Is Steering Humanity A Good Idea? by Armin Nikkhah Shirazi

To All:

My paper evidently reminded some of Hanna Arendt's famous phrase "banality of evil", which appears in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem.

I would like to clarify here that that phrase refers to a kind of situation which is different but related to the main topic in my essay, and that it is important not to confuse the two.

The phrase "banality of evil" is usually meant to refer to the situation in which a normal person-in particular, a person with a well-developed conscience-, under just the right social circumstances and pressures can be compelled or manipulated into doing horribly evil things.

Arendt herself seems to attribute this weakness to "stupidity", but social psychologists have already known for decades that this is true for the vast majority of people. For instance, see the Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Again, the main problem these bring to the forefront is that most (normal) people are sufficiently influenced by their environment that they are capable of doing things they would have never dreamt of.

My essay is NOT about these people. Rather it is about a small minority of the population who do not need any external pressures to push them to do something evil, who rise to positions of power and create precisely the kinds of circumstances and pressures that will manipulate a portion of the rest of the population into such actions. In other words, "banality of evil" refers mainly to followers while my paper is about leaders.

Had there been more room I might have included a discussion of the dynamic between leaders and followers as well, but I was already at the character count limit. For those who would like to know more abut this dynamic, I know of no book that lays it out more clearly than "The Authoritarians" by the social psychologist Bob Altemyer, and which you can read for free here (It is also much easier to read than Lobaczewski's book)

His research shows that although the vast majority of people can be influenced by external pressures, there is a subset, about 20-25% of the population, which is especially susceptible to being manipulated into following authority no matter where it leads them. He calls them "the right wing authoritarians"(RWA) where right-wing does NOT denote political persuasion but a persuasion to uphold the status quo by following orders (LWA, by contrast are authoritarians who strictly follow a revolutionary authority to overthrow the status quo). He finds a large overlap between RWA's and the religious fundamentalist subset of a population. He analyzes their thinking in detail, and finds that often their thought processes are irrational, compartmentalized, and reflective of believing what they want to believe to be true rather than what is actually true. He states in the beginning that his objective is not to give opinions but only report the results of the studies (mainly surveys) he did , but I was still at times disturbed by how one-sidedly negative the authoritarians came out. On the other hand, when one reads that the majority of Republicans still think that Iraq harbored weapons of mass destruction or that more Americans think that torture is okay than they did in 2005, one begins to wonder maybe that is really how the world is.

In the later chapters, Altemyer shifts his attention from the followers to the leaders, whom he calls "social dominators". Although he does not go so far as to call them psychopaths, his description of their personalities and characteristics leaves one to seriously wonder what exactly the difference is. See for example p. 166 The "Exploitive Manipulative Amoral Dishonesty Scale".

Although It does not appear that Altemyer and Lobaczewski were aware of each other's works, they seem surprisingly congruent with each other.

I hope that the above clarified the distinctions.

Armin

Wow!, and I say it again wow! You wrote something I have thought for some time. We seem to be seeing the rise of mentally disturbed people in positions of power, and those who rise particularly are sociopaths.

I make a few distinctions and I have a couple of other observations. The first is that the sociopath is often equated with the psychopath. Both are often defined too heavily according to behavior that is erratic and violent. Yet the sociopath, or what might be called the "good psychopath," is one who has some control over such behaviors. These are most often people who are successful in the world of political, financial, military and religious power. These four are what I call statecraft, tradecraft, warcraft and priestcraft, which have largely defined the sorts of control structures through most of our history. The effective psychopath, whom I usually call the sociopath, is the person who is able to manipulate people to their advantage and who have no moral or empathetic sense of what they do to other people. The nonsociopathic individual is one who is prevented from within from demolishing other people, usually such demolitions in our age are professionally or by crushing out the livelihoods of others, by their sense of connection to others. Call it an emotionally healthy theory of the mind. The sociopath has a limited sense of their commonality with other people, and narcissistically sees little beyond their own gain.

I am in an employment situation where my boss's boss is a sociopath. I have been in this job for less than a year and it became clear at the end of last year there was a problem. This is a situation that I am going to have to navigate carefully. A number of people have recently either left the organization or just announced they will do so, and I am intending to stay only one more year so my work history does not look spotty. I have unfortunately also come under this man's gaze in a negative light as well. This is the second time I have found myself in this situation.

