James Holmes, right, soon after being apprehended in July, 2012, and left the 'Joker' persona that erupted from his submerged consciousness
Eleven years ago this past Sunday marked a memorable day when both Rick, my long time atheist friend, and my sister--in -law Krimhilde (a follower of Eckankar), came to have dinner with us at the Elephant Bar and Grille. E.g.
Among the topics we covered was the nature of natural and moral imperfection in our world and why it's labeled as "evil" and whether this has any valid salience. I threw the conversation open by referencing Philosopher N.M. Wildiers now famous quote:
"Evil is part and parcel of a world in evolution, an
incomplete world.”
and asking Rick and Krimhilde what they thought. Not surprisingly, as evolved thinkers, both agreed. As Krimhilde put it: "Of course an incomplete world and universe must also be evolving. It is evolving TOWARD that ultimate perfection but that perfection does not now exist, so why expect it? It is childish and shows humans are really very immature beings." Rick basically agreed with that as did Janice, both noting the very nature of evolution implies adaptation, mutation and constant change toward some final result over which the interlude is governed by false starts, failed efforts, and novel offshoots more successful at adapting.
Religionists
go round in circles trying to avoid this contradictory fact; that they posit a loving
God and yet implacable defects exist in nature and humans – which they are wont to
label “evil”. But this is immature and a
failure of perception as we all agreed.
If
you're going to posit that a Designer made it all, then logic demands that if
we inhabit a world with immense defects (to us) - such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed 230,000 - it’s the Designer’s fault for not doing
its work properly. Thereby enabling such monstrous natural tragedies and deaths to occur, not to mention human moral failures leading to genocides like the Holocaust! After all,
if He/She/It designed it they must take ownership
– same as if I design a moon rocket which then blows up on the pad taking out all
aboard.
If an entity is deemed truly omnipotent then why not design a planet
without defects that also had to be known well in advance? (Given the designer is said to be "omniscient" as well). If, as some religionists
argue, He did it to teach us some moral lesson, then what exactly is it? And does it require mass death to convey? All these issues we covered at our
dinner, and also “sin” which all 4 of us agreed was invented by religionists to
keep humans under their thumb. As
Krimhilde put it: “How could eating meat on a Friday be an insult to the
divine, or cause it grief and pain?” And Rick then added: "How could a teen jacking off in his bedroom do the same?"
In the wake of 13 mass shootings over the weekend I recalled again that fascinating dinner with two deep thinkers from nearly opposite spiritual poles. This was especially as I'd just read Lance Morrow's WSJ column (Innocence, Violence
and the Mystery of Evil ) appearing after the Buffalo massacre, in which he asked:
"Why do people
do these things? Because they are unhappy? Because they are crazy? Or can it be
that they are, in truth . . . evil? Evil is a very big word. Writing
in Time magazine about the slaughter of 16 schoolchildren and a teacher in
Dunblane, Scotland, 26 years ago, I called it an evil act; I said that the
shooter himself, a man named Hamilton, was evil. A medical doctor, a civilized
man, wrote to me saying that I was stupid to use such a medieval word as evil."
Well the medical doctor was actually right. Prof. David Gardner - a Springs Buddhist and occasional contributor to the Colorado Springs Indy's spiritual column, provided this insight for the origin of evil back in 2017:
"There is evil because we call something evil. It's hard to defend the position that something exists independent of the perceptions of people. If it did, we wouldn't perceive it. So 'evil' is a conventional category created by human thought, It's not a self-evident portion of the existing world."
The atheist position and account of the origin of evil comes close to Prof. Gardner's take. In my last book on moral philosophy (Beyond
Atheism, Beyond God) in the section Practical Reason and Human
Evil I noted that one of the canards circulated about human
evil is that it’s irrational. If the person only knew better, or
reasoned properly, he’d arrive at the generic good, and we'd all be better
off. I cited philosopher John Kekes who disposes of this myth quite
forcefully (The Roots of Evil, p. 156.)
As Kekes observes, abundant historical examples disclose that people
often robustly justify their actions on the basis of a good perceived
in their minds, but which in retrospect turns out to be evil. Therefore
it’s not the lack of reason or rationality that infuses their
actions but instead the false beliefs that supported the reasoning! A perfect case was George W. Bush launching the 2003 Iraq War on the basis of "getting rid of the bad man Saddam Hussein." But he may not have seen it would lead to 500,000 Iraqi deaths - many innocent civilians- as well as the subsequent rise of ISIS. And don't forget the derivative evil unleashed at Abu Ghraib, that destroyed the U.S reputation as the "good guys", e.g.
