I was watching The Thom Hartmann Show a few days ago. Mary from Laurie, Missouri called in with her concerns about what she saw as evil in our society and how literature informed her evil can be found throughout all of human history. Two of her powerful questions stood out. The first was, “What is evil?” This of course is one of the biggest questions of all time. I cannot remember trying to answer that question before fully developing the CNI philosophy, but will give it a go in a future Part II.
Having wrestled with the causes and nature of evil most of my life, I certainly understood Mary’s frustration and longing for tangible rather than abstract answers. There were many questions and vectors Thom and Mary covered in their short yet deep conversation. Indeed several parts could be unpacked and broken down into their basic psychological elements, but since Mary’s final question could give some immediate and practical answers beyond the more abstract, “What is evil?”, it seemed best to start with, “How does evil creep into society?”
Whether one recognizes it or not, the entire free world is currently at war with various types of evil, or to be more precise, they are at war with us, with the goal of remaking the global order so the citizens of the free world and our resources serve them. It certainly would be foolish to say we are winning this war right now, and that the future of freedom and democracy is not barely being kept in balance on a knife’s edge. The forces of good and freedom are strong, but so too are the dark, conscienceless and psychologically twisted forces of evil, which is why this quandary about societal creep seems a useful aspect to decode. It is a tangible concept that can help the forces of good better understand the presence, nature and patterns of the evils we are currently and eternally up against.
Mary from Laurie
“I was contemplating today. I am absolutely convinced that trump will get life in prison without parole. Having said that, I got to getting a little esoteric and I thought, ‘Hmm, what is evil?’ Because in my lifetime, the only really truly evil human being that I can conceive of is donald trump. Now Hitler isn’t part of my lifetime, he’s part of history. But in my lifetime, I think you can actually call that person, ‘evil.’ And it made me think what the heck is ‘evil?’ …It seems rather Medieval.
I thought about trump’s niece who wrote the book who said he is mentally whatever. I’m thinking well is it mental illness? Is evil mental illness? I don’t think so! And then I thought about what Plato said. Plato never said, as I recall, he never said, ‘evil.’ He just said, ‘The good.’”
Side note: Mary seems like a smart and well-read person, and perhaps she was only referring to national leaders, but clearly she has lived a charmed, innocent and somewhat globally sheltered life if the only evil person she can think of in her lifetime is trump, because certainly Vladimir Putin has gone full evil. Domestically, Mitch McConnell, Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott and many others have certainly given excellent impressions of being close to pure evil for some time. They have repeatedly shown they do not care about other humans at all, or contain any shame, guilt or remorse about those they hurt in anything they do to enrich themselves. Is that not evil? They all claim to be Christians but that is not Christian behavior, is it?
Thom Hartmann
“This is an issue or a question that philosophers have struggled with for 1000s of years, ‘What is evil?” There was a time when it was believed evil was basically demonic possession, and you drive the demons out with exorcisms and things. There have been a bunch of different perspectives on “evil.” I think it is fairly clear that donald trump is both evil and mentally ill, and that he is mentally ill because he was wounded by his childhood.”
Mary from Laurie
“Yeah but that is creating an excuse.”
Thom Hartmann
“I get that, but let me finish my thought. When you look at the European countries that have really worked hard, to help make childhood easy, that offer paid family leave for a year and a half or two years when babies are born, so they can bond with their parents. That provides good vigorous healthy support to parents and to families. That basically don’t have poverty.
We just got the report from the Census Bureau this morning, showing that poverty in the United States just doubled in the last two months, because of the end of the child tax credit, and some other programs that were left over from the pandemic, so the number of children in poverty just doubled.
Those are children that are at risk of growing up damaged. Now donald trump obviously didn’t grow up in poverty, he wasn’t damaged by that. He was damaged by having a psychopath as a father, and an emotionally distant mother. A mother that did not want him frankly, or didn’t know how to handle him.
The more we can do across society to try to make sure that children grow up in a way that doesn’t involve damage, I think the better. You could look at this theologically, you could look at it psychologically. I think we have to look at it as a public health crisis. The kind of behavior that donald trump and the Republican Party are engaging in is a danger to the physical and mental health of America.”
