Hierarchy and the anatomy of evil

The anatomy of evil

© Johannes Bjorner

 Writing this post does not please me, but I believe that understanding the roots of evil is necessary in order to confront it.

Evil is everywhere, and we are increasingly being confronted with it through different news media, because evil sells newspapers and TV shows.

There is an abundant amount of material available on the physical and psychological reasons for evil. 

When we are confronted with evil we use words like “monstrous”, “inhuman”, etc. 

We wish to distance ourselves from the evil acts that we witness or hear about. 

The potential for evil exists to some degree in all of us, so evil is human. 

To confront evil we most fully understand ourselves.

Before going further, is worth looking at the definition of evil. My own perception of evil is: causing direct or indirect damage or pain to another living being, by neglect, carelessness, egotism, revenge, or simply to inflict pain.

Ignorance, and lacking brain functions can also cause pain and damage, but falls into a different category, as the individual might not be aware of the pain he/she is causing.

The most important contributor to what we call evil is evolution, this is not a popular view, because it means that we have to confront the fact that we all carry the potential for evil, and that we might not be fully responsible for our acts.

Modern evolution, however also carry the seeds for reducing evil. Developing the soul though exposure to art; music, painting,literature, etc, can be an important tool for reducing evil.

The role of evolution

When the first forms of life developed millions of years ago, they were primitive one celled forms of life. Later multi-celled animals and higher forms of life evolved. For most of the evolutionary time scale, the basic functions were eat, kill (or be killed), multiply, die. Today this continues in all animals, except in modern humans, evolution is being influenced by our souls.

The instinct of hierarchy is hardwired into our being, it is an instinct so powerful and so potentially destructive, that understanding it should be a part of early education in children, but also adults should learn to understand the potential danger of this instinct. 
The instinct of hierarchy is not just potentially dangerous, but it can also be part of friendly competition and pushing us to better ourselves.

Throughout history of living beings the hierarchy was connected with our chances of survival. The Alpha male and females had better chances of survival than the Beta male and females, which in turn had better chances than the Gama male and female, etc. At the outer fringes there was a struggle to improve your position in the hierarchy. In the animal kingdom the Alpha male gets the best pieces of the kill and mates with the Alpha female and whoever he chooses to. The kill might not be enough to feed the animals further down the pecking order. In a season where food is scarce the place in the pecking order is a matter of life and death, this has been reinforced and is hardwired into the genes of most animals. Except in cases where food is always available. In humans the hierarchy takes many aspects. 

Like human societies, animals often collaborate and work for the good of the group. But if confronted with another group suspicion and hostilities can often result. Our hard wired instincts alert us to potential danger.

We identify with the group we belong to, our family, our neighborhood, our town, our nation, etc.

In a friendly sports competition the fans of the loosing team sometimes go berserk. Their group pecking order has been degraded by the winning team. When we are young these feelings can be quite strong, as we get older we often get a more balanced view of winning and losing. It's not the end of the world when we lose. Troublemakers at sports events are predominantly young people. I enjoy a friendly game of petanque, but when I lose there is this little feeling of being inferior (in the pecking order), fortunately it is soon forgotten, and the social aspect of the game predominates.

In my younger years my reaction when feeling degraded or insulted by somebody, was a wish to release that anger by punching that individual really hard, fortunately I never gave in to that impulse. It was my private dirty little secret. While not giving in to physical violence, I have am ashamed to admit that I have, in more than one occasion lashed out verbally at people who i felt, had insulted me or often just my perception that they had. For that I feel very sorry and I hope that have forgiven me.

History abounds with examples of individuals or nations  have caused  immeasurable suffering to large group of individuals when they felt slighted. World War one is such an example. The cost of the actions of a few individuals releasing their anger caused suffering to millions of people.

We have seen have generations going back to the beginning of mankind have hard wired in us the need to position ourselves as high in the hierarchy as we can, survival and passing on our genes to future generations depend on it.

 In animals the hierarchy is usually decided swiftly through combat or the threat of combat.

In humans the hierarchy is resolved in a more complex way.

In Carl Sagan's book "Shadows of forgotten ancestors" he writes” Male chimps are obsessively motivated to work their way up the dominance ladder This involves courage, fighting ability, often size, and always skill in hard-heeler politics.

The chimps are our closest relatives in the animal kingdom.

We respond to some of the same hardwired impulse, only the means are different. 

Our whole life is permeated with our feeling of our position in the hierarchy

When we buy a better or more expensive automobile than our neighbor, it is sometimes with the wish to show our superiority, the same can be the case when buying our house, our clothing and any number of items. We buy or believe we buy a better place in the hierarchy.

Some trivial cases: A young man might buy a flashy sports car with the hoping to impress the girls.

In these examples there is nothing evil, maybe foolish, about the actions to improve our status.

There are other cases where evil results:

A young person growing up in poverty, with a low self-worth, sees the luxury items that other people of perceived higher status pose. The envy he or she feels is really a feeling of being on the bottom of the pecking order. Vandalism can be the result as a means of lowering the status of the perceived higher person. On a larger scale terrorism can result when religious fanaticism is combined with self-worth. Cruelty and torture are often the means by which individuals can feel empowered, when the victims are of a perceived higher status.

The most dangerous of the hardwired forces that direct our behavior is the pecking order, when it manifest in a large group.

When a nation feels slighted and humiliated it will sometimes resort to violent acts, regarding of the cost to that nations population. When Germany lost the First World War, it was humiliated by the treaty of Versailles and forced to pay enormous war reparations. That lay the ground for Hitler to come to power, which resulted in the death of millions of military and civilian people worldwide.

The First World War was the result of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Archduke of Austria Hungary and his wife Sophie (Wikipedia).

 Millions of people died in a meaningless war.

Cruelty was more predominant on a worldwide scale some centuries ago, one needs only to read about life in the middle ages. Nations progress away from cruelty on different time scales. When we read about the terrible conditions of children workers in some countries, we need only to step back a little over a century to find those same conditions in so called civilized countries.

Cruelty vs. empathy

Individuals with lacking or low empathy are the most likely to commit evil acts, as they are unable to identify with the victim(s).  

Much more attention should be given worldwide to the human causes of conflicts, and how to change individual behavior. Children should learn early about their “animal” impulses, where they come from and why they occur.  Scolding them might cause better behavior by fear, but if they do not understand the cause of their behavior, they will learn little. They should learn empathy by exposing them to the arts and literature that allows them to identify with the persons in the story.  

Understanding how the instinct of hierarchy interferes with our life

There are many ways in which the instinct of hierarchy can be useful to us, because measuring ourselves against others can give us an incentive to better ourselves

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