I think there is a range of other mental disorders at work as well. The GW Bush administration, what really was the Cheney administration, was a case of this. The sociopath was Dick Cheney, and he was the brains behind it all. GW Shrub has delusional personality disorder, schizotypal mental disorders, or maybe for that matter post alcoholic brain damage. He was the tool, and people like him are a necessary ingredient in the mix. In order for the sociopathic conman to pull their con they need to have a population of neurotics, delusional, and personality disordered types. These often form the "satellite crowd," such as Sarah Palin who fill in a celebrity role. Obama is a bit of both in a way, and he is an "operator." He has been quite disappointing.

The cyclic rise of sociopaths is dangerous, and it can ramp up into very insane situations, such as the rise of Nazi Germany or the evolution of Soviet Russia to the utter insanity of Stalinism. In these situations the sociopath in their charismatic power can transfer that behavior onto large number of people, and more and more of their lieutenants include violent "bad psychopaths." We are in an age marked by the rise of people with these behaviors, and while it is disturbingly the case in the United States, it is elsewhere in the world. The current game that Putin is playing to dismantle Ukraine is evidence of this.

Meanwhile our planetary life support system is disintegrating and in danger of collapse. My essay connects physics and cosmology with what I see as the prospect for any intelligent life reaching extreme levels of advanced technology.

I gave your essay a 9, even though that pulls you way ahead of me and everyone else. I removed one point because there is no connection with physics or hard science. However, your point is straight on.

Cheers LC

Dear Armin Shirazi,

The first two people I mentioned this contest to, a manager and a lawyer, both thought it was a terrible idea. I think you've captured the essence of their objections! I fully agree with your analysis of the situation, and the way it plays into my own analysis in the Thermodynamics of Freedom. One of my readers asked if it is necessary to assume the large gap implied by my model, between the controllers and the controlled. I answered that there is no physical reason, it always just seems to work out that way, and I referred him to your essay.

The alternative, in my model, is what you call "The Prosperous Society", and it is the one I prefer. Your very strong argument agrees with my analysis. I hope you will enjoy my essay, and I look forward to any comments you might have.

My best regards, and thanks for your fine essay,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Armin,

I'm reminded of the old African saying, "If you want to travel fast, go alone, but if you want to travel far, go with a group."

Have you considered how this might be modeled as a physical system, say a storm, or vortex, or possibly a volcano, or maybe a bolt of lightning, where the energy in a field breaks loose, travels through, overrides another, etc? Not to be amoral on my part, but it does seem much economic activities can be modeled in terms of convective processes and the wealthy, successful, lucky necessarily are riding a wave of energy along a gradient and those we consider immoral, or amoral, are riding waves which happen to wash over the lives of other people. If we really step back and consider these processes, we might be able to mitigate some of their effects, even if at the expense of accepting them as natural. Even death is natural, but we still try to mitigate some of the sideffects.

Regards,

John Merryman

Dear Armin,

Thanks for clarifying the distinction. I appreciate your viewpoint. At the same time, I'm afraid I am as firm in my starting assumption that evil is not inherent in human beings, as you are in yours. I think people do evil things because they believe they are doing good.

My reason stems from a very old study in statistics that led to the now well accepted principle of regression to the mean, or the principle of mediocrity. Darwin's cousin Francis Galton compiled and superimposed thousands of photos of Jewish people, looking for a "Jewish type," which turned out to be a type not different from any other human type, in the aggregate. I hold the opinion that there is no type of human that differs from every other type, given the individual's freedom to act alone.

So I think it's the structure of social systems -- external coercion -- that leads individuals and groups to evil, not innate characteristics. Whether the nature-or-nuture question is ever settled, though, we find plenty of common ground in promoting a way to assure both the nature and nurture of human beings as individuals free of coercive influences.

All best,

Tom

Hello Armin, May I offer a short, but sincere critique of your essay? I would ask you to return the favour. Here's my policy on that. - Mike

Dear Tom,

You said: "Thanks for clarifying the distinction. I appreciate your viewpoint. At the same time, I'm afraid I am as firm in my starting assumption that evil is not inherent in human beings, as you are in yours."

I think you have misunderstood my point of view. But then, looking back, I think it is easy to come away with your impression, so I'm glad you brought it up so that I can set things straight.

I believe that:

1) The overwhelming majority of (but not all) people are NOT inherently evil.

