You have a much larger capacity for evil than you realize or understand. Most of us absolutely do not believe we are capable of doing the things we hear in the news, read in history books, or see in Hollywood productions. The reality however, is most of us are capable of the exact things we know are terrible and evil. You need to understand your own capacity for evil before your morals are questioned or you are likely to fail the test.
When we read history or see terrible things happen on
television or in movies, we tend to sympathize with the victims of wrongdoings.
We are particularly susceptible if we have a history of being a victim at some
point in our lives. We feel sorry for the victims and we romanticize our
ability and desire to help those in need. The very notion of helping a victim
however, isn’t something you are actually likely to do. You are more likely to
walk away or, worse, record it with your cell phone. This propensity to ignore evil
is the reason we tell our daughters to cry out “fire” rather than “rape.” We
are more likely to help when there is no victim, when there is no evil being
done. When we know evil is being done, we walk by and pretend we didn’t hear or
see anything at all, if we even walk away. You should be trying to understand
the perpetrator. You should realize you are more likely to be that person.
Our world is filled with Social Media posts created by
people, just like you, who would rather record someone in great distress than
help the victim. You have watched people get shot or stabbed, people get
physically assaulted, property get destroyed. You’ve seen people drive
recklessly and perform completely antisocial acts, detrimental to and in direct
violation of social norms. You’ve watched, commented, and shared the atrocities.
You’ve likely even thought to yourself, “one day I’m going to be the person
that records something like this so I can get famous.”
Throughout history, we have done terrible things to each
other. We all think of the atrocities conducted by the Nazis in the 1940s and
recognize those actions as completely evil. We can’t understand how humans
could perform such terrible acts on other people. Yet, as much as we were
shocked by the notion of concentration camps in Nazi Germany, we were putting
Japanese Americans in internment camps at the same time. It wasn’t until 20
years after the end of WWII we started talking about the fact we were
segregating Americans based on the color of their skin. We didn’t worry about
burning women “witches” at the stake. We still judge and even perpetrate people
with opposing political views.
You may think concentration camps and segregation are two
separate things, but really, they are one and the same in several ways. Both we
and the Nazis divided people based on difference. Rather than including, we
denied those different from us were as human as we are. Both were directly
shaped by societal norms. Both events led good people to do terrible things.
Both were conducted by the majority of the populace. Some numbers suggest 99%
of Germans, fully knowing the atrocities were terrible, participated and
agreed, publicly, to some degree. It was better to agree with grotesque hatred,
mutilation, murder, and genocide than to risk our own state in the world.
History tells us things would be no different today. History tells us, you and
I would probably do the exact same. We would gladly watch people get brutally killed
in a colosseum, burned at a stake, defamed on social media, or gassed, in-mass,
in a gas chamber before we would actually stand up and risk joining the
victims.
Even though we want to be strong enough to not be shaped by
society, we often rationalize our actions based on events surrounding us. If
everyone else is doing it, yes, you are going to do it. You are going to do it
because it is easy, socially acceptable, and you believe your comfort is more
important than that of others. People have been known to rape their own kin
just to be part of a gang. Chances are, you and I would do the exact same. Even
though you are reading this thinking, “no, I would NEVER do ANY of those things,”
the statistics are undeniable.
I won’t argue that people are inherently evil. I’m not
saying you are only pretending to be good. I think you are just as susceptible
however, as 99% of humans are, to
rationalize evil as acceptable and participate in the conduct of terrible
things. I think you won’t even hesitate and may not even realize the thing you
are doing is evil. You may not understand the depth of your evil until years
later. That’s the saddest part of all of it. We get so wrapped up in the
justification and rationalization of our actions, we never take the time to
understand our actions. We don’t look to learn for the things that motivated us
to do evil. We don’t look for ways to make ourselves better. We don’t create
the cognitive dissonance within ourselves necessary to grow.
Yes, you are very capable of absolute evil.