Torture at Abu Ghraib | The New Yorker
But what about personal manifestations of evil such as the mass shooters who've taken out hundreds of lives in Dunblane, Sandy Hook, Aurora CO, Las Vegas, Orlando, Parkland, Charleston and more recently Buffalo and Uvalde? To
the Physicalist or Scientific Materialist, of course, there is no such thing as
"Satan" or "the Devil" - those are merely cartoon
copouts for the unthinking. Evil exists, but not as an independent,
infinite negative absolute, or personified in a spirit entity, but rather
as a dynamic of our own brains.
What
most ordinary people refer to as “evil” is easily explainable by the scientific
Materialist in terms of brain evolution. Thus, Homo Sapiens is
fundamentally an animal species with a host of animal/primitive instincts residing
in its ancient brain or paleocortex. The paleocortex sits evolutionarily beneath
the more evolved mesocortex and neocortex, the latter of which crafts concepts
and language. One clever person has compared this tri-partite brain structure
to a car design welding a Lamborghini to a Model T Ford chassis, with a 1957
Chevy engine to power the Lamborghini. If an automotive engineer can conceive
of such a hybrid beast, I'd be interested to know exactly how he thinks it
would run.
Given
the preceding brain structural defect, there is much evidence that human
behavior will get progressively worse as the complexity inherent in
technological and globalized societies increases, but brain evolution is unable
to keep pace with it. Basically, we are a species with the capability of making
nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles but with an R-complex imbued with
reptilian tendencies. The
behavior resulting from this hybrid brain is bound to be morally mixed,
reflecting the fact that we literally have three brains contending for
emergence in one cranium. Behavior will therefore range from the most selfless
acts (not to mention creative masterpieces) to savagery, carnal lust run amuck
and addictions that paralyze purpose.
The mistake of the orthodox religionist is to associate the first mode of
behavior with being human and not the latter. In effect, disowning most of the
possible behaviors of which humans are capable.- and hence nine tenths of what
makes us what we are. Worse, not only disowning these behaviors – but ascribing
them to some antagonistic dark or negative force (“Satan”) thereby making them
into a religious abstraction.
The
neocortex then goes into over-drive, propelled by its ability to craft words
for which no correspondents may exist in reality. Suddenly, our “souls” are at
risk of being “lost to Satan” who will then fry us in “Hell” if we don't grab
the right afterlife insurance policy. In effect, the religionist’s higher brain
centers divide reality into forces of darkness and light, just like the ancient
Manicheans.
As the divide grows and persists, certain behaviorally idealistic expectations
come to the fore, and a mass of negative or primitive actions is relegated to
“evil”. Humans tune in to this Zeitgeist, which is soon circulated everywhere, and
begin to suppress all behaviors that they regard as defective or
"sinful". They don’t realize or appreciate that humans are risen
apes, and not fallen angels.
Lance Morrow in his WSJ essay goes on to write:
One considers the question of whether the individual may be “evil,” but in a little while that speculation opens up onto a larger vista: The question of whether something in the society itself—in the cultural milieu— is evil. Why was this disturbed boy allowed to buy those guns?"
But his answers can be given from what I already noted in a previous post and why no one younger than 21 ought to be able to own a weapon - any weapon and especially a military style assault weapon . That is, given the brains of these young men are not fully formed and on account of that more easily become detached from reality. My psych niece Shayl argues they are much more prone to schizoid personality disorders as well as schizophrenia. For example, the Sandy Hook killer, Adam Lanza, was triggered by a severe schizoid personality break that essentially released an "inner" submerged "demon". (See e.g. Alexander Wolf and Irving Kutash (Psychotherapy of the Submerged Personality) In the authors' words (p. 47):
'In infancy the child is provided with satisfaction of all the basic physical needs such as food and physical comfort, but due to either a lack of parenting ability or life circumstance, the child is unable to receive much positive emotional stimulation or gratification. This scenario may be the result of a parent who is depressed or schizoid, or it may be due to a long term illness in which the child needs to be hospitalized. As the child enters the ego-emergence phase, independent strides are met with negative consequences such as punishment or anger.
This may be the result of having a parent who needs the child to remain a child in order to feel less threatened, or who needs the child to engage in activities that they themselves cannot fulfill."
As a result the ego development is thwarted with disastrous results. A malign pseudo-ego then seized control and removed the authentic ego from the stage. In this case of Lanza the pseudo -ego turned out to be "demonic' at least in terms of the malignant intent to wreak havoc, kill innocents. As Shayl put it: "In slaying the innocents at Sandy Hook he believed he was slaying the weak, dependent, child ego of himself." A similar dynamic played out with the Aurora mass murderer James Eagen Holmes who developed a pseudo ego he referred to as 'The Joker" which was the one adopted for the horrific assault on movie goers in Aurora in July, 2012. Shayl believes Holmes' authentic ego was actually arrested at the 11- 12 year old stage or just before puberty, which made it even more susceptible to takeover.
