Evil?

Evil?

Friday morning, my friend Becky, mentioned that she had watched two shows Thursday evening,  Evolution of Evil  which featured Saddam Hussein and an episode of the primetime news magazine show 20/20.  The 20/20 episode, featuring Becky Babcock, daughter of Diane Downs, caught her attention because when Becky worked in Oregon, she supervised faculty who were teaching in the women’s state prison where Ms. Downs was being held and had been in classrooms where Ms. Downs was a student.  Both shows seemed to have a common theme – that of ‘evil.’   Since I only see television when watching news at the gym to distract myself while on the treadmill it was not surprising that I had not seen the program. Sometimes I do read about programs and occasionally I will watch a television show via Netflix.  I have no negative feelings or thoughts regarding television; it just does not occur to me to turn it on.  At any rate, I had not seen the program Becky was telling me about. If I had seen it I would have known about this episode of 20/20 that featured Becky Babcock, the youngest daughter of Diane Downs.  A brief search on Wikipedia reminded me of the following regarding Diane Downs:

“On May 19, 1983, prosecutors contend that Downs shot her three children, Stephen Daniel (born 1979); Cheryl Lynn (born 1976); and Christie Ann (born 1974). Downs drove the children in a blood-spattered car to McKenzie-Willamette Hospital. There was blood spatter all over the inside of the car but none on Diane. On arrival at the hospital, Cheryl was already dead. Danny was paralyzed from the waist down and Christie suffered a disabling stroke. Downs herself had been shot in the left forearm. Downs claimed she was carjacked on a rural road near Springfield, Oregon, by a strange man who shot her and her three children.

Investigators later discovered she bought the handgun in Arizona; and, although they were unable to find the actual weapon, they found unfired casings in her home with extractor markings from the same gun that shot her children. Most damaging, witnesses saw Downs' car being driven very slowly toward the hospital at an estimated speed of five to seven mph, contradicting Downs' claim that she drove to the hospital at a high speed after the shooting. Based on this and additional evidence, Downs was arrested on February 28, 1984, nine months after the event, and charged with one count of murder and two counts each of attempted murder and criminal assault.”  Her youngest daughter (Becky Babcock) was born in prison and adopted immediately after her birth.

She has been in prison since 1984. In 2013 she was denied parole and will not be eligible for another parole hearing until 2023.    It was never determined that she was legally insane.   The evidence suggesting that she committed the act of which she was charged and convicted is very convincing. 

In the case of Saddam Hussein, I can find no evidence that he was innocent of all the horrendous acts of which he was accused. People may disagree about exact numbers but all seem to agree that he was responsible for the torture and deaths of many people.

I am sure that the television program Evolution of Evil will have no problem finding scores of examples of individuals or groups of individuals who have been responsible for injuring and even killing other humans.  Daily, we can pick up newspaper and find reports of we humans hurting each other in very cruel ways and, seemingly, at times, doing so very deliberately without any feeling of remorse, but also without being legally insane.

As near as I can determine the word evil or has been in use since about the 12th century.    Dictionary.com gives the current definition as:

Full Definition of EVIL

1

A:  morally reprehensible: sinful, wicked <an evil impulse>

B:  arising from actual or imputed bad character or conduct <a person of evil reputation>

2

A archaic: inferior

b :  causing discomfort or repulsion :  offensive <an evil odor>

c :  disagreeable <woke late and in an evil temper>

3

a :  causing harm :  pernicious <the evil institution of slavery>

b :  marked by misfortune :  unlucky

If one just accepts this general definition one would not have any problem labeling a number of events or actions as evil.   I want to focus on that part of the definition which refers to acts committed by people – acts which are “morally reprehensible, committed from “actual or imputed bad character or causing great harm,” i.e. e. slavery.

All of these definitions imply that the person or persons who commit such acts act out of free will.     If I look up the definition of free will I find:

“The ability to choose, think, and act voluntarily. For many philosophers, to believe in free will is to believe that human beings can be the authors of their own actions and to reject the idea that human actions are determined by external conditions or fate.” (dictionary.reference.com)

Free will implies the absence of insanity.  As I recently stated in another blog, legal insanity has a very narrow definition but minimally states that a person was unable to tell right from wrong.  In other words they were unable to access that part of their brain which “should” remind them that, for example, hurting another person, putting the needs of self above the needs or rights of self is morally wrong. Yet, as in the case with active addiction, we humans sometimes make allowances for a person who is legally sane, but impaired. There has been no evidence uncovered which would suggest that all of Saddam Hussein’s or Diane Downs’ actions were due to being impaired with alcohol or some other drug.

