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Title: Evil: Inside Human Cruelty and Violence
Author: Roy F. Baumeister
Genre: Sociology
Thingummies: 3
Synopsis: A sociological perspective on the nature and causes of evil.
Thoughts: Like a lot of pop sociology, this book mostly codifies knowledge you already had floating around unorganized in the back of your brain. There are a couple points where he specifically takes down "common wisdom", though, in a way that still makes you think, "Oh yeah, that makes sense, doesn't it."
The author makes two big decisions near the beginning, both of which I think are particularly helpful. First, he refuses to use anecdotes from fiction. I can see his point. I, too, have seen shorter works at least that reference Pol Pol and Iago at the same level, as if fictional characters were as illustrative as real people. While fiction is useful for defining our perception of evil, which he does address, it prevents us from actually sorting out the real roots from the imagined ones. His second choice is to portray nearly everything from the perpetrator's perspective instead of the victim's. To the victim, as he repeatedly points out, an evil act often seems nonsensical, while the person committing the act often sees themselves as being entirely rational. While he does not downplay the damage done to the victim, focusing on the victim's perspective does make it impossible to actually learn the causes of the act itself.
Baumeister hypothesizes that the roots of evil are a combination of desire for material gain, threatened egotism, misplaced idealism, and sadistic tendencies. While the majority of portrayals of evildoers tend to lay the cause at the feet of the last category, Baumeister presents some fairly compelling research that sadism is probably the motivation for about 5-6% of people committing evil acts. He convincingly argues that a lot of the hallmarks of people "enjoying" committing evil acts--laughter, turning it into a game, etc--are the discomfort reactions of a body distinctly uncomfortable and trying desperately to distract and distance itself from the nature of what it's doing. That is, people feel compelled to commit an atrocity such as the execution of innocents for other reasons, such as fear for their own lives or instinct to follow the orders of authority, and are trying to make a very distasteful act into something less threatening by focusing on minutiae.
Another bit of "common wisdom" thoroughly routed is the notion that bullies, etc., act from low self-esteem. It's been a popular theme that I think has been dying down that people are aggressive because they feel bad about themselves and wish to build themselves up. Baumeister argues instead that most bullies actually have a very high opinion of themselves that is probably not deserved. When someone challenges this opinion in some way, the bully reacts aggressively not to assuage feelings of inadequacy but to prevent them from occuring in the first place.
There's a fair amount of psychological studies quoted and quite a lot of anecdotal evidence. Like all soft sciences, proof is harder to come by than in, say, chemistry. But the reasoning generally seems fairly sound. He does have some problems with repetition. A certain amount of reinforcing concepts is always a good idea, of course. But I got the feeling that this was written and edited somewhat piecemeal and perhaps he never really took that final pass straight through to make sure he wasn't being overly repetitive. There were some paragraphs that I swear were nearly word-for-word the same, which inspired some feelings of deja vu and the occasional wondering if perhaps I'd accidentally started reading a few pages before where I had last put the book down.
I probably would not have picked this book off the shelf on my own--I acquired it from a friend doing a book purge. I think it's actually rather useful to have read, aside from a general perspective on the world, as a writer. I have a bit of a tendency to write overly wooden villains, and I hope some of these insights will translate to some better conceived bad guys.
I don't know if this is the most profound work on the topic--probably not. But it's interesting and something worthy of being thought about in greater depth that (hopefully) every day life gives you opportunity to do.
Author: Roy F. Baumeister
Genre: Sociology
Thingummies: 3
Synopsis: A sociological perspective on the nature and causes of evil.
Thoughts: Like a lot of pop sociology, this book mostly codifies knowledge you already had floating around unorganized in the back of your brain. There are a couple points where he specifically takes down "common wisdom", though, in a way that still makes you think, "Oh yeah, that makes sense, doesn't it."
The author makes two big decisions near the beginning, both of which I think are particularly helpful. First, he refuses to use anecdotes from fiction. I can see his point. I, too, have seen shorter works at least that reference Pol Pol and Iago at the same level, as if fictional characters were as illustrative as real people. While fiction is useful for defining our perception of evil, which he does address, it prevents us from actually sorting out the real roots from the imagined ones. His second choice is to portray nearly everything from the perpetrator's perspective instead of the victim's. To the victim, as he repeatedly points out, an evil act often seems nonsensical, while the person committing the act often sees themselves as being entirely rational. While he does not downplay the damage done to the victim, focusing on the victim's perspective does make it impossible to actually learn the causes of the act itself.
Baumeister hypothesizes that the roots of evil are a combination of desire for material gain, threatened egotism, misplaced idealism, and sadistic tendencies. While the majority of portrayals of evildoers tend to lay the cause at the feet of the last category, Baumeister presents some fairly compelling research that sadism is probably the motivation for about 5-6% of people committing evil acts. He convincingly argues that a lot of the hallmarks of people "enjoying" committing evil acts--laughter, turning it into a game, etc--are the discomfort reactions of a body distinctly uncomfortable and trying desperately to distract and distance itself from the nature of what it's doing. That is, people feel compelled to commit an atrocity such as the execution of innocents for other reasons, such as fear for their own lives or instinct to follow the orders of authority, and are trying to make a very distasteful act into something less threatening by focusing on minutiae.
Another bit of "common wisdom" thoroughly routed is the notion that bullies, etc., act from low self-esteem. It's been a popular theme that I think has been dying down that people are aggressive because they feel bad about themselves and wish to build themselves up. Baumeister argues instead that most bullies actually have a very high opinion of themselves that is probably not deserved. When someone challenges this opinion in some way, the bully reacts aggressively not to assuage feelings of inadequacy but to prevent them from occuring in the first place.
There's a fair amount of psychological studies quoted and quite a lot of anecdotal evidence. Like all soft sciences, proof is harder to come by than in, say, chemistry. But the reasoning generally seems fairly sound. He does have some problems with repetition. A certain amount of reinforcing concepts is always a good idea, of course. But I got the feeling that this was written and edited somewhat piecemeal and perhaps he never really took that final pass straight through to make sure he wasn't being overly repetitive. There were some paragraphs that I swear were nearly word-for-word the same, which inspired some feelings of deja vu and the occasional wondering if perhaps I'd accidentally started reading a few pages before where I had last put the book down.
I probably would not have picked this book off the shelf on my own--I acquired it from a friend doing a book purge. I think it's actually rather useful to have read, aside from a general perspective on the world, as a writer. I have a bit of a tendency to write overly wooden villains, and I hope some of these insights will translate to some better conceived bad guys.
I don't know if this is the most profound work on the topic--probably not. But it's interesting and something worthy of being thought about in greater depth that (hopefully) every day life gives you opportunity to do.
