You ask me if I love you
And I choke on my reply
I'd rather hurt you honestly
Than mislead you with a lie
And who am I to judge you
On what you say or do?
I'm only just beginning to see the real you
Sometimes When We Touch, Dan Hill
My buddy Gene, remember him from the 1st Chapter, and I have known each other since 2nd grade. He moved to Hialeah to live with his aunt and two sisters in a two bedroom duplex. Gene’s aunt kept a tight reign over him, Gene was not allowed to have anyone over to the house when she wasn’t there. Gene also couldn’t go over to anyone’s house after school, condemning him to an afternoon of boredom. I couldn’t let that happen so I made it point to go over to Gene’s house pretty much every day after school. We made up a number of games to play, most of which were related to baseball. We played baseball in his backyard with a plastic lemon and a stick for a bat. The lawn chair was set up behind home plate to act as the umpire and anything hit over the roof was a home run. One day, I was looking in Gene’s refrigerator/freezer when I saw a button that read “defrost.” Curiosity got the better of me and I pressed it to see what it did. It clicked down and as mightily as I tried, I couldn’t get the button to pop back out. I heard Gene coming into the kitchen so I closed the door and said nothing; hoping against hope that nothing would happen. Gene’s aunt came home about 5:30 and went to the fridge to get her after work beer and saw an enormous puddle of water. She yelled for Gene and asked what had happened. Poor Gene had absolutely no idea what had gone on but when his aunt told him he pushed the defrost button, he said he must have pressed it by accident. He was punished, mildly as I remember, and the next day he asked me what I was thinking. I said I wasn’t thinking at all and in spite of the deception, we’ve remained friends for over 40 years. I’ve apologized to him a number of times about the incident and have never put him in that sort of position ever again.
We all fail to tell the truth and we all sometimes say things that we know are not 100% factual. This is the genesis of our discussion of good and evil. If everyone told the truth all of the time, there could be no evil. There would be a lot of hurt feelings, but no evil. Rest assured, the universe can cope with lying and, in some ways, good and evil are basic parts of the universe. No need for a Garden of Eden to bring evil into the world; we humans are pretty good at doing that without any outside help. Let’s get into it a bit.
Origin of Evil - Awareness
First off, realize that humans are incredibly complex creations and are the product of amazing emergence. We haven’t spoken a great deal about awareness, how we perceive the world around us, and the topic is too great to cover in detail now. Suffice it to say that the way we perceive our world is built up from the interactions we have with the physical world as reported to us through our senses. We take the various inputs and build our view of the world. Perception is reality - the interactions between us and the outside world, coupled with our own internal interactions form our world view. The reason it is hard to pin down awareness is the same reason scientist can’t agree on a definition of life. It are the interactions that form the emergent property we call awareness. We can look into the brain as long as we want and we’ll never find the one place where awareness takes place. This dispersed awareness allows us to function in a degraded fashion if part of our brain no longer works, or some of our senses fail. We still have awareness, it is just not the same awareness we’d have if all of our senses worked. Since science has not embraced the notion of emergence, we’re currently stuck in a reductionist mode of research. This will pass.
The complexity of our brain and the resulting awareness means we can interact with ourselves. We no longer need external stimuli to generate thoughts and ideas. We generate them ourselves. This self-interaction is a big part of what makes up our self-image and will plays a part in the discussion of good and evil. The awareness evolutionary process, under the influence of human awareness – remember you need to qualify the term evolution to describe which selection criteria is involved, leads to a wide range of self-images from people who are outgoing to inward turning folks. For now, let’s focus on the majority of folks who are relatively well adjusted and are not self delusional. They process the data sent to them by their senses in what we would term a “normal” fashion. There are those who are delusional and seem to have problems integrating sensory data into a reality that matches the external world. That’s a topic for a later discussion as I want to focus on how good and evil come into being in the absence of any “abnormal” situations.
