Mailer says that questions such as this have bedevilled ‘theologians’, whereas it would be more accurate to say that such questions, posed by philosophers, have attempted to put theologians out of business. A long exchange on the probability of reincarnation (known to Mailer sometimes as ‘karmic reassignment’) manages to fall slightly below the level of those undergraduate talk sessions. The Manichean stand-off leads Mailer, in closing, to speculate on what God might desire politically and to say: ‘In different times, the heavens may have been partial to monarchy, to communism, and certainly the Lord was interested in democracy, in capitalism. (As was the Devil!)’
I think it was at this point that I decided I would rather remember Mailer as the author of Harlot’s Ghost and The Armies of the Night. Christopher Hitchens
Well, as Hannah Arendt famously said, there can be a banal aspect to evil. In other words, it doesn’t present always. I mean, often what you’re meeting is a very mediocre person. But nonetheless, you can get a sort of frisson of wickedness from them. And the best combination of those, I think, I describe him in the book, is/was General Jorge Rafael Videla of Argentina, who I met in the late 1970s when the death squad war was at its height, and his fellow citizens were disappearing off the street all the time. And he was, in some ways, extremely banal. I describe him as looking like a human toothbrush. He was a sort of starch, lean officer with a silly moustache, and a very stupid look to him, but a very fanatical glint as well. And, if I’d tell you why he’s now under house arrest in Argentina, you might get a sense of the horror I felt as I was asking him questions about all this. He’s in prison in Argentina for selling the children of the rape victims among the private prisoners, who he kept in a personal jail. And I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone who’s done anything as sort of condensedly horrible as that. Christopher Hitchens
Somehow a word without which we cannot do … Borrowed from Immanuel Kant the concept of radical evil: the evil that’s so evil that it tries to destroy itself; it is so committed to evil, to hatred, to cruelty, that it becomes suicidal. My definition of it is the surplus value that is generated by totalitarianism. Christopher Hitchens, lecture ‘The Axis of Evil Revisited’ 2009, Fora TV/Youtube 1.00.52
You have got to confront evil. You have got to start to read and learn about stuff which you won’t want to read about because it’s not very nice. But you’ve got to take yourself above it. Stop being scared. Learn what these people are doing because you can fight. Brian Gerrish, lecture Alternative View conference II, ‘Common Purpose: Exposing the Real Traitors’
Something really nasty is at work. And if we let it happen, we’re in big trouble. Brian Gerrish, lecture Alternative View conference IV, ‘Political Ponerology: Confronting Evil: Turning the Tide’
The Narcissistic personality – they’re a product of their culture and civilisation. ibid.
Common Purpose: a Ponerologic Network: elitist, dishonest, no conscience, egocentric, fearful. ibid.
The diagnosis is evil beyond all words; the cure is truth and love. David Halpin, lecture Alternative View conference II, ‘The Vortex Sucks Ever Louder’
Evil be to him who evil thinks. Order of the Garter motto
What compels seemingly normal people to commit acts of cruelty and violence? Today researchers are uncovering the hidden forces that inflame our inner demons. Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman: Can We Eliminate Evil? Science 2012
Evil seems an inescapable part of life. ibid.
If most of us are born good, why do some of us turn out so bad? ibid.
Psychopaths: they can pass for normal but they are capable of terrifying acts of evil. ibid.
How do we stop the evil that poisons whole nations? ibid.
Why does this exist? Where does it come from? Morgan Freeman, The Story of God s1e5, National Geographic 2016
Or is evil something that comes from inside us? ibid.
Ay that I had not done a thousand more.
Even now I curse the day – and yet I think
Few come within the compass of my curse ...
But I have done a thousand dreadful things
As willingly as one would kill a fly,
And nothing grieves me heartily indeed
But that I cannot do ten thousand more. William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus V i 124-126 & 141-145
Gloucester, ’tis true that we are in great danger;
The greater therefore should our courage be ...
There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distil it out –
For our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers,
Which is both beautiful and good husbandry,
Besides, there are our outward consciences,
And preachers to us all, admonishing
That we should dress us fairly for our end.
Thus may we gather honey from the weed
And make a moral of the devil himself. William Shakespeare, Henry V IV i 1-14, King Harry to Gloucester
The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones. Julius Caesar 2012 starring Paterson Joseph & Ray Fearon & Cyril Nri & Adjoa Andoh & Jeffery Kissoon et al, director Gregory Duran RSC production ***** Antony
Foul whisperings are abroad. Unnatural deeds
Do breed unnatural troubles; infected minds
To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets;
More needs she the divine than the physician. William Shakespeare, Macbeth V i 78
… in my false brother
Awaked an evil nature; and my trust,
Like a good parent, did beget of him
A falsehood, in its contrary as great
As my trust was. William Shakespeare, The Tempest I ii @92, Prospero
With colours fairer painted their foul ends. ibid. I ii 143, Prospero
Now the villain was to be an even more unlikely figure, one who initially looks like an angel in Paradise. At first sight it would seem an idyllic setting. An island deserted apart from a handful of innocent schoolboys. Yet it was here that William Golding proposed to look evil straight in the face. And that face belonged to perhaps the most shocking villain in British fiction – a twelve-year-old choirboy called Jack Meridew. Faulks on Fiction 4/4: The Villains, BBC 2011
4Evil men know not what should be done or what should not be done. Purity is not in their hearts, nor good conduct, nor truth. Bhagavad Gita: Krishna’s Dialogue on the Soul 16:7
What makes us good or evil? Scientists are daring to investigate this unsettling question. They’re trying to peel back the mask of the psychopathic killer. What separates us from these terrifying people? They are exposing the biology that divides vice from virtue. And what they are finding reveals something about the good and evil in us all. Who or what is evil? Horizon: Are You Good or Evil? BBC 2011
It seems that when we’re confronted with a difficult moral choice we’re confused, distressed. We may not know the right thing to do but we seem to have a moral impulse to try to do good. ibid.
But if 70% [of babies] choose the good guy, that leaves 30% who don’t. So what does that say about those babies? ibid.
Most of us seem to start life with good impulses not bad. The inclination to help each other, to empathise, seems to be built into our brains. We feel distressed when we see someone in pain. But why? ibid.
Oxytocin [hormone] seems to be the key to empathy. ibid.
What does it do to a human if you suppress their own moral instinct? ibid.
What they found is that ... taking away all these ethical parameters was removing something fundamental to their brains. ibid.
It seems our moral instinct cannot be suppressed without paying a heavy price. ibid.
Bob Hare had identified one of the lines that might separate good from evil: it was our emotions; psychopaths simply did not seem to have the feelings of empathy that stop the rest of us from harming. ibid.
It looked like we were getting closer to the signature brain profile of a serial killer. The location of these abnormalities indicated to Jim why psychopaths could be driven towards extreme behaviour. ibid.
It then emerged that just being born with one variant of this gene could also predispose you to violent behaviour. The MAOA gene became known as the warrior gene. ibid.
Whether genes are triggered or not will depend on what happens in your childhood. ibid.
Psychopaths had been adopting a camouflage. ibid.
Corporate culture today seems ideal for the psychopath. ibid.
The verdict has set a powerful precedent; it’s ushering in a brand new era of neuro-law. The new science is starting to explain the basis of good and evil. ibid.
Are we really free to choose at all? ibid.