Good and Evil

Right or wrong — who is to say?

Milton Erikson wrote:

A physician called me up and asked if I would see his son, who was a high-school youth who had been an ever increasing management problem. They had bought him a car, a stereo set, a color TV; they had given him a very generous allowance, and the boy had just become increasingly demanding, selfish, and destructive of the entire family.

I said I would at least interview the boy in the presence of his mother and father. They brought him to me. I told the boy to sit down and keep his mouth shut, I wanted to hear all the worst things about him that his father and mother could say. They reluctantly told me about his misbehavior. As they talked, the kid looked at them with a graftlied expression on his face. I asked him, "Is that a fairly accurate story?"

The boy said, "Hell, no, they left out a lot of stuff because they're too ashamed to tell about it. I ripped up my mothers panties, I jacked off in front of them, I said all the four-letter words I could think of, I dumped urine over the dinner. You know what my old man always did? He gave me a five- or ten-dollar bill, and my mother cried."
(Milton Erickson, quoted by Jay Haley in “Uncommon Therapy” p274)

Is the son evil? Is his physician father evil? Clearly the father has created a monster and I find it easy to believe that the monster may never be happily integrated into our society.

Osama bin Laden is credited with conceiving the attack on New York's World Trade Centre on September 11th, 2001. Is he evil? Many people have no difficulty at all in affirming that. The transcript of his utterances however does not show any sense of wrong-doing. Indeed quite the opposite, he appears to consider his actions are divinely inspired, and his the hand of God. If he is a True Believer (not just a good actor), he most likely sees himself as a prophet or a saint. The same may also be true for the pilots who flew those aircraft to their death, the suicide bombers and countless others who have sacrificed themselves for causes in which they believed they were called by God to do so.

If we assume they are true believers, is such faithful behaviour intrinsically evil? I think not. No more so than dropping nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 (which struck many more innocent civilians than did the WTC attack).

In People of the Lie Scott Peck argues that some people are intrinsically evil. He offers examples of behaviour which in the context offered is difficult to interpret any other way, but would the people described recognise that context as a sufficient description of their circumstances? Isn't it possible that there were other elements of the situation, not described, which conspire to put a different light on it and make the acts seem quite appropriate?

Socrates (in the Protagoras) insisted that people do wrong only if they are deluded into thinking they are doing right or are otherwise incapable of distinguishing right from wrong. If my circumstances make my behaviour appear appropriate - by what criterion do you call it evil?

This should not be construed to dismiss the concepts of good or evil, but to recognise that such concepts are socially determined. Our concept of evil springs from the motives behind the act rather than the act itself. Another man dies, but the same killing may be found to be self-defence, manslaughter (carelessness) or murder depending on the circumstances and motive of the killer.

Likewise perhaps for any act or decision we make. If the motivation is selfish then the act is potentially evil. If the father of the boy in the quote at the top of this page were motivated by some undisclosed objective and the boy and the family were being sacrificed for that then I suggest his parenting is evil.

What is good? What is evil? Perhaps these are no more objective than our forefather's assessments that white skin was superior to black or that men's work was worth more than women's?

Eric Berne developed the concept of 'mortido' - a fundamental desire to destroy or kill, as a complement of libido - the corresponding desire for life (he takes the term from Paul Federn Ego, Psychology and Psychoses 1953, and notes that Weiss names the same concept 'destrudo' in Principles of Psychodynamics 1950). Many people in our society would deny the existence of mortido within themselves although they usually have little trouble seeing it in some other people.

The idea of some sort of innate morbidness does not disappear simply because we wish to deny it. The formerly widespread use of flagellation in religious practice may be in recess for the time being but it has a very long history and contemporary practice still includes the psychological equivalent in a range of penance customs. Similarly, spanking and other 'kinky' sexual practices are probably a great deal more common than is easily established.

We can allow no place for our own morbidness by simply denying it. That is to deny a part of ourselves and to prevent our understanding of important feelings and emotions which we still have. Alternatively we can admit that such 'dark' feelings and emotions do arise in our minds, and seek to integrate these into the wider scope of our social behaviour, recognising ourselves as a whole and integrated person in whom these feelings legitimately occur.

It is difficult the first time to accept that I could be a sadist — that I could find pleasure in causing pain to somebody else and moreso because I love them. It is one thing to accept the action, and another again to accept that there is pleasure in this. A related set of experiences might just as easily see us vulnerable to our lover and desiring their sadistic act. Other pages on this site deal with issues of erotic power exchange. Our fear of such 'perversions' is learned — we can choose to get to know ourselves better if we wish.

A bit of what drove the physician's son and Osama bin Laden may be found in all of us. We have less risk of being astonished by our own actions if we are able to recognise and relate to the feelings that drive them. Getting to know ourselves is the best place to start.

The integration of one's self, the full acceptance of how one *is* rather than what we were told we *should* be leads to healthy self image and the possibility of lasting satisfaction.

Original: February ‘03
This page is part of “Living in the Light”
found at: http://www.tassie.net.au/~phoban/

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