Showing posts with label evil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label evil. Show all posts

Thursday, February 8, 2024

What Erich Fromm wrote about extremely narcissistic people

I am currently reading The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil by the psychoanalyst and social psychologist Erich Fromm. Published in 1964, it describes his view of what he calls the syndrome of decay and its opposite, the syndrome of growth. The syndrome of decay is comprised of extreme forms of the following: necrophilia (love of and fascination with death); narcissism; and incestuous symbiosis. When these are combined to excessive degrees in a person, he defines that person as evil. Hitler is his primary example, but he also lists others--Caligula, Nero, and Stalin, among others. 

He writes:

There are other examples in history of megalomaniac leaders who 'cured' their narcissism by transforming the world to fit it; such people must also try to destroy all critics, since they cannot tolerate the threat whcih the voice of sanity constitutes for them.........we see that their need to find believers, to transform reality so that it fits their narcissism, and to destroy all critics, is so intense and so desperate precisely because it is an attempt to prevent the outbreak of insanity. Paradoxically, the element of insanity in such leaders makes them also successful. It gives them that certainty and freedom from doubt which is so impressive to the average person. Needless to say, this need to change the world and to win others to share in one's ideas and delusions requires also talents and gifts which the average person, psychotic or non-psychotic, lacks. 

In other words, political leaders who behave like this have a desperate need for their followers to share in their beliefs and delusions. They are never cured of their narcissism, and it's doubtful that they understand that they are narcissists. They simply mold the world around them to fit their brand of it. Their followers reward these types of leaders for their lack of self-doubt (total self-assurance, arrogance), their solipsism (self-centeredness--they are the centers of the universe), and their xenophobia (in this context, fear of anyone who doesn't share the leaders' beliefs, also parochialism, insularity, intolerance). 

Sound familiar? Look at some of our current world leaders and would-be leaders. Again I ask, how did we get to this point? Perhaps the better question is why. Why did we get to this point? Why do so many people want to abdicate personal responsibility in order to follow these types of leaders, to become little more than toadies? I can only conclude that following such leaders is preferable to thinking for oneself and to taking charge of one's own life. It's easier to place one's decision-making in the hands of someone who promises you complete and utter security and certainty (a fantasy), who promises you the past (also a fantasy), and who promises you that nothing has to change--lack of change and growth. Lack of change and growth is important to those who do not want to focus on personal development or bettering themselves, which involves change and growth. 

Fromm's book is worth reading. He's a good writer who can take complex ideas and clarify them for his reading public. When we were young adults, his book The Art of Loving, was very popular. I remember reading it then, but I never ventured further with his other books until now. Reading The Heart of Man is helping me to understand the current political situation. It may not provide solutions, but it's good to know what we're dealing with and what's at stake. 

Sunday, February 27, 2022

Some quotes about evil

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. --Edmund Burke

Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil. --Elie Wiesel

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. --Martin Luther King, Jr.

It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways. --Buddha

Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil. --Plato

The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance. --Herodotus

Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table. --W. H. Auden

Each of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is good... Everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them. That would be enough to make the world a better place. --Pope Francis

Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil. --Aristotle

Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself. --Soren Kierkegaard

Evil is whatever distracts. --Franz Kafka

I define a 'good person' as somebody who is fully conscious of their own limitations. They know their strengths, but they also know their 'shadow' - they know their weaknesses. In other words, they understand that there is no good without bad. Good and evil are really one, but we have broken them up in our consciousness. We polarize them. --John Bradshaw

All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy. --Scott Alexander

It is not enough for us to restrain from doing evil, unless we shall also do good. --St. Jerome

The bad man desires arbitrary power. What moves the evil man is the love of injustice. --John Rawls

The belief that there is only one truth, and that oneself is in possession of it, is the root of all evil in the world. --Max Born

I believe the root of all evil is abuse of power. --Patricia Cornwell


Wednesday, March 17, 2021

Exit and the quest for more and more money

It strikes me, after having seen seasons 1 and 2 of Exit, the Norwegian series about four investment brokers--Henrik, Jeppe, William, and Adam--in the Norwegian financial world and their (mostly miserable) personal lives, that we have been handed a morality tale, yet again, on the evils of greed. Much like Wall Street and The Wolf of Wall Street, where ‘greed is good’, except that it isn’t. We the viewers know it, the creators and producers of the series know it, and the actors know it. There’s a price to pay for being greedy, and it’s huge, even though payment might not come due immediately. But because Exit is a series and not a movie, it’s possible to delve into the lives of each of these men, and you come to learn quite a lot about them and what made them the way they are. None of them are nice men, none of them are men you root for, and none of them are men you’d like your daughters to marry. They are actually evil men, except that their brand of evil is banal—they are unfaithful husbands, whore chasers, alcoholics, and drug users—by choice. Some of them are bullying and aggressive (violent) toward other men (Jeppe and Henrik) while one of them (Adam) is a bona fide wife abuser. There are several scenes with William, where the camera focuses on his face and his eyes, which hold a contempt for others that is positively chilling. Overall, these men are dinosaurs when it comes to their views on women and careers. Their dinosaur stance is that they are the providers, they want to marry trophy wives who don’t work and who bear them children who are mostly raised by au pairs, and they end up resenting their trophy wives for loving the life and the money that they provide for them. Part of the deal between marital partners is that the trophy wives don't complain when their husbands work long hours, are out late, don't account for their absences, and have little or nothing to do with raising the children. 

