How Could They be so Evil (or Thoughtless)?


Often people wonder how (other) people can be so evil, so thoughtless? Don’t they have a conscience, they wonder? As someone who is naturally cynical, I’ve never spent much time on that topic: to me, the answer has been that most people are evil, dumb or both.

Of course, in my more rational moments, I know that can’t be it. Certainly not all of it, anyway. Surely there must be some other answer to explain how the scale of atrocities by many (and the do-nothing-against-it response of the rest) could happen during Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia?

Steven Pinker’s comments on the need to defend dissenters and whistleblowers seems to explain “collective delusions”, which in turn could be the answer to the evil-on-a-grand-scale question:
“You look at them retrospectively and you wonder, 'How could everyone have been so mad?' On top of being evil these ideas seem patently ludicrous. How can you have a collective delusion overtaking an entire society? And it looks like one of the answers is that if dissenters are punished and can anticipate they're going to be punished, then you might have a situation where no one actually believes something, but everyone else believes that everyone else believes it. Therefore no one is willing to be the little boy that says the emperor is naked. And this 'pluralistic ignorance' as it's sometimes called is easily implemented when you have the punishing or censoring of unpopular views.”

Much lower down the scale of evil is individual actions like littering the place. Forget India, and think of Western countries where people can and do get fined for it. Why do people still litter? And the answer seems to be “rationalization”. Michael Sandel’s passage from his book, “What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets” explains it well:
“Fines register moral disapproval, whereas fees are simply prices that imply no moral judgment. When we impose a fine for littering, we’re saying that littering is wrong. Tossing a beer can into the Grand Canyon not only imposes cleanup costs. It reflects a bad attitude that we as a society want to discourage. Suppose the fine is $100, and a wealthy hiker decides it’s worth the convenience of not having to carry his empties out of the park. He treats the fine as a fee and tosses his beer cans into the Grand Canyon.”
I guess “treats the fine as a fee” mindset is part of the answer to why people do the things they do.

Sometimes it is good to think of (partial) reasons for the craziness around, even if there are no solutions…

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