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We've had many a discussion on the E-word; this glib enough essay gave me further thought. I'd read an article about the scientists attempting to fix the term for application to forensics and psychiatry, an interesting idea and yet this writer makes some basic contra points. I think it's like trying to categorize beauty or pornography. - Perdita
THE E WORD - - Neva Chonin, SF Chronicle, February 13, 2005
First, a confession: I have a thing for Evil. Don't misunderstand me. In my everyday life, I sweat compassion and bleed for the oppressed. I decry totalitarianism. I root for the underdog and support every losing cause that crosses my path. I believe in fighting the good fight. Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. make me teary.
Ah, but the life of my mind works differently. When I read the Harry Potter books, I long for Voldemort to kick Dumbledore's butt (and I bet Dumbledore would kinda like it, too, the nasty old thing). My favorite character in HBO's "Oz" was a serial killer who broke his boyfriend's arms and legs (because, y'know, he was played by Christopher Meloni, an actor possessed of certain ... assets).
In my defense, at least I can separate my fantasy evil from the inexplicable horrors of daily life. Others seem to struggle in making this distinction. The New York Times recently reported that a group of forensic scientists is hypothesizing that certain criminal personalities are extreme enough to be classified as purely (therefore clinically and legally) evil. As in the Luciferian sense of the word, one imagines; though this isn't really fair to Lucifer, whose greatest crime was not cannibalizing children and burying them in the cellar, but simply rebelling against authority or, one might argue, thinking outside the box.
At a time when the line between terrorist and freedom fighter runs as thin as governmental ethics, defining evil presents obvious conundrums. The word's religious baggage renders it suspect, for one. Remember Kierkegaard's teleological suspension of the ethical? You studied it in Philosophy 101. It posited that Abraham's willingness to murder his son because he claimed God told him to do it exemplified how religious duty can trump social norms. And if God told him to blow up the house next door? You see the problem. God doesn't hold news conferences to confirm or deny whether his name is being used in vain, or whether he is in fact encouraging people toward sociopathic behavior (in which case methinks he has some explaining to do. Because, Dude, abuse of power much?)
Trying to apply clinical methodology to a moral judgment is just flat-out dangerous. Nonetheless, the Times reports that some forensic psychiatrists remain determined to "standardize what makes a crime particularly heinous" and are developing a "depravity scale, which rates the horror of an act by the sum of its grim details." One Columbia University "personality expert" (explain this title to me, please) has even published a "hierarchy of evil behavior."
Sure, categorizing evil sounds tempting. Few would deny that the architects of pogroms and ethnic cleansings and sundry genocides and the Holocaust were operating from a malfunctioning moral compass. And yet, and yet. How does one define the evil of those who knew of such atrocities and remained silent, or those who followed the bloody herd with a disregard so bland it inspired historian Hannah Arendt to ponder "the banality of evil?"
The problem lies in the fact that determining what is, or is not, an atrocity is a luxury reserved for the powerful and victorious -- and experience suggests that "good" doesn't always win. Even if it does, its justice is subjective. My little Lithuanian mama lived through one Nazi occupation and two Soviet takeovers (and actively resisted all); she also witnessed, and was nearly killed by, repeated allied bombings of civilian targets such as schools and hospitals. She's glad the Nazis lost the war. At the same time, she has invested me with skepticism toward easy good-versus- evil moralizing.
I'm not alone. In the Times article, one psychiatrist dissented with his peers to argue that classifying evil was pointless, "in part because evil is ultimately in the eye of the beholder, shaped by political and cultural as well as religious values." It's also shaped suspiciously like a political football, particularly considering that two U.S. presidents I didn't vote for -- and whose agendas I consider, well, at least somewhat evil -- use terms like "Evil Empire" and "Axis of Evil" to describe non-U.S.-friendly regimes while ignoring the abominations of other, more pro-American governments.
Any way you look at it, defining evil presents an ethical tar pit. It plays on irrationality; it inevitably defers responsibility. As another dissenting psychiatrist told the Times, "I think the main reason it's better to avoid the term 'evil,' at least in the courtroom, is that for many it evokes a personalized Satan, the idea that there is supernatural causation for misconduct." (Which brings us back to Lucifer, angelic pretty boy and original antihero, but that's a topic for another column.)
I'm not unsympathetic toward clinicians who long to segregate "evil" from the world. If researchers can identify personality traits that suggest certain criminals are more likely to repeat their crimes, it might be easier to keep them off the streets. But check out the working version of one doctor's psychopathy checklist: Warning signs include "glibness and superficial charm, grandiose self-worth, pathological lying, proneness to boredom and emotional vacuity." Well, there goes half my social circle and many of my favorite artists. So here I'll lapse back into my evil fantasy world and suggest that it's better to party in hell than study forensics in heaven.
