Deliver us from Evil

Do you know many evil people?

I don’t. I know some people with a different value system to my own. I meet people who lack social skills and do things we consider inappropriate. I come across people who break laws, but most of those are not really evil, they simply are managing their life with a different balance between need and risk. Anyone who has seen a divorce close up will verify that there are always two sides to those stories; people are not at their best, but a description of evil is not usually apposite.

Am I evil? I do some very stupid things, mainly by making thoughtless remarks. I don’t do a lot of law breaking, but I am as prone as the next man when in a partisan crowd – in my London days I used to go to watch West Ham’s home games and shudder to think about the abuse I shouted or encouraged. But evil seems a pretty extreme description of those transgressions. Maybe the same applies to you.

So we don’t come across evil people very often. Yet we are conditioned into thinking of it as common. The traditional Church simplistically divides acts and people into good and evil, and suggests we have some tendency to sin. In childhood, we are often taught how to behave via compartmentalisation into good and evil. Our media and our politicians encourage us to think of criminals as evil, and often whole states as well. I remember being expected to believe that every single Russian was evil. In History, Germans used to be too, though later this was modified to their being misguided by one person, an Austrian even, who was so evil that he poisoned the whole nation. Brits, of course, were always good, especially royal ones. There are exceptions of course, perhaps related to their colour, or religion, or criminal tendency.

Hence there seems to be a mismatch between what we witness in our daily lives, especially when we think hard about it and offer people the benefit of the doubt, and what we are attuned to believe of the world in general.

So what? Well, maybe it matters a lot. I read an article last week in The Guardian Weekly which argued that in reality evil is generally a lack of empathy, a view promulgated by a Cambridge professor called Simon Baron-Cohen. Empathy, how we understand and relate to the people around us, is something most of us can develop. We mess it up frequently, most often under pressure, when confronted with an unfamiliar situation or when focused so much on ourselves that we miss signals from others – remember all the first dates you have endured?

Baron-Cohen studies people with the least empathetic ability, such as people with borderline personality disorder or psychopaths. Unlike in earlier times, when such people were generally locked away and forgotten about, most disorders can be at least partially controlled by focusing on developing empathy. And the same is true of all of us – the more empathy we can develop, the less likely we are to do stupid things, evil things if you like. Empathy may be the most valuable resource in our world, yet only recently have we started to understand and cultivate it.

The article claimed empathy as a sot of universal solvent. And it comes virtually unlike, unlike the arms industry or the legal and penal system.

I found this a powerful and optimistic thought. When I thought further, I twinned a focus on empathy with one on the balance between need and risk I mentioned above. Even people with regular empathetic potential can slide into crime. Usually it is because they see little hope of meeting their basic needs without harming others, while the risk of illegal acquisition is not enough to deter them. Hence we see the cost of a human life appears much lower in parts of Africa than in Western Europe. Even in Western Europe, once someone is deep in debt, or in a cycle of crime and prison, or simply without hope, it is hard to see a way out. It does not help that alcohol and drugs are so available and misunderstood, not to mention ruinous credit.

Put this together, and you potentially have a recipe of a world virtually freed from evil. First take an educational focus on empathy, especially for the young and those sliding into trouble. Use general affluence, technology and social policies to provide an opportunity for basic needs for all, and a way out for those lacking hope, putting rehabilitation above punishment. Improve institutions, again using technology, so that those such as Gbagbo or Madoff face more risk to counter balance their greed. Finally, tackle the menace of drugs and especially alcohol head on.

Will this happen? You know, it might. Sadly, we might need a few more wars along the journey. I don’t see the current generations of politicians helping much, with their focus on national power projection, pandering to fear, and punishment.

But, honestly, I think we are closer than it might appear. Imagine if everyone had 10% more empathy. Imagine if parenting skills improved to place empathy ahead of good and evil as a means of teaching. Imagine technology and openness, Wikileaks blazing the trail, to hold the greedy to account. Imagine if we had more women in charge. Imagine if we all used language with less emphasis on evil – that in itself could be a big step forward. In the last two generations, we have started to succeed in promoting women, outlawing tobacco, creating openness, tackling poverty, and scientifically enhancing our understanding of ourselves.

I never really subscribed to the rather lazy theory that man was essentially an evil being requiring control rather than a good one. In this respect, as in others, religion has perhaps done the world a disservice. I am pleased to see the enlightened branches of many religions focusing far less on sin and judgement these days and far more on service and community. On this day when Christians remember the death of Jesus, perhaps we can finally look forward, even within one or two generations, to a world truly delivered from evil.