The Human Animal (Animals)

by dhw, Friday, June 18, 2010, 15:28 (5271 days ago) @ dhw

Having now finished reading the complete and very disturbing account of the Milgram Experiment (thank you for that), I would like to add a postscript to what I wrote yesterday about the source of evil, perhaps to bring our viewpoints a little closer together. Our human society is so complex that we have become reliant on authority figures ... e.g. political and religious leaders, and experts in fields we know nothing about. You could therefore argue that our social instincts may put us in situations that result in group-evil (though not in individual crimes, as listed earlier). But I would still say that those social instincts are not the source. In themselves they are neutral, and the worst they can do is make us vulnerable to evil influences, just as they can make us receptive to good influences. (I am of course ignoring the relativity of the two terms.) In my view, the source of the evil in the Milgram/Nazi context is the authority that abuses our dependence.