EVILICIOUS: Cruelty = Desire + Denial

Evilicious

Cruelty = Desire + Denial

Marc D. Hauser

Copyright © 2013, Marc D. Hauser. All Rights Reserved.

Praise for Evilicious

In this original and uniquely informative book, Marc Hauser shows us how the “addiction to evil” – the persistent subjection of innocents to gratuitous cruelty -- emerged as a by-product of the human brain’s unique evolutionary design. The ability to creatively combine all manner of thought and emotion enabled our species to produce great works of art and science, as well as to freely choose to kill and torture with a level of maliciousness unprecedented in the history of life on earth. Here we find that the most dangerous and effective evildoers are not sadists or serial killers with disordered minds, but mostly normal people who could have chosen not to kill and torture. When driven by unsatisfied desires -- especially if channeled into dreams of glory for a cause -- and in denying the reality and the humanity of others, even nice guys can become massively bloodthirsty.

—
Scott Atran
,
Director of Research in Anthropology at France’s National Center for Scientific Research and author of “Talking to the Enemy”

“Evilicious is an incisive and engaging analysis of why people have the capacity to inflict great evil. Marc Hauser cogently draws from psychology, neuroscience and evolution to explore potential explanations for this darkest side of human nature. His fascinating book is lively from start to finish, and helps bring science to bear on an issue of great importance.”

—
Kent Berridge
,
Professor of Neurosciences, University of Michigan

“The problem of evil is as old as recorded thought, and one might have guessed that there would be nothing fresh and original to say. But Marc Hauser’s
Evilicious
is an entertaining and compassionate essay refutes that expectation, offering new perspectives and intriguing suggestions on traditional problems from a remarkably wide range of comparative and experimental evidence and evolutionary considerations, often fascinating in themselves. A thought-provoking inquiry.”

—
Noam Chomsky
, Institute Professor and Professor of Linguistics, MIT

“The urge to explain evil is as compelling and as daunting as the wish to explain love, a task that for all of human history has befuddled poets, philosophers, psychologists, biologists and, most recently, neuroscientists. Marc Hauser draws on all those disciplines and more to examine the worst of human behavior. It is always fascinating to read what he is thinking, all the more so when he’s thinking differently from me. He challenges my assumptions and makes my world bigger. Who could ask for more? Even when you disagree with him, you’ll do so with pleasure.”

—
Randy Cohen
, Original writer of “The Ethicist”, New York Times Magazine

“
Eviliciou
s is a gripping investigation into our appetite for cruelty and destructiveness. Highly informative, and written in a lively style that is accessible to the general reader while also having much to offer the specialist, it is a book that is difficult to put down. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the puzzle of human violence, and every serious student of human nature.”

—
David Livingstone Smith
, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy and author of “Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others.”

“In Evilicious, renowned neuroscientist Marc Hauser provides a provocative and insightful account of evil as the consequence of ancient neural systems put to new uses as evolution shaped the uniquely human, combinatorial brain. While making his case, Hauser offers lively and accessible explanations of many cutting-edge findings in social neuroscience that are a fascinating read for the general public and scientists in the field alike. The book is an impressive demonstration of the important role science plays in thinking about the most pressing social and ethical issues of today.”

—
Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg
, Director, Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim, Professor, University of Heidelberg

“What Steven Pinker has done for violence, Marc Hauser has achieved with evil - this book brings the light of science to illumine the heart of darkness.”

—
Nicholas Wade
, former Science Editor, New York Times

“Evilicious
offers an analysis of the human capacity for evil, and a plausible account of how it emerged, that is immediately engaging and deeply satisfying. Saturated with eye-catching examples, bristling with punchy observations, and marvelously comprehensive in its coverage, this is a book to savor and to treasure.”

—
Philip Pettit
, University Professor of Politics and Human Values, Princeton University, and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Australian National University.

“Marc Hauser’s cogent and concise study on the psychological nature of evil could not come at a more propitious time after the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre changed the national debate on violence. Much discussion has been focused on mental health issues, but as Hauser reveals through his thorough summary of the scientific study of violence, the problem is not a handful of crazy people; it is that we all have the capacity to commit acts of violence due to the nature of our psychology and how our brains are wired. Every Congressman, Senator, and journalist voting or writing on what to do about violence should read this book first.”

—
Michael Shermer
, Publisher of Skeptic magazine, monthly columnist for Scientific American, adjunct professor at Claremont Graduate University, and author of “The Believing Brain.”

“
Evilicious
is a serious attempt to understand gratuitous cruelty. Evolutionary psychologist Marc Hauser argues that even though the capacity for evil evolved by chance, and despite the strong roles of individuals’ genes and experiences, the abuse of power makes grisly sense. Unflinching, thought-provoking and richly informed, this examination of the darkest of human desires is an important original contribution to the science of human moral failings.”

—
Richard W. Wrangham
, Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, author of “Catching Fire” & “Demonic Males.”

For Jacques and Bert Hauser,

my parents,

my friends,

and my reminder

that life should be

lived to its fullest,

always.