A lot of words have been written on whether or not people have free will. In our discussions, we’re touched on the emergence of human awareness and intelligence. Again, in the world of emergence, hard definitions seem to elude our grasp and we find it easy to find examples that defy explanation. Given the uncertainty, I’ll assume that most people exhibit what we call free will. The exact nature of free will can be maddeningly difficult to pin down because it isn’t a thing, but a set of interactions. The various parts of our brain interact and assemble our view of the world. Since there isn’t a single place where reality exists in our brain, there is no place where we find free will. Go along with me for now as it seems like a lot of people exhibit free will. Self interaction is a valid an interaction as any other interaction and is part of the reason evil evolves. Let’s start at the beginning.
Evil Evolves
I claim that children are born without the knowledge of good and evil. After all we’ve talked about emergence and how simple interactions can lead to complicated behavior; it should come as no surprise that I believe evil evolves. It is difficult to define what you mean by evil. Again, this should come as no surprise since we’ve seen that scientists cannot define life or species. Emergent properties and the associated evolution seem to be defined by our inability to figure them out completely. We certainly know that some things are definitely living and some things are not but there are grey areas that defy definition. The same thing happens with good and evil. I’ll avoid a definition of good and evil as I don’t think that is necessary in this discussion.
As children we observe and interpret our observations. It seems reasonable to associate these observations with facts about our surroundings. We build up a fact database and as we interact with our world we very quickly find out about consistency in the physical world. Gravity is one of the first physical things we find out about and we fight it from the beginning. As we interact with others, our physical body and our own thoughts we are shaped as a person. At some point in our development, we realize that there are things that are not facts. Make believe is a very big part of our coming of age. Once we have an understanding of facts and make believe, we are in a position to learn about lies. A lie is where part of the interaction is intentionally not entirely factual. That means there are two parts to a lie, in my definition. There not only needs to be some part of the facts left out or the entire interaction is make believe but there needs to be an intentional piece to it. That’s why I needed to talk about free will and awareness before venturing into good and evil. If no one ever lied, there would be no evil in the world. There might be a lot of other things – like hurt feelings and broken hearts – but there would be no evil. (Again, we’re not talking about the self delusional folks – that is a separate discussion.)
Back to our young child, growing up and realizing there are facts and make believe. We find out pretty quickly that people who tell us facts can be trusted. Most of us quickly develop trust in our parents and we find stability in the trust. We need stability in order to grow and people who develop in this atmosphere are what we term well adjusted. At some point in our lives all of us came across a situation where we did something that was “wrong” in our parent’s terms and we were punished. We didn’t like the punishment and at some point in the future we might try to make something up to avoid the punishment. Our initial attempts (based on some of the things my children tried) are pretty lame and our parents see through them. At some point, we find out how to make up something that is close enough to the facts that they are accepted. We have learned that we may be able to avoid punishment by making something up – or leaving something out. It should be pointed out that most people tell the truth most of the time. If everyone lied all of the time, the world would be so chaotic that nothing could happen and we’d dissolve into anarchy and death. Nature learned early on (even before there were humans) that working together, it can accomplish things that cannot be accomplished alone. Cooperation is necessary for survival and cooperation requires trust and trust is based on the facts.
Of course, since most people tell the truth most of the time we make it possible for someone who is good at make believe to gain a competitive advantage. Let me state that greed and fear are the root of all evil. I haven’t thought about it exhaustively, but every lie that has been told by me or to me was either to avoid punishment (fear) or get something that wasn’t deserved (greed). So the biblical quote,”Love of money is the root of all evil” is partially right. Greed and fear is the root of all evil. Let’s go back to our blossoming child.