2) The overwhelming majority of (but not all) people are, under the right circumstances and external pressures, capable of doing horribly evil things

3) There is no contradiction between beliefs 1) and 2)

How is this possible? Social psychologists distinguish between situational attribution and dispositional attribution. The former explains how an individual can carry out actions or behave in highly uncharacteristic ways due to external circumstances, whereas the former explains behaviors and actions that are characteristic of an individual. So if belief 2) is assigned a situational attribution, then there is in fact no conflict between it and belief 1). This is just psychological jargon for something you said yourself:

"So I think it's the structure of social systems -- external coercion -- that leads individuals and groups to evil, not innate characteristics."

So, you see, our perspectives on this point are not as far apart as you might have thought. The points on which I disagree with you are as follows:

1) Not all coercion is external. If it was true that all coercion was external, then someone who is coerced into committing a certain evil action repeatedly would have to be coerced with the same force into doing that action each time. This disagrees with the available evidence. For instance, there are records of Nazi soldiers assigned to exterminate civilians who were initially highly reluctant to do so. However, after they had already killed a few, their reluctance faded. Most likely, there was an internal rationalization mechanism along the lines that since they had already crossed the line, it did not matter to resist any longer. In my view, rationalizations, willful ignorance of evidence in contradiction of one's convictions, biases, internal justifications by means of fallacies, delusions and other forms by which the mind leads one to behave uncharacteristically are internal forms of coercion.

Moreover, there is a certain subset of the population who are NOT inherently evil but are unfortunately more prone to performing these kinds of mental maneuvers on themselves and as a result are more easily potential cases that illustrate the "banality of evil". You may want to take a look at the first few chapters of Altemyer's book.

2) Not all people are inherently good. If you really believe that no one is inherently evil, then your belief is again in contradiction to the available evidence. If nothing else, the stereotypical serial killers who kill purely for the joy of it present stark counterexamples to that belief.

3) Each of us should openly admit to ourselves that we are, under the right external pressures, capable of committing horribly evil deeds. I believe that if I am willing to honestly admit that to myself, then, should I ever find myself in a real-life Milgram-experiment type situation, I will be much more likely "catch myself" doing something evil before I actually carry it out. If, instead I desperately hang onto the notion that I am inherently good, I may be much more prone to activate the rationalization, self-deception etc. mechanisms in my own mind which make it more likely that I will actually carry out the evil deeds.

In fact, this underlies something you said yourself:

"I think people do evil things because they believe they are doing good."

I think this holds for almost all followers of evil and almost none of its leaders. Again, it is important not to confuse the two types of situations.

A major point of my essay was the "social structures" giving rise to "external coercion" which lead people to "do evil things because they think they are doing good" may not come about randomly or at least inadvertently, but rather are built up intentionally and gradually by people who understand very well that what they are doing is not because it is good but because it satisfies some of their wants and desires.

At this point, let me pull out in the open what I think is your real objection and confront it head-on.

I think that you find the notion that a minority of the population is singled out as, at least in some sense, "evil" highly disturbing and uncomfortable, and you would rather believe that this was not true.

Let me emphasize that I completely agree with you! If we associate a certain group of people with "evil" we are taking the first step towards dehumanizing them, and thereby, we are taking the first step towards dehumanizing ourselves. In other words, acknowledging that this might be true suddenly causes one to be immediately confronted with a profound and very difficult ethical and moral dilemma. I understand this, had to grapple with it and acknowledged it and my inability to come up with a good answer (at least at the moment)in my essay. On the other hand, if this is really true and I deny it because its consequences make me feel uncomfortable, I have failed in my search for truth. We all like to think of ourselves as reasonably objective and rational, but the true test is when we are presented with evidence that contradicts our most cherished convictions. Moreover, if this is true and I deny it, I may make myself more vulnerable to the consequences of my denial.

The way I have tried to deal with this is not to let the ethical conflict stop me from investigating this possibility mentioned in my essay, but at the same time openly acknowledge that an ethical conflict exists and that it needs a solution. Some of the things one could do, and I am attempting to do for now, are

1) Minimize the emphasis on the moral and ethical concept of evil and maximize the emphasis on medical and scientific concepts disease and selection

2) Refrain, in the absence of a medical diagnosis, from calling specific people psychopaths unless there is clear and generally agreed upon evidence that the person in question most likely did not have a conscience (e.g. Hitler, Stalin). In my essay I did name some specific persons at the end, but if you read carefully you will see that I only described their actions and did not label them.

