And this is true even if that nefariousness can be positively hijacked, to unleash the best of our angels. Yet Sapolsky provides some hope about how to steer ourselves toward better behavior. Distrust essentialism. Keep in mind that what seems like rationality is often just rationalization, playing catch-up with subterranean forces that we never suspect. Focus on the larger, shared goals.
Practice perspective taking. Individuate, individuate, individuate. Recall the historical lessons of how often the truly malignant Thems keep themselves hidden and make third parties the fall guy. Importantly, Sapolsky makes these points without the classical hubris of a know-it-all neurobiologist talking down to social scientists, which makes his arguments digestible to non-scientists.
At the same time, his book alerts basic scientists that their often mechanistic take on behavior can miss some things—namely, an appropriate understanding of how context shapes the biology of good and bad. And, as an African American who has engineered much of his social life around avoiding racism personal and institutional —the way I live, my politics, the manner in which I communicate, how and where I work—I find it somewhat sobering to learn that racist behavior is a manifestation of a cognitive quicksand that the species continues to fall into, the product of very essential, very real, very tractable biology.
He thinks this is directly relevant to internet trolls. Indeed, the bug-crushing experiment suggested that everyday sadists may have more muted emotional responses to all kinds of pleasurable activities — so perhaps their random acts of cruelty are attempts to break through the emotional numbness. More immediately, his discoveries have attracted the attention of police and military agencies, who want to collaborate with Paulhus to see if his insights might explain why some people abuse their positions.
If so, further work might suggest ways to screen out the dark personalities at recruitment. In some situations, ruthlessness may be necessary.
After all, the dark personalities often have the impulse and the confidence to get things done —even Mother Theresa apparently had a steely side , he says. All of which underlines the false dichotomy of good and evil that Paulhus has been keen to probe. In a sense, that is a personal as much as a professional question.
He admits to seeing a dark streak in his own behaviour: for example, he enjoys watching violent, painful sports like Mixed Martial Arts. In Depth Psychology. Psychology: the man who studies everyday evil. They deserve to be praised for their accomplishments and benevolence and condemned for their crimes and cruelty.
We should apply these lessons to ourselves, too. When you hurt others, the best thing you can do is sincerely apologize and try to do better next time.
Alan Jern is a cognitive scientist and associate professor of psychology at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. This post is a great read. I hope you can take the time to read my post as well Good and Evil.
The big problem with all too many liberals and leftists these days, as I see it, is that they suffer from a double standard in judging the less than ideal behavior of various different groups in our society—and in effect thus also suffer from a kind of metaphysical schizophrenia!
On the one hand, liberals and leftists offer extenuating sociological, economic, and psychological circumstances for the social pathologies of groups they officially sympathize with and champion, explaining street crime, drug addiction, single parenthood, etc. On the other hand, those same liberals and leftists rarely if ever exhibit the same empathetic, compassionate understanding, nor offer the same psychological and sociological explanations, excuses and extenuating circumstances, for what they condemn as the unlovely attitudes and behavior of the white working class.
A philosopher might observe that those liberals and leftists seem simultaneously to be psychological and sociological determinists in compassionately exculpating their favored social victim groups, but free-willist in moralistically judging white working-class people! This maps well with the Jewish view that people are not intrinsically good or evil, but rather intrinsically autonomous, charged to decide between doing the urgings of bad and good. I suppose it is a sign of the times that this article would even be published.
Christians used to try to keep in mind that all have sinned. We are fallen angels. This can be a source of compassion for the miscreant. Cancel culture means that if someone steps over the line by telling one racist joke he is doomed forever. An English prof almost lost his job by trying to teach about a book by a black author that had the N word in the title. This is a very unforgiving way to live. This is dangerous. There are in fact people with no moral compass and no hesitation to just take what they want.
Hegel, and even Marx and Engels, and disciples such as Erich Fromm but not Marcuse understood this, despite efforts to lump the latter into the camp of post-modernism.
Ultimately, we need better ideas, better ideologies. We need a culture less obsessed with power and honor and more concerned with mindfulness and dignity. Am I optimistic that we can do this? Yeah, I am. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding.
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By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Why humans are cruel. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. The grounds of the former Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany. A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.
Sean Illing Can you sum up your argument about the roots of human cruelty? Paul Bloom A lot of people blame cruelty on dehumanization.
Paul Bloom I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. Sean Illing What does that say about us, about our psychology, about our susceptibility to this kind of violence? Delivered Fridays.
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