Their notion of good and evil is inherently tied up in how they learn from their experimenting with facts and make believe. As with any evolutionary process, there are a wide range of differences but most people end up telling few lies. There are very few people that lie all of the time, they are eventually shunned and without trust they become isolated (or imprisoned). It is the path from mostly telling the truth the lying I’d like to explore. In the late 1960’s Carol King wrote a song entitled, “Tapestry” where she used a tapestry as an analogy of the interactions in her life. I like this imagery in dealing with good and evil so I’d like to incorporate it into our discussion. If we look at our interactions as trailing a thread behind them, then it isn’t too hard to see that our interactions do indeed build of a sort of tapestry. However, we only have a thread in our interactions if they are based on facts. Lies lead to interactions without thread. There is nothing behind the interaction so it leaves a “hole” in the tapestry.
We all lie and leave holes in our tapestry. Most of the holes start out small – like a little white lie to keep from hurting someone’s feelings. Most of the holes stay small and they don’t affect the overall strength of the tapestry; they are easy to cover up and do0n’t spread. Our world evolves away from the hole and it is lost in the fabric of the cosmos with no one the wiser. Some holes become strange attractors and they don’t get left behind.
An Example
Let’s say I had made plans to go to the movies this coming Friday with my girlfriend Anne. On Tuesday, I got to talking to Marie, who was very pretty and someone I had wanted to date, and she said she’d really like to go out with me - what was I doing on Friday? Making a split second decision, I said I’d love to go out with her on Friday. So far, I’ve not gotten myself into too much trouble, but I need to figure out how to be in two places at the same time. Friday afternoon I make the decision to call Anne and tell her I’m really sick and we can’t go out. She said she hoped I felt better and we’d see each other over the weekend, when I felt better. I pick up Marie and we go to the local movie house and as I’m standing in line to buy the tickets, Anne and her girl friend show up. The hole in the tapestry Anne and I had put together blew up and the tapestry was rent asunder. I could have tried to patch up the hole and tried to gain Anne’s trust but she wasn’t ready for that and we never dated again. (Dating Marie didn’t last very long either.)
Evil doesn’t scale
That was a very simplistic example of a hole but it doesn’t take much to see that some of us make holes that become strange attractors. Ponzi pyramid schemes are a great example of a hole that becomes a strange attractor. While some Ponzi schemes start out crooked, most of them start out as well intentioned interactions based on facts. If I am investment councilor, I need money to invest. I promise I’ll make a good return on your investment. If the investment returns I promised don’t come to pass I am faced with a choice. Tell the truth and take the chance that you’ll pull your money from me or find someone new to invest their money with me, take their money and pay you the promised return. Once you make the decision to take the money from a new investor and give it to an older investor, you’ve created a strange attractor and guarantee the hole will grow. As the hole grows in size, you need to expend more and more energy to find new investors to give you enough money to pay all of the original investors. At some point, there is not enough money in the world to cover your payments and the hole is discovered and your tapestry turns into shreds.
In the same way, evil evolves out of lies that are covered up. Small lies (the white ones) usually don’t grow in size. There are ones that grow (and we don’t always know which ones will grow and which ones will not) and the fear (or greed) surrounding them make the perpetrators do things we call evil. As bigger the hole, the more energy you need to put into repairing the hole. All of your might is focused on stitching around the hole and keeping it together. Since there is a finite amount of energy in the world, the hole will eventually rend the tapestry. Evil is not scalable, since it is built on lies (omissions) which leave holes in the tapestry of your life.
Lies that start with good intentions can stay bounded and not grow so the “evil” is small and can be ignored. It is the lies that keep growing that need to be covered up; that’s the big problem. Most evil starts with good intentions and it is the intentions that differentiate between types of evil. Evil is an evolutionary process; can we call it moral evolution? You start out with a white lie with every intention to not hurt someone’s feelings. If that lie never gets passed on through interactions (remember that if there are no further interactions around the lie it will not grow) and the lie stays small. However, if that lie gets passed on (through interactions) it might get passed on to someone who knows it is a lie and they may come back to you and ask why you are perpetrating a lie. Now you have reached a crossroads. You can fess up and say you lied, explain why you lied and the lie goes away. You may need to go back to the person you originally lied to in order to completely heal the hole; thereby breaking the lying feedback loop. If you decide that there’s too much invested in the perpetrating the lie (fear or greed is driving you) you need to come up with a new lie to cover up the original lie. You have now officially started down the moral evolutionary process with a negative (because it is based on fear or greed) feedback loop. I claim that your intentions have now changed and you are no longer lying to keep from hurting someone else’s feelings but are now lying to cover yourself. Once you have made that change of intentions, you are on the proverbial “slippery slope” that leads to an unpredictable place.
