First off, a story whose very headline seems like it was written to make me click on it : Why a lack of empathy is the root of all evil.

Could not have said it better myself. I have been saying the same thing for many years now. And even better, this guy, Simon Baron-Cohen (any relation to Sascha?) is saying it with science!

I agree with him entirely that the word “evil” is largely too vague and unhelpful to be useful in any sort of serious discussion of the world. Explaining abhorrent acts by simply saying “The people who did it are evil” does not answer anything. It’s a non-answer. And it begs so many questions. Were they always evil? If not, how did they become evil? Was it a choice they made? Were they “good” until they made that choice? Does that mean anyone could cross the line at any time?

Unfortunately, the answer “they lack empathy” is not a whole lot better. I am impressed with the degree of study Baron-Cohen has put into his theory, but I think it too is over-simplistic. It’s easy to point to obviously deranged people like serial killers and rapists and say “Clearly, they lack empathy.” Obviously. But is it a blanket lack of empathy? Is every killer also a sociopath? Or is it more complicated than that?

And what about those infamous Nazi prison guards who perpetrated the most horrible acts of mass horror the world had ever seen? As far as I know, Hitler did not need to scour all of Germany in order to find the few total monsters willing to do these horrible deeds. These were average, normal Germans who turned people into lampshades and smashed gold fillings out of teeth with the butts of their rifles, then went home to their families, hugged their children, ate their dinners, made love to their wives. How is this possible?

And even more so than that, what about the every day evil? The acts of barbarity and sadism that never make the history books because they are not illegal and therefore count as “normal”? A cruel remark, a vicious rumour, a brutal shunning, a nasty and underhanded business move. Evil is far more than somethign that just happens at the ends of the bell curve. It happens every day, and is perpetrated by normal citizens who otherwise have a full complement of empathy and would pass a Voight Kampff test without a problem.

What about that? In the end, saying “evil is lack of empathy” does not advance our understanding by very much. A truly deep and comprehensive understanding of evil, of why people do bad things and hopefully how we can stop them, has to be considerably more robust than such simplistic reductions.

For a long time, I have used “malice” as the closest approximation of a workable definition of evil. Much of the world’s everyday evil stems from misdirected anger surfacing as the desire to hurt others and hence transfer our pain to them. This is an inherently empathic act. If you only view other human beings as objects, you cannot receive the sort of confirmation that you have successfully venting your pain into them that such malice and sadism requires. Malice requires empathy.

I see the propagation of evil as driven by many factors, but one of the strongest is the desire for revenge. Specifically, the desire for revenge where it A) is not directed back at the target but at some other person and B) the amount of pain is magnified as a punitive measure.

You hurt me X amount? Well, I hurt you 2X amount, see how YOU like it! You, and your stupid brother!

This leads to escalation, and that turns one simple crime which might even have been a total misunderstanding into a huge conflagration of back and forth escalating acts of evil. Whole nations have gone to war because of the desire for revenge and people being unable to restrain their more base urges to unthinkingly strike back at a ready target instead of working things out between them.

Lack of empathy is not even a factor. If anything, the primary factor is another root of evil, lack of self-control. Specifically, that critical component of self-control which allows a person to resist the urge to just do whatever their emotions tell them to do and instead think about the situation a moment.

Lack of empathy is a good place to start when examining evil, but it’s no place to stop.