Mary from Laurie
“I agree. I totally agree…What really boggles my mind is, ‘How does evil creep into a society?’”
Thom Hartmann
“It’s contagious.”
Mary from Laurie
“…How does it creep in? So it makes me feel like, geez! It’s gone way back in literature, Dante’s Seven Circles of Hell…I’m starting to think, Jesus, maybe there is such a thing as pure fricking evil.”
Thom Hartmann
“There may well be Mary”
Believe it or not, “How does evil creep into society?” throughout human history is one of those big questions that can be fairly easily answered via CNI philosophy. Regardless of whether you agree with the conclusions, I have found no other philosophies that provide solutional answers to nearly every question about evil thrown at it. If you know of such a philosophy, I would love to hear about it. If you have a question about evil that you have never heard a good answer to, post it in the comments, and I may use CNI to answer it. In the meantime, let us explore the evil that is currently trying to further creep into and destroy nearly every civil society around the globe.
First and foremost, the CNI translation of empirical psychology tells us “evil” does not ever need to creep into society. Certainly it can increase or decrease, but it has always been with humanity, every community, culture, and always will be until science can heal and/or grow empathy and consciences in human brains in the 1-4% that are born without them (psychopaths), and/or those brains that have been damaged or broken by a TBI, tumor, or other forms of damage that result in psychopathy.
Psychopathy itself is not evil, but evil certainly has its highest propensity to come from people lacking a conscience. Without a conscience, a person does not feel things such as empathy, shame, guilt or remorse, and psychopaths are at the top of that pyramid. When you see something in the news that is so inhumane you cannot wrap your head around it, most of the time, that person was a badly abused sociopath or psychopath.
Just as Thom wisely mentioned how European preventative child-rearing assistance helps combat evil, we must also do our best to end all forms of spiritual, physical and psychological child abuse and trauma, because they are the primary environmental factors that creep in and create (contagion) more malignant narcissists, aka selfish, greedy, paranoid, sadistic, power-hungry egomaniacs, often perfectly mimicking evil.
The vast majority are created as a result of childhood trauma happening at home, due to a narcissistic parent, guardian or relative consciously and/or unconsciously trying to groom, gaslight and/or manipulate flying monkeys to serve them. i.e. The better the quality of governmental child support services, the less damage will be done to most children of pathological abusers.
Once they reach adulthood and greater awareness of the evil they have been conditioned and traumatized with, many children eventually escape but not unscathed from this cruel and unjust psychological trauma prison built by a person who was supposed to love them unconditionally, take care of them and properly prepare them to be strong and independent citizens in society. Unfortunately, it usually takes decades of therapy to help them unravel and remove most of the toxins and narcissistic traits that often block them from finding a sustainable happiness.
For those who cannot break free, they usually wither into a malleable adult minion for another dominant narcissist and/or succumb to that dark side themselves, and the cycle repeats by the children of narcissists instinctually grooming, gaslighting and manipulating their own children to serve them, as someone did to them.
Thus a main answer to how evil continually creeps into society throughout the centuries is because it is always there all along, and it is self-perpetuating generation after generation, until the cycle of grooming evil from birth is somehow broken.
Trauma being the primary factor should help further explain (regardless of being conscious or unconscious) why “cruelty is the point.” Obviously it is because cruelty is the primary self-perpetuating trauma mechanism that creates more narcissists, sociopaths, (and indirectly psychopaths from a hereditary and genetic brain-rewiring perspective).
Psychological trauma and abuse also seem to be the main determining factors in whether psychopaths will follow or resist their worst primal (evil) instincts or not. They will always be restricted by their brain’s limitations, but a loving and understanding family can help keep them on a productive “non-evil” path, while abuse can bring out their cold and cruel malevolence by instilling a craving to repeat the abuse onto others. Certainly when one is the target of such abuse from any kind of malignant narcissist in real life, it looks, talks and walks like “evil.”