What are the outcomes? They are as many outcomes to this as there to any evolutionary process - unlimited.
Some people catch themselves early in the feedback loop, swallow their pride and make an attempt to uncover the lies. These people practice “godly” sorrow for they came to the conclusion on their own that they needed to correct the lie.
There are some who can stop the trip down the slippery slope by containing it. If only a few people are involved, you can probably put together a set of lies that will “fill the hole with spackle” that may be ugly, but it works. These folks feel no sorrow and the positive reinforcement that they can cover up a lie gives them the confidence to do it again.
At some point, lies spin out of control and start requiring an enormous amount of energy and time to keep the hole covered. Bernie Madoff was able to swindle thousands of people out of millions of dollars for many, many years. The amount of time and energy he spent covering things up was incredible but you know what? Eventually he got caught and they will always get caught. At some point, the amount of energy needed to cover the hole will exceed the total amount of energy in the universe and things will come crashing down. I’d like to explore two things about these types of people.
1. In order to pull off a really big lie and perpetrate serious evil requires accomplices and dupes. Accomplices are paid to come along for the ride and are part of the evil. Dupes are people who are told a lie but are lead to believe it to be a fact. A lot of early investors of Bernie Madoff got the promised returns on their investments and they thought Bernie was being factual. They told their friends – officially becoming Madoff dupes. In college, I read the book, “They Thought They Were Free” about the German people during the 1930s and 40s. in order to foist he incredible evil that grew out of the Nazi movement, the party needed a lot of accomplices and a lot of dupes. Why? You typically have to pay accomplices more than dupes because accomplices know you are lying and could turn on you.
2. People who are caught generally show “earthly” sorrow. They are sorry they got caught. Some time people change their ways – Michael Vick has told us he is no longer interested in dog fighting and appears genially ready to make amends. The problem with earthly sorrow is that you are never sure when the person is really sorry and when they just got caught.
Summary
Evil is an evolutionary process that grows from lies. Sometimes, a lie starts out evil in that the person originates the lie out of fear or greed. Those lies are generated by internal interactions – someone hurt your feelings and you want to get back at them. Even if they started out with the best intentions, fear or greed will turn their good intentions into some self-serving beast and the evil begins to grow. How do you stop evil? The good news is that because of the scalability issues, evil will always be found out and good eventually triumphs. By good, I mean factual interactions with people; they are truthful. The only reason evil can survive in the world is because most people are truthful and that makes them trustworthy. A perfect human would be someone who never intentionally lied. They could not do evil. They could hurt people’s feelings, get angry and yell but they would not be evil. It is pretty clear that no one living on the earth is perfect. We all learn at an early age that we can lie and it almost incumbent upon us to experiment with lying to see what it does. Psychology has a long way to go to figure out what some humans to find lying abhorrent and find ways to avoid it most of the time and some have little or no problem lying whenever it suits the situation.
In the meantime, rest assured that evil has its day but good will triumph in the long run. You need to be on guard that you do not become an evil dupe. While perpetuating an evil innocently absolves you of some guilt, being in the critical path of evil (when it is eventually found out) still hurts a great deal. There are few evil people, but when you find them – avoid them like the plague. Interacting with them is the best way to become a dupe or accomplice. If you think being a dupe hurts, being an accomplice hurts even more as you are as guilty as the principles but you more than likely didn’t get as much benefit from the lies. One lie doesn’t make you an evil person. Realizing when you made a lie into an evolutionary, negative feedback loop and correcting it without outside prompting will allow you to regain trust much more quickly than hiding it.
