Philosophical prologue on human evil without concrete allegations

a deeper understanding of how and why our species has engaged in evildoing, but we will learn about our own individual vulnerability to follow suit. This prologue provides a sampling of the central ideas minus the rich evidence and explanations that follow in the four core chapters of this book. A brief history of malice Homo sapiens, the knowing and wise animal, has logged an uncontested record of atrocities, despite moral norms prohibiting such actions: no other species has abducted innocent children into rogue armies and then killed those who refused to kill, tossed infants into the air as targets for shooting practice, gang raped women to force them to carry the enemy’s fetus to term while destroying the souls of their powerless husbands, and mutilated and burned men to death because more humane forms of killing were less effective and enjoyable. These are horrific acts. They abound globally and across the ages. Many scholars have judged them as evil. Despite the pervasiveness of these atrocities, evil is commonly perceived as a defect, an unfortunate malignancy that has engulfed and metastasized within our species’ essential goodness. Evil is also denied, relegated to mythology, the delusional imagination of a few madmen, the propaganda of imperialist nations, or the result of a rare mutation. Perhaps because of these impressions, we have an obsessive fascination with evil, evidenced by our fertile capacity to create and then consume films about genocide, cunning rapists, master criminals, corporate raiders, psychopaths and serial killers. We are of two minds, wanting to hide from the atrocities of evil while feeding our insatiable appetite for more. To understand evil is neither to justify nor excuse it, reflexively converting inhumane acts into mere accidents of our biology or the unfortunate consequences of bad environments. To understand evil is to open a door into its essence, to clarify its causes. In some cases, understanding may force us to exonerate the perpetrators, recognizing that they harbored significant brain damage and as a result, lacked self-control or awareness of others’ pain. In other cases, understanding will reveal that they knowingly caused harm to innocent others, relishing the devastation left behind. By describing and understanding an individual’s character with the tools of science, we are more likely to make appropriate assignments of responsibility, blame, punishment, and future risk to society. To understand evil requires facing our species’ sustained record of atrocities, laying out a variety of cases for inspection. Former Reverend Lawrence Murphy was responsible for over two hundred instances of sexual abuse, luring innocent deaf children in with a saintly smile. Charles Manson, the illegitimate son of a sixteen year old woman and the self-proclaimed father of dozens of runaway women, was responsible for the brutal death of five people by means of 114 knife jabs, while also prostituting his Hauser Prologue. Evilution 9 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012755