How then to explain the we humans – all of us – continue to behave in ways which are ultimately self-injurious as well as injurious to others? Whether we hurt another because we are distracted while driving, too busy to notice them because we are focused on our important task, fearful of how they will respond if we tell them the truth, fearful that they are going to take something valuable from us such as the affection of a friend, or simply convince ourselves that they deserve to be mistreated.  There are as many reasons for judging another person, as there are people.  We generally, however, reserve the word evil for those “crimes’ we decide are beyond the scope of the average humans being.  In recent years, much of so-called civilized society has been particularly concerned with the “evil” business of using children for sexual exploitation.  Those who use children for sexual exploitation may be the ones who actually force children to perform sexual acts or use the resulting videos or images to stimulate or aid in the stimulation of our own sexual behavior.  We have gone so far as to accuse professional photographers such as Sally Mann who photograph their children nude of sexual abuse of children. In the case of Ms. Mann there were no legal charges filed but she and her family were treated as if they were terrible people. Many would so far as to say that she was evil.  Yesterday I wrote to a man in prison because child pornography was found on his laptop, which was accessible to others. In fact, another man is in jail on the same charge for the same laptop photographs. Furthermore, when the second one ran from the authorities he was also charged with that crime.

Daily, we judge the actions of other people as morally bad, arising from bad character, those that makes us uncomfortable or as those, which are bad due to luck.  We generally reserve the word evil for those we find morally bad or morally reprehensible.   Often, if we can convince ourselves that we are serving a larger or long term good,  an act we might otherwise find morally reprehensible might be labeled as either one of great patriotic duty or one regrettably necessary.   The act of rendition by the United States Government  - the act of taking people to another country to torture them in an attempt to gain information which would assist us in fighting “evil” – was such an regrettably necessary action according to many in our government.  Two presidents stated as much.   Killing people with drones even if it involved the collateral killing of so-called civilians is also a regrettably necessity and not evil.   Forcibly stealing property and killing people in the process was not considered evil when done by the early Caucasian settlers in the United States.  Slavery was eventually labeled as evil.

Some might consider having sex with an underage teenager, even if the teenager is one year younger than the legal age and even if the legal age is different in each country and state, a heinous crime or even evil.  First trimester abortions or abortions at any stage following conception is considered evil by some and an unfortunately necessity by others.  Killing another while driving drunk may be classified as an unfortunate manslaughter and still be punished by the legal system or it may, depending on the jury, judge, and prosecutor be considered a reckless and irresponsible act.  Violating the agreed upon sexual boundaries in a marriage by be considered morally bad by some and even evil by some and just a sad part of being human to others.

Being labeled as evil requires that the degree of hurt inflicted on another by the use of one’s assumed free will to hurt other for one’s immediate personal gain is more harmful in some case than in others.  Evil thus is one of degree of hurt or the degree of defenselessness. Children are assumed to be defenseless, especially when a parent or other caretaker inflicts the hurt.

To label someone else as evil also requires that I rationalize or somehow justify that behavior in which I engaged without considering how it affected others.  That behavior might be as simple as eating a Twinkie (remember the Twinkie defense by Dan White’s attorney in his trial for the murder of Harvey Milk and George Moscone?) without considering the long term effect on one’s health on the health of  others.  Assuming that my consumption of Twinkies does not lead to the murder of other people, we might  say that what I eat or drink  does not affect anyone else. Some officials in cities such as New York have argued otherwise.  Anyone who had had responsibility for someone who was unable to change their eating and exercise behavior thus aggravating their diabetic condition might argue otherwise.   In fact, one might argue that all of us consciously or unconsciously – knowingly or unknowingly  - engage in behavior which affects others.  We also ignore or discount the fact that we are all interdependent. Thus, any action, which hurts you, hurts all of us and any action which long term hurts me hurts everyone else.

There is some truth to the fact that all food, including Twinkies and other so called junk food, can have an adverse effect on my brain which, in turn can affect my ability to exercise free will – my ability to consistently make decisions which are considered moral by me or the larger community.  Most of us daily deny or understate to ourselves and/or to others the extent to which our personal health decision affects others. We can do this because we have convinced ourselves that degree of hurt is not even close to the degree of hurt, which we might label as evil.

Thus, in order, to continue to label some behavior as evil we must:

·      Convince us that our brain is always going to function in a way, which prevents that sort of extreme hurtful behavior.  We might still allow for the effect of such conditions as brain tumors or acute mental illness.

·      That my way of hurting is much less harmful than that of the person I label as evil. Thus, paying very high, multi-million dollar salaries to top executive while paying minimum or less than living wage to even one employee is not evil because we are adding to the overall good by helping to ensure a healthy economy. Likewise, paying the executive staff of an utility company huge salaries while turning off the electricity of poor people who cannot pay their bill is a necessary part of running a business in the modern world.

·      That we good people perform hurtful behavior such as killing in war (or authorize them) as a sad necessity while others who kill for their beliefs are evil.

Could it be that evil is more a matter of who is doing the labeling of a behavior and whether that person(s) doing the labeling has as argument which is more “acceptable” to the larger community?

Do we pay a price for such delusional thinking and, if so, is it an acceptable price?

Am I over complicating a fairly simple process of labeling people such as Saddam Hussein and Diane Downs as evil?  Do I need to attend to the teachings of philosopher John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham who maintained “that we ought to maximize the good, that is, bring about “the greatest amount of good” for the greatest number” (standford.edu/utilitarians) or should I attend to the more complicated teaching of John Locke or Immanuel Kant, or should I just simply accept that the distinction between good and evil is axiomatic to anyone who is paying attention?