Evil is the subset of the villainous character which uses reason but is not materially self interested. This is because if the behavior is self interested it’s examined through the secular lens of criminology or social justice, and if the behavior is insane it’s examined through the lens of psychology and considered a kind of “random” natural disaster like hurricanes or earthquakes.
And the three typical reasons are obdurate obsession, vice signaling, and a desire to blaspheme against God or the social order.
(Vice signaling is frequently self interested, even part of a psychologically healthy person, but the specific form is when vice signaling goes beyond what is self interested through e.g. peer pressure.)
The reason that evil is hard for modern people to grapple with is that it breaks the usual intuitions, almost all things can be examined as self interested or forms of insanity. Except evil. This means that many “objective, modern” people are literally unable to perceive evil.
Some examples:
Hitler: Obdurate obsession/fascist vice signaling, “viva la muerte” etc.
Mussolini: Vice signaling and a desire to blaspheme against God. You can see this in the introduction to his autobiography where he advertises that he has had the American ambassador to Italy ghost write it and offer a fawning foreword.
Columbine Shooters: Desire to blaspheme against God/society/goodness, straightforward example.
Obsession seems to me like a milder form of mental illness—the kind of thing that everyone has to some degree and we classify it as mental illness only when it is strong enough to interfere with the person’s life in general. Problem is when it manifests in people with power, in a way that does not prevent them from getting power. The underlying problem is that many people would prefer to see the country led by an insane member of ingroup, than by a sane member of outgroup. Politics is often seen as a zero-sum conflict, rather than a collective attempt to figure out how to make the country better for everyone.
Vice signaling is a difficult thing to explain, when most people seem unable to even understand that things can have 2nd order effects.
The desire to blaspheme seems to me like some kind of status move. If many people feel low-status, they will be tempted to join. (The politics as usual only makes things worse, because people desire to make their outgroup feel low-status. The problem is when they succeed.)
...many of these things seem downstream of the zero-sum approach to politics and maybe life in general. I mean, if you adopt the perspective of a zero-sum life, then words like “good” and “evil” lose their original meaning. The only thing that remains is “good for ingroup / bad for outgroup” and “good for outgroup / bad for ingroup”.
Evil is the subset of the villainous character which uses reason but is not materially self interested. This is because if the behavior is self interested it’s examined through the secular lens of criminology or social justice, and if the behavior is insane it’s examined through the lens of psychology and considered a kind of “random” natural disaster like hurricanes or earthquakes.
And the three typical reasons are obdurate obsession, vice signaling, and a desire to blaspheme against God or the social order.
(Vice signaling is frequently self interested, even part of a psychologically healthy person, but the specific form is when vice signaling goes beyond what is self interested through e.g. peer pressure.)
The reason that evil is hard for modern people to grapple with is that it breaks the usual intuitions, almost all things can be examined as self interested or forms of insanity. Except evil. This means that many “objective, modern” people are literally unable to perceive evil.
Some examples:
Hitler: Obdurate obsession/fascist vice signaling, “viva la muerte” etc.
Mussolini: Vice signaling and a desire to blaspheme against God. You can see this in the introduction to his autobiography where he advertises that he has had the American ambassador to Italy ghost write it and offer a fawning foreword.
Columbine Shooters: Desire to blaspheme against God/society/goodness, straightforward example.
Obsession seems to me like a milder form of mental illness—the kind of thing that everyone has to some degree and we classify it as mental illness only when it is strong enough to interfere with the person’s life in general. Problem is when it manifests in people with power, in a way that does not prevent them from getting power. The underlying problem is that many people would prefer to see the country led by an insane member of ingroup, than by a sane member of outgroup. Politics is often seen as a zero-sum conflict, rather than a collective attempt to figure out how to make the country better for everyone.
Vice signaling is a difficult thing to explain, when most people seem unable to even understand that things can have 2nd order effects.
The desire to blaspheme seems to me like some kind of status move. If many people feel low-status, they will be tempted to join. (The politics as usual only makes things worse, because people desire to make their outgroup feel low-status. The problem is when they succeed.)
...many of these things seem downstream of the zero-sum approach to politics and maybe life in general. I mean, if you adopt the perspective of a zero-sum life, then words like “good” and “evil” lose their original meaning. The only thing that remains is “good for ingroup / bad for outgroup” and “good for outgroup / bad for ingroup”.