? I don't think they're lying, or evil. They're
> just deluding themselves about their principles.

I rather think the answer is simply that they aren't very organized. Nobody
likes technical debt, but unless you're organized enough to make entries in
your 'hit list' _while they 're bugging you_, you'll inevitably forget the
specifics.

------
aazaa
> ... Nobody thinks they’re doing evil — maybe because it’s just impossible to
> be intentionally evil, maybe because it’s easier and more effective to
> convince yourself you’re good — but every major villain had some
> justification to explain why what they were doing was good. Everybody thinks
> they’re good.

Could it be that the root of evil lies in failure to recognize this universal
truth? In other words, the prerequisite for evil deeds is to convince oneself
that monstrous evil exists in the world that the ends justify the means when
dealing with it?

~~~
Karunamon
Distilled down to a pithy saying, I think a good moral foundation is something
like:

 _One may never morally commit an evil act for any reason, even if that act
will prevent an even greater evil from being perpetrated._

That "will" is tricky, because often you don't actually know what the outcome
will be, but I think it applies even if you do know with certainty.

Forgive my following ramble:

This is hardly a new thought - it's one shared by a number of religious belief
systems (Catholicism comes to mind, CCC 1753 explicitly says this in about as
many words), but there's a lot of wisdom to be had with this even if you
completely write off the religious angle.

It completely removes this possibility. The avenue is forever closed; if you
reject evil acts, no ifs-ands-or-buts, no ends justifying the means, this is
simply never a thing you'll accept or allow yourself to be involved with.

It's _simpler_ as far as moral thinking goes, it removes a lot of judgment,
which is usually a red flag for lazy reductionism, but given the _sheer
quantity_ of evil in the would of the banal sort, exactly as you described,
I'd wager that the world would be a better place overall if this principle
were followed by good-faith actors.

~~~
tarboreus
This is deontological ethics, or Kant's categorical imperative. Just in case
anyone wants to follow up on this.

------
rhacker
This reminds me of the show "The Good Place" (sorry spoiler ahead!!!!!!!)
Basically part of the premise of the show is that life has become so complex
that you can no longer make a moral choice because macroeconomic structures
have forced nearly all of our tiny decisions to be grades of evil.

~~~
randallsquared
I don't think that's a good summary of the premise of the show. For one thing,
consider the exact number of people we are told have made it, in the last
500-something years, which expands the required explanatory power well beyond
the complexities of modern life.

------
codingslave
This post is similar to the ideas of Hannah Arendt and her concept of "the
banality of evil". In her own words:

"I was struck by the manifest shallowness in the doer [ie Eichmann] which made
it impossible to trace the uncontestable evil of his deeds to any deeper level
of roots or motives. The deeds were monstrous, but the doer – at least the
very effective one now on trial – was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither
demonic nor monstrous."

She set out to research the origins of how high ranking nazis became so evil,
only to find that in many cases the roots were innocuous. Her thesis is that
the great evils in history generally, and the Holocaust in particular, were
not executed by fanatics or sociopaths, but by ordinary people who accepted
the premises of their state and therefore participated with the view that
their actions were normal.

Explaining this phenomenon, Edward S. Herman has emphasized the importance of
"normalizing the unthinkable." According to him, "doing terrible things in an
organized and systematic way rests on 'normalization.' This is the process
whereby ugly, degrading, murderous, and unspeakable acts become routine and
are accepted as 'the way things are done.'"

~~~
aabeshou
I've been listening a lot to Slavoj Zizek recently and he discusses this
often. His argument is that to make good people do horrible things, you need
an ideology that basically says that you are an agent of "what must be done"
and then the ends justify the means.