No doubt abused psychopaths were a primary source in the belief of “demonic possession,” because without the benefit of knowing the science, a cruel and sadistic psychopathic mind can be rationalized away by blaming demons, but it was no doubt often very convenient for sadistic psychopaths and narcissists to claim those they abused were demonically possessed, so they could get away with and have religious approval of their abuses of others. I do not know if Sinead O’Conner’s malignant narcissist mother ever claimed she was possessed by the devil, but she did have the local Catholic Church convinced that her sadistic physical and psychological abuse of her daughter was religiously justified.
Evil is always rationalizing. Evil is always pushing for more. Evil is a greedy compulsion. Evil is an eternal zombie that we can kill over and over, but it never dies. It just hides, rebirths, regroups, retools, gathers strength, and then rises from the ashes of its own destruction, but evil always comes back because despite appearances, it never leaves.
If you are a fan of Star Wars, think of our evil the same way you think of Sith evil. Every time the Jedi are at the height of their influence and power in the Galaxy, the dark side Sith have been weakening the Jedi from the shadows for decades, if not centuries, or millennia, until they are ready to strike. The Star Wars saga is a never-ending ebb and flow of good vs. evil over many 1000s of years, because George Lucas modeled the Star Wars universe after the most common and repetitive themes in human history and existence.
How many times over the last 10-20 years were we told or did we think that progress in human rights, civil rights, women’s rights etc. was settled law, only to find out that evil had insidiously come back with a vengeance by placing minions in our government and courts who have been relentlessly revoking every self-determinative right most modern societies recognize their own people need and deserve, such as body autonomy.
Evil by its very nature is a bottomless pit of despair that wants to possess and have control over everything and everyone, and no accountability for itself, and it is no coincidence that trump and the GOP, and many authoritarian narcissists around the world are acting the exact same way.
Remember, it is not a playbook. These are dark and disordered pathologies doing what they have been compelled to do by their narcissist natures throughout human history. As always, we have two choices. Let them be the cruel, dark and dystopian disordered dictators who rule over us, as they have always craved due to their own weaknesses, or we as a society must stop them, because they cannot stop themselves.
There is no negotiating with pathological narcissists without them being certain your power can make things much worse for them, like sending them to prison. Essentially, their fear of consequences must override their compulsions for greed, power and domination. A task not easy or for the faint of heart.
In order to keep evil from creeping into society and possessing and controlling more than it does naturally through shameless generational theft, we need to constantly reveal its dark and twisted behaviors so truth and justice can prevail over greed and cruelty in the short, medium and long run.
One thing every society must correct in their educational and legal system is to be sure personality disorders can’t be free passes or cloaks of invisibility for doing evil out of respect for an evil person’s privacy.
In the U.S., the American Psychiatric Association’s suicidal Goldwater Rule has kept most of our society ignorant about all the dark disorders that often rhyme with what is thought of as evil, or is inhumane beyond normal human comprehension. In other words, the more psychological knowledge is hidden from a society like the APA does here, the more evil can contagiously and increasingly creep in via the often hidden and under-addressed dark demons of cruelty, abuse, trauma, psychopathy and malignant narcissism.
“We need to be smarter than they are evil.” - Mrs. Paul Drake - Perry Mason
Sam Ray © 2023 Counter-Narcissist Intelligence
I’d like to point out that forced-birth by those who know they cannot or should not have children is a great Petri dish for growing more psychopathy in this generation and the next. Because the reality is, most mothers will keep those children, pressured by their extended family and community. And a significant proportion of those kids will land in the foster care system eventually. Adoptions are expensive and rare, and adopters want infants, not a 5 or 10 year old from the foster care program. Again - as stated - the cruelty is the point.
I read your article with interest. Several years ago i read a book called
People of the Lie.
By Scott Peck MD , a psychiatrist who has written many books about Spirituality.
I think that this may be of interest.
It is also obviously a common if not compulsive practice of Donald and his followers.
It might be of interest to you .
‘People of the Lie’ by M. Scott Peck, MD “The hope for healing human evil”.