Short of a massive nationwide psychiatric screening of all American late male teens - probably costing up to a few hundred billion dollars - there is no way to root out these psychological deviants. Those include the millions of "incels" and misogynists who attack women their own age for not being willing to have sex with them. Those like the Santa Barbara screwball Elliot Rodger some years back e.g.
But all this in concert shows why the access to assault weapons must be severely limited for this demographic, if not outright banned for everyone, see e.g.
The span of what humans call "evil" then is multi-faceted but again is predicated on multiple brain defects, dispositions and vulnerabilities. Especially in young males with testosterone also supercharging their deviance and toxic masculinity, e.g.
But again, "toxic masculinity" does not exist in a vacuum. At root it surfaces from the reptilian areas of the brain, the susceptibility to loss of (executive) control in the tri-partite brain, as well as the hormonal effects that amplify the worst features of the R-complex - from rape, to mass murder and sexual torture- to the creation of gas chambers for genocide.
Still left out is a point noted in my previous post of June 3, i.e. it is estimated (e.g. by my Psych prof niece Shayl) that 60 percent of mass shootings are not done by 'insane' people but usually normal individuals who simply snap. Following some major trigger event they blow a gasket under severe pressure and reach for the nearest gun to kill. If this is so it means no amount of mental health surveillance or 'red flag' laws will prevent mass slaughter. Normal people suddenly going into a homicidal rage after being fired, divorced or cut off on the road, is simply not factored into the mix. Why not? Probably because we tend to accept a fixed or static model of identity rather than a fluid one. The latter model of a fluid self that changes constantly was first proposed by Robert Ornstein in his book, The Evolution of Consciousness, and summarized in his "simpleton theory" of the selves, e.g.
If this is so it can explain a lot of mass shootings that don't involve young, high strung, aggressive or psychotic (Schizoid) males whose lizard brains - plus testosterone- have propelled them into savagery. It is also much more unsettling because it means a totally normal- looking, totally "average" person can suddenly veer into a murderous rage given some unseen or unknown trigger. The very banality (i.e. "ordinariness") of the conditions at once seems to contradict the concept most humans have of evil - as some clearly malignant anti-moral agent or force. But this was exactly the dynamic author Hannah Arendt warned us to be alert to in her 1963 book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality
of Evil.
It is a warning - timely as it turns out - that banal evil can suddenly sprout amidst us and from the seemingly normal personas of friends and neighbors. As in the January 6th insurrection for which the FBI still has over 300 images posted - 'seeking information' - many of them known to family but as yet unidentified.
See Also:
by Amanda Marcotte | June 4, 2022 - 7:26am | permalink— from Salon
During his Thursday night address to the country following a staggering series of mass shootings across the country, President Joe Biden mostly focused his attention on the need for better gun laws. But — likely due to the fact that Republicans will block even the mildest of restrictions on gun access — Biden did toss a bone in the direction of the mental health discussion.
"There's a serious youth mental health crisis in this country," he noted, pointing out that he already proposed legislation that would "provide more school counselors, more school nurses, more mental health services for students." (He's referring to his Build Back Better plan that was killed by Republicans, with the assistance of Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.) Republicans love to talk up "mental health" after mass shootings, but, as most everyone understands, they don't mean it. It's just a deflection from talking about gun control, because they know full well their radical "guns everywhere" views aren't exactly popular with the public. In the real world, as often as they can.
And:
by Amanda Marcotte | May 26, 2022 - 7:29am | permalink
Excerpt:
The soullessness and contempt for humanity are only more illuminated by the fact that these are the same people who just spent months justifying abortion bans by glibly pretending to be "pro-life." Like every other pretext that spills out of Republican mouths, that too is a lie. Opposition to abortion rights is about gender and sexuality, as evidenced by the sprawling sexism that reaches every corner of conservativism. The contrast between the theatrical sentimentality over an embryo versus the lack of any true concern over actual child murder really drives home the point.
Republicans only care about children that are imaginary. Real children have needs: Food, shelter, safety, emotional support, education, love. Imaginary children, however, want for nothing. The fictional threats to imaginary children are useful for political rhetoric and for bashing your opponents, with no real cost. Providing for real children cuts into resources Republicans would rather see spent on yacht improvements for their donor base. Keeping real children safe means embracing policies, like gun control, that offend the easily bruised egos of their voting base of child-men and their wives.
And:
Man, 4 grandkids killed by Texas fugitive had gone to ranch to fish
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