3) Refrain from a description of the situation in anything but the most objective language possible.

This got to be a very long response, but I hope that now things are really clarified.

Armin

Armin,

I certainly agree there are way too many moving pieces, enflamed emotions and unknowns to effectively do what I suggest in the context of what you describe. On a broader scale though, could we model what would be morality as a truly bottom up decision making process, developed over billions of years, rather than the top down set of rules we are handed by our few millennia of civilization?

As I see it, the source of consciousness is necessarily inherent in biology and thus is a bottom up dynamic element, rather than a top down ideal, so the premise of good and bad is not some cosmic duel between the forces of goodness and evil, but the biological binary code of attraction to the beneficial and repulsion of the detrimental. What is good for the fox, is bad for the chicken and there is no clear line where the chicken ends and the fox begins. In the vast feedback loops which create modern life on this planet, many of us are perpetuating the abuse of someone, or some environmental resource, just that we are well insulated from it. It is mostly when we are in proximity to the pain, it is on some massive scale, or otherwise manages to attract attention that our sense of outrage is more than just passing. Nature is a bitch. If we are to effectively start limiting those massive, or conveniently distant abuses, we need to develop much more local feedback loops and thus, at least in the short to medium term, a less global economy. Only when we have allowed those local structures to become sufficiently resilient can we then start to construct broader economic structures on top of them. Nature spent billions of years evolving the degree of biologically complex organisms we see today and reading her tea leaves, it's not entirely improbable there is some inherent tendency to be trying to evolve an essentially single global organism, possibly with human civilization as its central nervous system, but there necessarily will be a few false starts in such an endeavor, so we may not go beyond top predator in a collapsing ecosystem.

Regards,

John

Dear Armin,

My impression was that they felt the people trying to steer the future would be looking out for themselves, as you outline in your essay. I can't recall the specific quotes, but that seemed to be the gist of it.

Best,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Maestro Shirazi,

I thought your exceptionally well written essay was truly enlightening. I especially appreciated your contention that one should doubt everything at least a little.

With regards,

Joe Fisher

Armin Nikkhah Shirazi,

I think you gave very weak examples. Do you have other more definite support for your conclusion. It appears to me that your otherwise balanced appearing essay is an indictment of the government of the United States as a developed or nearly developed 'pathocracy'.

"For most people, 30 years and more is probably too long a period of time to materially notice the transmutation of a society into a pathocracy. Some of the things you can do to help counteract the these developments are: pledge to

vote for a party other than the two major ones; inform yourself more about these issues, educate others about them and support scientific research into them; inculcate your children with values that foster a prosperous society;

support the separation of corporation and state. The one thing you may not wish to support, however, is the "steering" of humanity by an elite few."

Presumably you believe that third party candidates will not be psychopathic. With regard to our children, my opinion, is that we have in the past and do now teach them values for a moral and free society. Prosperity is desired also. We want better for our children. But morals and freedom first. Your last point is clear enough and our government is designed to avoid that undesirable result.

I won't be rating your essay. It is doing very well with others who like it. I think you will finish high in the contest. So, good luck to you.

James Putnam

Hi Armin,

I read your essay last night. It is well written and easy to read and your strong feelings about the subject of psychopaths is clear. Like Lawrence, I did not see any physics, which is also true of a number of the other essays I have read. Not being an American and fully informed on Americas domestic affairs I felt a little uncomfortable reading such strong views.

Now that it is possible to see the brain structure differences of psychopaths by scanning wouldn't independent testing of all candidates for election be a way of selecting out individuals with those particular incurable personality disorders, ie. psychopaths/sociopaths? If a candidate does not agree to testing he will be excluded from possible nomination? The results could be kept confidential and candidates can just withdraw without giving a reason or using some other excuse.

With such scientific advances, which you could have discussed in some detail in your essay, it isn't inevitable that the future will be steered by psychopaths. There has to be recognition of the condition and the harm such individuals can do at all levels of society.Your essay may have helped in that, but I fear that the political view expressed might work against it.

Good luck, Georgina

Armin,

A well thought out essay. But you are needed more on the physics blogosphere where your intellectual contribution is missing. I still recall your last year's essay and the 'photon existence paradox' in one of your papers. The time you spent writing this would have produced a physics paper that would have been more useful for humanity.

Akinbo