Men Reign Superior Again...

It is the week of finals and as I am studiously trying to finish my paper on genocide, one interesting topic emerges. I have mentioned it previously, but I am going to provide more detail in this post. The topic refers to the established commonality between all genocidal murderers and that is that they all possess the gene of a killer and that particular gene is the Y chromosome. Yes, the really talented genocidal killers have all been men. As if it is not already hard enough to be a woman, but in the field of mass murder, men reign superior once again.

Throughout history, women have not been used as soldiers and only in recent years, some countries have become more welcoming. They are considered the weaker gender and as such, they cannot be trusted with the important task of being a soldier defending the country. Furthermore, men who refuse to participate in mass murder actions are labeled as cowards and become the targets of jokes and verbal attacks. Therefore, in a twisted and perverse way, those who agree to slaughter innocent women, men, and children are marked as brave and honorable while those who refuse to do so are deemed as weak and cowardly. This, consequently, only goes to prove ChristopherBrowning’s idea that ordinary people are the ones committing evil acts. What is even more disturbing than the ease with which ordinary people commit atrocious acts is the general acceptance of such acts and the excuse that they are normal and necessary in the fight of some global evil. The acceptance of a deviant and aberrant behavior as necessary is just as evil as actually exhibiting it. This is the ordinary and banal world we live in: to kill is courageous; to choose not to is pusillanimous. This is exactly what Hitler believed; in his opinion, if apes could kill outsiders or ‘the other’, why would not humans be able to do it? As if killing is some form of a higher achievement one must be proud of.

Personally, if I have to choose, I am going with the cowards and that is my final answer!

-       Krasi

Empathy

What would you do if you see a person struggling to lift a big suitcase off the luggage belt at an airport? The answer to this question depends on many variables including, but definitely not limited to, your level of distraction (Are you focused on spotting your own suitcase and worried about lifting it?) or your physical ability (Maybe you have a really bad back and should not lift heavy items.). One element, however, that invariably determines whether one will help the struggling individual or not is the capacity to feel empathy. 

Empathy has been defined as the ability to feel another person’s frustrations, experiences, and emotions.  In addition, if individuals are able to grasp the frustration of the person in front of them, they will be more likely to assist him/her as they can understand the suffering (or, to use the above example, they can understand the frustration of trying to lift a heavy suitcase off a moving belt). The idea is that you will not analyze the situation strictly from your point of view, but rather, you are able to consider the feelings of the person in front of you. 

In his book The Science of Evil, Simon Baron-Cohen discusses the idea of empathy and proposes that all humans are on a continuum and fall anywhere between having no empathy and having a lot of it. What I find even more fascinating is the idea that where a person places along the continuum depends on a host of environmental, social, and cultural contexts. As such, only very few people have zero empathy or too much empathy. Most people fall in the middle and their behavior is not necessarily consistent across situations. A good example, of course, is the one of the doctors in Nazi Germany who, despite the commitment to caring for others, performed experiments on a certain fraction of the population which hurt, tortured and, in many cases, killed them.  Baron-Cohen further examines the idea of empathy erosion or the process by which a person could lose his or her empathy. 

Personally, I believe that a person’s ability to observe the world from different perspectives is increased as the person becomes culturally educated, i.e. she or he becomes familiar with and understands diverse cultures and a spate of points of views. For the record, becoming familiar with an idea does not imply acceptance of that idea, but it does lead to better understanding of the person with that idea. The importance of culture learning (not sure if this is a term but I am using it!) will be discussed in an upcoming post so look forward to it. 

What is your opinion on empathy or do you even care?:)

-          Krasi

Are Evil People Really Evil?

 As promised in my last post, and I try to always keep my promises, one of the topics I am interested in writing about is the nature of evil. There are several intriguing sub-topics under the quite capacious umbrella of evil, and I have decided to begin with the one about the reasons behind massive evil acts and those who become members of groups whose goal is to commit an evil act. 

I was more than intrigued by this issue in a class on Genocide that I have the privilege of taking this quarter at the University of Denver. Despite the fact that the volume of reading assignments is larger than any person can physically cover, the topic is so fascinating that I have no choice but to forsake the goal of eight hours of sleep per night. Temporarily that is. 

Who, then, are the people engaging in evil acts on a large scale and why do they do it? Some have argued that the majority of people are followers who simply conform to the order of a select few elites with strong murderous instincts. This theory suggests that a small cohort of men (no women here and on that I shall have a post in the future) with hate agendas manage to convince a whole nation to comply with their ambition to annihilate an established enemy.  Others emphasize that evilness or the desire and willingness to commit a mass murder is embedded in certain cultures. As such, mass killing can only be the result of a specific culture that for one reason or another has the desire for evil. The proponents of that theory persist that the Holocaust could have only happened in Germany because this is what German culture was at that time. 

The theory that I find the most shocking and thought-provoking, however, is the one that claims that it is not a special kind of person that becomes a mass murderer and commits genocide. Rather, most who did, and still do by the way, are ordinary people who under normal circumstances will live quite ordinary and mundane lives. Now how is that for an inspiration? Under the ideal conditions, each one of us can participate in genocide. I am sure that many people will be outraged by such a claim and I can understand the reason. It is quite comforting to believe that those we see as monsters are separate and different from us and by all means, they cannot be referred to as humans. It is easier to hate them and banish them that way. Much evidence suggests, however, that even if some of the ones who committed a genocidal act enjoyed it very much, most despised the action and thought it wrong, but participated anyway. 

Here it is important to note that labeling those who commit evil acts “ordinary people” and finding possible explanations for their behavior do not excuse the nature of what took place. Whether they hated it or not, the fact is, they did it and should be prosecuted for their actions. The answer to their believed inherent evilness, however, is certainly not a simple or a warmth-inducing one. 

Recommended readings: Becoming Evil, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Dictators

-          Krasi