He describes how Nazi soldiers, who were instinctively horrified by what they
were doing, were instructed to try to dissociate from their bodies and their
actions, and identify themselves completely and impersonally with the
nationalist cause.

~~~
fmajid
The Nazis also dosed their soldiers with methamphetamine.

------
joe_the_user
CS Lewis' Devil Screwtape describes the evil of today:

"Oh, to get one's teeth again into a Farinata, a Henry VIII, or even a Hitler!
There was real crackling there; something to crunch; a rage, an egotism, a
cruelty only just less robust than our own. It put up a delicious resistance
to being devoured. It warmed your inwards when you'd got it down. Instead of
this, what have we had tonight? There was a municipal authority with Graft
sauce. But personally I could not detect in him the flavour of a really
passionate and brutal avarice such as delighted one in the great tycoons of
the last century. Was he not unmistakably a Little Man — a creature of the
petty rake-off pocketed with a petty joke in private and denied with the
stalest platitudes in his public utterances — a grubby little nonentity who
had drifted into corruption, only just realizing that he was corrupt, and
chiefly be-cause everyone else did it? ..."

... "The difficulty lay in their very smallness and flabbiness. Here were
vermin so muddled in mind, so passively responsive to environment, that it was
very hard to raise them to that level of clarity and deliberateness at which
mortal sin becomes possible. To raise them just enough; but not that fatal
millimetre of “too much.”" [1]

Which is to say the quality of a "banal evil" is kind of a product of our
modern bureaucratic capitalist society.

[1]
[http://www.samizdat.qc.ca/arts/lit/Toast_CSL.pdf](http://www.samizdat.qc.ca/arts/lit/Toast_CSL.pdf)

~~~
sdegutis
Reminds me of one of my favorite poems ever, written by a Chaplain during WWI:

    
    
        When Jesus came to Golgotha, they hanged Him on a tree,
        They drove great nails through hands and feet, and made a Calvary;
        They crowned Him with a crown of thorns, red were His wounds and deep,
        For those were crude and cruel days, and human flesh was cheap.
    
        When Jesus came to Birmingham they simply passed Him by,
        They never hurt a hair of Him, they only let Him die;
        For men had grown more tender, and they would not give Him pain,
        They only just passed down the street, and left Him in the rain.
    
        Still Jesus cried, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do,”
        And still it rained the wintry rain that drenched Him through and through;
        The crowds went home, and left the streets without a soul to see,
        And Jesus crouched against a wall and cried for Calvary.

------
oriettaxx
I agree.

when a mafioso high boss talks t his son, he would say that thanks to the
mafia Italy did not became a comunist country, that the politicians (center,
in power) were extremely corrupted and useless.

I am serious.

nobody thinks to be evil (as nobody thinks to be an idiot)

------
wrnr
If we can be unintentionally evil, could we be unintentionally good too?

~~~
vslira
That is basically Adam Smith's (and consequently almost every pro-market
economist) thesis. Actually his thesis is that on average the answer is "yes".
If it's true or false is a matter of intense debate, to say the least

------
petermcneeley
Doesn't this all just come down to the fact that lambs think eagles are evil
and eagles think lambs are tasty?

~~~
happytoexplain
I don't understand what it means to "all just come down to" a metaphor.
Metaphors are inherently high level and abstract - the very opposite of what
things "come down to", which is used to describe a concrete, pragmatic
causation. The specific metaphor also is unhelpful, as it throws away the
uniquely human nature of both morality and freedom of choice.

~~~
petermcneeley
Aaron suggests that is childish to think evil people do evil things
intentionality. But isn't actually the notion of good and evil completely
childish? Arnt bankers just predators and their victims just prey? The banker
isn't even thinking "I'm good" they are just thinking "I'm hungry"

Realistically adults don't think about the morality of their actions much at
all.

~~~
oska
> Realistically adults don't think about the morality of their actions much at
> all.

If you're basing this on personal experience then either you or I are atypical
because I think of the morality of my actions all the time (and sometimes
makes judgement calls which are different to social norms).

~~~
natecavanaugh
I think you're both right here. From the outside, it seems like most people
don't consider the morality of their actions, but I believe it's a matter of
degrees and instances. For instance, I've been told by many in my social
circle that I tend to think more deeply than most about the morality, direct
or implied, of my actions/beliefs, than the average person, but when I speak
to people, there's always some code they're holding themselves to, even if
they don't articulate it as such, but then there are also people who will have
sex with anything in sight, but will engage in extreme handwringing over every
food choice and environmental impact. Even if someone isn't weighing the
morality of their own actions, they're acutely aware of how others' actions
comply or contradict their moral code. Practically everyone has some common
moral code that they abide by, while ignoring other parts because of
convenience, desire, etc. People who are highly morally consistent tend to be
seen as ascetics, extremists, idealogues, or the like.

Like intelligence, moral IQ is a spectrum that probably most don't consciously
think about until a conundrum comes up, but that generally centers around a
mean, and spans multiple areas that overlap across cultures and generations
and behaviors.

------
cjf4
Comparing bankers to the people who carried out the Holocaust is a bit of a
reach.

~~~
firethief
Comparing is fine, equating is not. This is a clear example of the former.