Pleasure is the greatest incentive to evil.

— Plato

To witness suffering does one good, to inflict it even more so.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Man produces evil as a bee produces honey.

— William Golding

Dear reader,

I am familiar with the horrors of evil, mostly by indirect means. I lived in Uganda and spoke with people who witnessed the brutal savagery of the dictators Milton Obote and Idi Amin. I met child soldiers, holding automatic rifles and standing next to piles of skulls. I listened to stories of my father’s childhood as a Jew hiding in Nazi-occupied France, and read countless descriptions of past- and present-day genocides. I carried out research with populations of psychopaths and bullies, while personally experiencing the bullying of individuals who had little regard or compassion for someone who couldn’t fight back.

I am also familiar with and deeply moved by human kindness, particularly our capacity to reach out and help strangers. When my father was in a boarding school in the south of France, hiding from the Nazis, a little girl approached him and asked if he was Jewish. My father, conditioned by his parents to deny his background, said no. Sensing doubt in my father’s voice, she replied “Well, if you
are
Jewish, you should know that the director of the school is handing Jewish children over to the Nazis.” My father promptly called his parents, who immediately picked him up, thus allowing him to survive and tell me this story. This little girl expressed one of our species’ signature capacities: the ability to show compassion for another person, even if that person’s beliefs and desires are different from one’s own.

These experiences, together with my long-held interest in and exploration of human nature, have motivated this book and my desire to explain the causes of evil. It is a topic that is difficult to write about, as so much that one can say risks misinterpretation: issues that are only touched upon might cause experts to see the treatment as trivial; topics analyzed with the lens of science might cause some to perceive the treatment as lacking compassion for those who have suffered; and a focus on the biological causes of evil might be misperceived as an argument for the inevitability of our brutish nature, and the denial of our peaceful and cooperative side. I hope that these misconceptions will be avoided by my treatment of the topic.

I am also greatly humbled by the massive literature on evil, developed by scholars in theology, philosophy, and the social sciences. My decision to write a short book was not motivated by a desire to reduce this richness to a few footnotes, nor to push to the side the humanistic issues linked to the topic of evil. Rather, my goal was to use the wealth of insights from the past to inform a highly focused look at one aspect of evil, one that can, I believe, be enriched by the many new ideas and discoveries of the biological sciences. My desire to write a short and accessible book for a wide audience also means that I have left out exhaustive references, in-depth descriptions of our atrocities, and comprehensive engagement with the many theories that offer to explain evil; these can be found in the general references I cite in the footnotes at the end of each chapter, and in many other books and papers.

If this book has any impact on current discourse it is because it offers a minimalist explanation of evil, of how it evolved, develops within individuals, is nurtured by different cultures, and affects the lives of millions of innocent victims. I believe, as do many scientists, that deep understanding of exceptionally difficult phenomena requires staking out a piece of theoretical real estate with only a few properties, putting to the side many interesting, but potentially distracting details. This book is my attempt to extract and explain the core of evil, the part that generates the kind of variation that our history has catalogued and that our future holds. It is a description of evil, not a prescription for what we, both as individuals and as societies, should do.

Sincerely,

Acknowledgements

I wrote this book while my cat, Humphrey Bogart, sat on my desk, staring at the computer monitor. Though he purred a lot, and was good value when I needed a break, he didn’t provide a single insight. Nor did our other pets: a dog, rabbit, and two other cats. For insights, critical comments on my writing, comfort, and endless love and inspiration, there is only one mammal, deliciously wonderful, and without an evil bone in her body – my wife, Lilan.

Marc Aidinoff … a Harvard undergraduate who joined me early on in this journey, digging up references, collecting data, arguing interpretations, sharing my enthusiasm, while offering his own.

Kim Beeman and Fritz Tsao … my two oldest and closest friends. They have some of the richest minds around. Their knowledge of film, literature, and the arts is unsurpassed. Their capacity to bring these riches to the sciences, and share them with me, is a gift.

Noam Chomsky … for inspiration, fearless attacks on power mongering, and friendship.

Errol Morris … for heated discussion, camaraderie, and insights into evil through his cinematographic lens and critical mind.

Many colleagues, students, and friends provided invaluable feedback on various parts of the book, or its entirety: Kim Beeman, Kent Berridge, George Cadwalader, Donal Cahill, Noam Chomsky, Jim Churchill, Randy Cohen, Kevin Doughten, Jonathan Figdor, Nick Haslam, Omar Sultan Haque, Lilan Hauser, Bryce Huebner, Ann Jon, Gordon Kraft-Todd, Sarah Lippincott, Errol Morris, Philip Pettit, Lisa Pytka, Michael Schneider, Richard Sosis, Fritz Tsao, Jack Van Honk, Wendy Wolf, and Richard Wrangham. A special thanks to Dan Dennett, David Livingstone Smith, Robert Trivers, and Steven Pinker for commenting on the book at a time when I needed honest, critical advice.

For moving the book through Amazon, I would like to thank Dan Slater.

Lastly, many thanks to my agent and friend John Brockman for standing by me during challenging times.