Reply #6: Interesting that Hanna Arendt got bandied around recently

[Snazzy]

She came up in social psych way back when, in discussions of another subject also with recent misapplication, Milgram. "The Banality of Evil" was the subtitle of the book I think, but that doesn't really get you inside of Eichmann's head at all. Cliff note version if anything, and that's mocking poor Cliff (a national hero that Cliff).

No, I think her thesis (though it has been awhile) was closer to the notion that some people didn't have a capacity for empathy. Without that you can do the most terrible things, and convince people to do the most terrible things--why it's so important that authority dehumanizes the enemy, for example.

I do not recall M. Scott Peck but this is now a post-it sitting here enshrined in your honor, thanks.

Evil, like one of its mechanisms, torture, is one of those things that us humans, being human, all ought to agree upon when we see it. But now torture and evil have a partisan base (and a cable channel), so all bets are off. Strange fucking world that has torture debates.

Psychopath, sociopath suggest factors beyond control of the actor. Though he's clearly messed up in some serious way psychologically (uh, has issues? no breast feeding for sure), Cheney, the evil bastard big Kahunna, seems intentionally so. Like say a mob boss, though orders of magnitude worse. Milgram offered an absolute authority asking for the inhumane. Some obeyed. Milgram, unethical and questionable experiment that it was, doesn't examine the authority figure, just the subject. Does evil have room for both, maybe? Obviously one is a little more evil; too bad APA or whomever is now in on it, in the room with the waterboard. I expect no DSM category soon.

Jaunty eh, well not at 3:30. :toast: