It’s hard to understand why people do what they do (or don’t do). If you think psychology and behavioral sciences can explain it all, think again.
Here’s a little story to demonstrate.
This morning I made the five-minute walk over to the gym for my Sunday workout. The air was crisp and a little too windy for my liking, but the sun was out and the birds were doing all their spring-time business.
A few minutes in sunlight and nature always gets me in a good mood.
I get into the gym and start my workout on a high note.
But then who should appear?
The Camper.
The Camper camps on the equipment. He camps on a bench for 12 sets of dumbbell raises that don’t even require a bench. He camps with his face less than 18 inches from the good part of the dumbbell rack with all the choice weights.
Right on the equipment I need.
According to The Experts, we’re not supposed to judge any kind of inconsiderate, anti-social, rude, or even outright criminal behaviors.
The conversation goes like this:
They aren’t doing it on purpose. They’re just self-absorbed. They aren’t thinking about you or trying to make your day worse. They’ve got problems too! Maybe he’s having a bad day. Give the poor guy a break. What are you, some kind of monster for complaining about a little rudeness? Get over it. You’re just being judgmental. You need to do better.
With that short hop skip and leap of terrible reasoning we move from disapproval of bad behavior to making the bad guy into a misunderstood hero.
If evil exists, this is it.
Not the Camper. He’s rude and inconsiderate, but a social faux-pas isn’t by itself evil.
I’m talking about the evil of
Making excuses for any kind of terrible behavior
Before you know it, all manner of psychological ailments, quasi-scientific Marxist theories of trauma and exploitation, and barely-credible theories from evolutionary genetics show up to excuse even the worst, most depraved and degenerate criminal deviance.
Nobody’s evil because every bad behavior has an explanation.
Here’s the punchline.
If people can’t be responsible for their behaviors, you don’t have a society.
You’ve got a factory floor with managers.
Not mentioned in the above: The choices and decisions that led to the bad behavior.
There’s an old tradition that says evil is the absence or ignorance of Good. Bad people and evil people simply don’t know any better. They are confused, or ignorant, and don’t know what’s really good.
If you believe in human freedom, you can’t buy that story.
Consider this:
A cat plays with a mouse before it has dinner, which looks to us as terrible cruelty, but the cat’s not doing it out of malice. The cat doesn’t know right from wrong. It’s acting out its instincts to hunt and kill.
You’ll hear people say that a serial killer is an “animal”, but the reality is much worse than that.
Animals kill out of necessity. Humans can do it for kicks.
There are human beings who knowingly and willingly cause much worse suffering on animals and other people. Humans act with knowledge of what we are doing.
Humans can cause suffering on purpose in full knowledge.
“But he didn’t mean to do it, he had a rough life.” — This kind of justification makes a person into an unthinking animal, or a machine acting on programming.
Evil exists wherever you find sub-beastly cruelty, malice, apathy, indifference, and self-absorbed narcissism. You find evil wherever you find people willingly and knowingly acting like unthinking machines and mindless copy-cat robots. You find evil in that sinister philosophy claiming it doesn’t exist because
Humans are only dumb animals that need to be managed as human resources.
Humans choose evil.
It’s always possible to choose otherwise.
And if you don’t understand this, you don’t really understand why people do what they do.
You’re missing out a whole dimension of experience.
There’s a silver lining. The reality of Evil points to the possibility of Good.
The good parts of life are all about communicating, cooperating, and collaborating with others.
The Camper isn’t a bad man or evil for a minor rudeness. But there is something to say for recognizing the existence of other people and things outside of yourself.
That’s hard to do do.
In no small coincidence, those three Cs are the best principles by which to do business, and the rarest.
Much easier to run spreadsheets and count beans instead of the hard work of conversations with real people.
The reality of Evil is just one of many counter-intuitive insights that I’m working with.
It’s my goal to resurrect all this dead wisdom from forgotten psychology and human sciences.
I aim to practice what I preach and spread it by communicating and connecting with people who can benefit, and that I like working with.
If you’re a small businesses looking tighten up your messaging and marketing game with better communication — or that describes somebody in your network — then hit Reply and let me know.
Matt Perryman