Karl Rove: evil or just needing a cuddle?
THE E WORD - - Neva Chonin, SF Chronicle, February 13, 2005
First, a confession: I have a thing for Evil. Don't misunderstand me. In my everyday life, I sweat compassion and bleed for the oppressed. I decry totalitarianism. I root for the underdog and support every losing cause that crosses my path. I believe in fighting the good fight. Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. make me teary.
Ah, but the life of my mind works differently. When I read the Harry Potter books, I long for Voldemort to kick Dumbledore's butt (and I bet Dumbledore would kinda like it, too, the nasty old thing). My favorite character in HBO's "Oz" was a serial killer who broke his boyfriend's arms and legs (because, y'know, he was played by Christopher Meloni, an actor possessed of certain ... assets).
In my defense, at least I can separate my fantasy evil from the inexplicable horrors of daily life. Others seem to struggle in making this distinction. The New York Times recently reported that a group of forensic scientists is hypothesizing that certain criminal personalities are extreme enough to be classified as purely (therefore clinically and legally) evil. As in the Luciferian sense of the word, one imagines; though this isn't really fair to Lucifer, whose greatest crime was not cannibalizing children and burying them in the cellar, but simply rebelling against authority or, one might argue, thinking outside the box.
At a time when the line between terrorist and freedom fighter runs as thin as governmental ethics, defining evil presents obvious conundrums. The word's religious baggage renders it suspect, for one. Remember Kierkegaard's teleological suspension of the ethical? You studied it in Philosophy 101. It posited that Abraham's willingness to murder his son because he claimed God told him to do it exemplified how religious duty can trump social norms. And if God told him to blow up the house next door? You see the problem. God doesn't hold news conferences to confirm or deny whether his name is being used in vain, or whether he is in fact encouraging people toward sociopathic behavior (in which case methinks he has some explaining to do. Because, Dude, abuse of power much?)
Trying to apply clinical methodology to a moral judgment is just flat-out dangerous. Nonetheless, the Times reports that some forensic psychiatrists remain determined to "standardize what makes a crime particularly heinous" and are developing a "depravity scale, which rates the horror of an act by the sum of its grim details." One Columbia University "personality expert" (explain this title to me, please) has even published a "hierarchy of evil behavior."
Sure, categorizing evil sounds tempting. Few would deny that the architects of pogroms and ethnic cleansings and sundry genocides and the Holocaust were operating from a malfunctioning moral compass. And yet, and yet. How does one define the evil of those who knew of such atrocities and remained silent, or those who followed the bloody herd with a disregard so bland it inspired historian Hannah Arendt to ponder "the banality of evil?"
The problem lies in the fact that determining what is, or is not, an atrocity is a luxury reserved for the powerful and victorious -- and experience suggests that "good" doesn't always win. Even if it does, its justice is subjective. My little Lithuanian mama lived through one Nazi occupation and two Soviet takeovers (and actively resisted all); she also witnessed, and was nearly killed by, repeated allied bombings of civilian targets such as schools and hospitals. She's glad the Nazis lost the war. At the same time, she has invested me with skepticism toward easy good-versus- evil moralizing.
I'm not alone. In the Times article, one psychiatrist dissented with his peers to argue that classifying evil was pointless, "in part because evil is ultimately in the eye of the beholder, shaped by political and cultural as well as religious values." It's also shaped suspiciously like a political football, particularly considering that two U.S. presidents I didn't vote for -- and whose agendas I consider, well, at least somewhat evil -- use terms like "Evil Empire" and "Axis of Evil" to describe non-U.S.-friendly regimes while ignoring the abominations of other, more pro-American governments.
Any way you look at it, defining evil presents an ethical tar pit. It plays on irrationality; it inevitably defers responsibility. As another dissenting psychiatrist told the Times, "I think the main reason it's better to avoid the term 'evil,' at least in the courtroom, is that for many it evokes a personalized Satan, the idea that there is supernatural causation for misconduct." (Which brings us back to Lucifer, angelic pretty boy and original antihero, but that's a topic for another column.)
I'm not unsympathetic toward clinicians who long to segregate "evil" from the world. If researchers can identify personality traits that suggest certain criminals are more likely to repeat their crimes, it might be easier to keep them off the streets. But check out the working version of one doctor's psychopathy checklist: Warning signs include "glibness and superficial charm, grandiose self-worth, pathological lying, proneness to boredom and emotional vacuity." Well, there goes half my social circle and many of my favorite artists. So here I'll lapse back into my evil fantasy world and suggest that it's better to party in hell than study forensics in heaven.
Karl Rove: evil or just needing a cuddle?
