How People Do Evil Things
Author’s Note:
My understanding of the nature of evil and how seemingly good people can do terrible things, comes from reflecting on my life, and is aided by reading those whose thinking on the subject is more matured than my own. As a result, the example I’ve provided is drawn from my own experience, and thus, heavily criticizes real people. I don’t want this to be misconstrued. While those individuals deserve the criticism I present, because I only tell the truth of the matter without manipulating it to reach a desired end, I still have sympathy for them. They did not arrive at their circumstances consciously, which also part of the danger.
Also, I do not want to give the impression that all of my military leadership was cruel or inept. That is not true. I had several leaders, many of whom were senior staff, who I have nothing but respect for. The purpose of this article is to unpack how people shift to cruelty. Therefore, many of the positive actions of these individuals are not in the purview of this article. And while this is a testament to the culture of my unit, it is not an overlay that can be placed on every member.
I remember a friend from the Marine Corps, who at the time was remarkably fun loving, lighthearted, and by all accounts, witty. My memories of him, and from that time, are warm. I can picture the early mornings, standing on dew-covered grass as the sun rose over the hills at Las Pulgas, when the rays seemed warmer than my breath, and I can feel my heart swell. There is for me now, a pleasant nostalgia that laughs without calling me back.
I learned that he had a difficult adolescence and frequently got up to trouble, which was harshly matched by authority figures. To me it seemed that whatever it was that bothered him most, perhaps the feeling of failing, or being perceived as a failure, spurred in him an aloof attitude in the face of potential failures. He chose to see everything as a joke, regardless of its necessity, in order to ensure that any shortcoming could be justified by its minimal consequence. To admit that a misstep was serious, is to acknowledge the reality of personal failure. To him, humor was a buffer against the anxiety of responsibility.
Since everything was a joke, the world was a stage on which to practice comedy. And he practiced and practiced and practiced - to our amusement. We constantly laughed in his company, and the insufferable days with thoughtless superiors were made much more enjoyable because of him. I remember times when our superiors would catch his wheels turning before he could let off a quip, just to spare themselves the joke they were secretly impressed by.
We were Lance Corporals at the time, a junior enlisted rank, not yet Non-commissioned Officers. As a Lance Corporal, we had several superiors we had to answer to: Our seniors Lance Corporals, our Corporals, our Sargents, Staff Sergeants and officers, and many more. So when the shit rolled downhill, it gained a lot of momentum before steamrolling us. This led to constant, disproportionate abuses from (some of) our superiors, which only served to confirm my friend’s, and admittedly my own, feelings about the pointlessness of our tasks and the ineptitude of our leadership.
We would rag on about the tempers and mistreatment we received from our superiors. Their quirks and flaws became constant subjects of ridicule and their desperate clawing for control and respect became the motif for their mockery.
This didn’t last forever. When this fun-loving friend was promoted to Corporal, it only took a few weeks for him to change. The failure of his subordinates were met with screams and the promise of punishment; like jackboots trampling their spirit. He embodied the model of the leaders that came before him, those we had mocked only weeks before.
The great irony being, that he, and at times myself, perpetuated a culture where it wasn’t safe to make mistakes, so no one admitted to them, nor did they take their work seriously to spare themselves the personal harm of failure on top of the already disproportionate harm they would receive from their superiors. Failure, even honest mistakes, was met with punishment and belittling, which made them aloof in self-defense, which led to irresponsibility and more mistakes, which were met with greater punishments, and slowly our unit was permeated with hatred for superiors by reluctant workers.
His behavior wasn’t unique to him. The Corporal that becomes a different person overnight is so common an event that it’s practically archetypal. This isn’t merely because this appalling behavior is modeled by one’s superiors, though this is enabling, but because the individual plays an active role. Before gaining the power associated with rank, my friend’s resentments were contained to mockery. The mockery was a form of abuse, used to punish those he could. When he gained rank and authority over others, his desire for abuse was freed from the constraints of powerlessness, and his abuses took a new form and gained an easy target. It wasn’t that the position changed him, it was that the position allowed him to express what was already there. And the abuses he performed were the physical expressions of his latent capacities.
Human beings are as good as their environment facilitates. This man’s environment confirmed his resentments and enabled his abuses. He was allowed to behave how he wanted to. Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre believed that any action we take is an indication of our values. This man had the choice to be kind to those around him, to wield the power he had to improve the conditions around him but chose instead to bludgeon others with his frustrations. Sartre would say this is because he actually valued the bludgeoning more than any other option he could have chosen.
There is another instance that highlights this case: The famous Stanford Prison Experiment. A group of college-aged men, selected for their normalcy, were placed in a mock prison and randomly chosen to be guards or inmates. In less than a week, the exeriment had devolved into the psychological torture of the inmates by the guards, to the point that one inmate had a complete breakdown. The sadistic behavior of the guards against those they knew to be innocent, displays how one’s environment can enable the basest of behaviors to emerge.
Absolute power may corrupt absolutely, but incremental power corrupts exponentially. The environment that those young men, and my former friend, had initially been in, constrained their behavior. The opinions of others and the consequences of their actions prevented the outright abuse of others. But when the environment changed, when they were given the freedom to behave however they wanted, they acted sadistically. Sadism was already a feature of their psyche, it was the environment that allowed them to express it.
The lesson here is about more than the horrible actions of others, but that even ourselves, who we may think are perfectly normal, are capable of terrible things when allowed. If one thinks it is easy to be a good person, it’s because our environment has made it easy - not because we are necessarily trained in moral fortitude. There’s a saying in the military, “you don’t rise to the occasion, you fall back on your training.” If one’s only ever used moral training wheels, could they handle mountain terrain?
This should not leave you discouraged. Concerned but not discouraged. There are ways to prepare for these shifts in the environment: Train your moral muscles. In one study by Elisabeth K. Heiner, it was found that children who thought about what it was to be heroic, and imagined what they would do in moral dilemmas, had increased self-reported levels of courage (2018). By thinking about what they would do in difficult moral situations, they became more prepared to handle those situations in the future. They became more prepared for changes in their social environments.
Philip Zimbardo (the guy who conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment) called this the “Heroic Imagination.” Your mind has the incredible capacity to run simulations. Use that capacity to run potential ways of acting in moral dilemmas, free from the physical consequences, so that you know how to act when the time comes.
Zimbardo suggests these steps in his article, “The Banality of Heroism” (linked below):
Develop your ‘discontinuity-detector,’ your awareness of things that don’t sit right with you, so that you don’t let slide moral misgivings.
Become comfortable with personal conflict. There may come a time when you have to conflict with others in order to do the right thing.
Recognize the time horizon. The consequences of inaction extend beyond the discomfort of action.
Resist the urge to rationalize. If your ‘discontinuity-detector’ goes off, don’t justify your innaction.
Transcend the negative consequences. “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” Or more plainly, what good comes from avoiding loss, when greater losses are allowed as a consequence?
Consider how you should act in difficult situations, practice acting morally, and should you be called upon to act - perform heroically. Trusting you will do the right thing in the moment, isn’t enough. Imagine what it means to be heroic. Imagine how you, a heroic person, would act. Recognize Zimbardo’s steps in your own life. Then practice. Practice acting morally, because the consequences of our moral failures are greater than the small personal profits of avoiding right action.
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