Exit is not for everyone, definitely not for the prudish, because of the amount of sex and no-holds barred presentation of prostitution and sexual activity. It’s all staged, that I know. But nevertheless, it pushes the boundaries for what could be considered decent behavior in most circles. Perhaps there is a point to it, or perhaps not. Perhaps the series’ creators and producers are cynical enough to know that sex sells. It does, because Exit has been a ratings hit here in Norway (both seasons 1 and 2). When the series is sold to other countries, it will probably do well there also. The acting is very good, the storylines likewise. It’s a soap opera for adults with lots of sex, about the financial world, the highs, the lows, the drug abuse, the alcohol abuse, the cynicism, the hubris (that comes before a fall), and the daily abuse by these four men of people who would be seen as normal people under most circumstances. These four men have zero concept of what happiness is; the strange thing is that they know it, and still they carry on doing all the things that most of us would never do. They are on a quest for more and more money and greater and greater kicks, and that can only lead to one end—the deaths of others or the deaths of themselves, or both. At heart, they are miserable human beings who ruin the lives of most people with whom they come into contact.

The character William tried to commit suicide in season 1 after many bouts with cocaine abuse and alcoholism. He enters rehab, only to return to the same environment that he left—an empty soulless environment that really does not permit or encourage sobriety, monogamy, fidelity, kindness, or empathy. So he falls again and again, and by the time season 2 ends, it’s not clear whether he will survive. The story does not really create much compassion for him; rather, it seemed that the inevitable outcome of the storyline will be his death, and it seemed almost natural that it should end up that way. That actually seemed fine with me since he doesn’t really want to continue living and since no one can get through to him. He wants to die. The others lead pointless lives with wives and children for whom they have little or no feelings or connection. They would rather party, screw hookers, and dull their consciences with booze and cocaine. They would do that 24/7, except that they cannot because they always have to wake up, sober, and start a new workday, until they can dull their consciences again later on in the day.

One of the best scenes in season 2 is when Jeppe manages to get his divorced elderly parents together in the same restaurant. His mother and father (who now has a terminal illness) divorced due to his father’s predilection for whores, his infidelity, and his mistreatment of his wife. When you see the father who once was like Jeppe, but who is now lonely and decrepit, you see Jeppe as an old man, and he is aware of that on some level. His mother has no use for his father, and only agreed to the restaurant meeting to please Jeppe. When they all sit down at the table and begin to look at the menu, his mother suggests to his father that perhaps he should order some ‘ung due’ (young pigeon) or ‘små rype’ (small birds). The insinuation is clear, and it is an excellent scene showing his mother’s visceral hatred of her ex-husband. Jeppe’s father gets the not-so-subtle message, some unkind words are exchanged, and he leaves the restaurant. There is no reconciliation as Jeppe had hoped for before his father dies. Again on some level, it registers inside of him that this could well be his future as an old man.   

So what is the point of their lives, of living in this way? These men have it all—great material success and a lot of money--and yet they have nothing. They are morally bankrupt. It’s been said many times before--the quest for more and more money is nothing but greed. I look at the television portrayal of these men and their ‘successful’ lives--beautiful large houses, expensive sports cars, extensive wine cellars, built-in pools, yachts, private planes, being able to afford expensive restaurants and to travel, and I think to myself—so what? Absolutely none of it appeals to me—not the materialism, not the unbridled ambition and aggression, not the greed, not the cynicism attached to the greed, not the cynicism attached to the abuse and exploitation of women, not the ennui. It’s a bore, all of it. To paraphrase the bible—what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul? Indeed. Is it worth it? What is the meaning of life between birth and death? What should one do with all those years in-between, if one is so lucky to have been given a long life? Should one waste it on activities that produce nothing, like working as an investment broker, partying, contributing nothing of value to society and the lives around you? It seems to me that a life spent on intellectual, vocational, and/or creative pursuits is a much better life, not necessarily always happier, but much better spent, with something concrete to be proud of at life’s end.

There are also people who don’t work as investment professionals for whom money is paramount. They live their lives in an endless quest for more money, and the more money they go after, the more they fail at one scheme or another that is going to make them rich. They want money too much. They make stupid and irrational mistakes trying to attain it. They don’t use their heads. They trust the wrong people. They exploit their families and friends. They are rude to other people, behave like narcissists, and think that the world owes them a living. They are ‘high maintenance’ individuals, often live (or have lived) lives of privilege, generally lack gratitude for most of the good things in their lives, and have no idea of what it means to be happy. Some grew up without money, some grew up with plenty of it; thus there is no meaning to be derived from their upbringings. Some of them have fallen on hard times. I observe such people from a distance. Like the scientist I am, I study them and have for years. If they ever do become rich, it will have less to do with brains and intellect and more to do with pure luck, just statistics. Perhaps it was ‘just their time’. Or perhaps not. It is strange, this thing called greed. It makes people behave in strange ways, it makes them rude to others, it makes them proud, it makes them abusive, and it makes them miserable people to be around. There are wealthy people who have learned to live with their wealth, who live their lives wisely, who do not abuse others, who have humility, and who do not feel the need to flaunt their material possessions. So it is possible to behave decently and have a lot of wealth. It's just that we rarely hear about such people. 


Friday, December 9, 2016

Psychopathy and evil

I read M.Scott Peck's People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil shortly after it was published in 1983 because I wanted to understand why evil people behave as they do. That interest came about because my path unfortunately crossed with that of a person whose behavior was unquestionably evil and whose sole goal was to suck all of the goodness out of my soul. Peck did not disappoint; his book has to be one of the most disturbing (and scary) that I've ever read, because he described individuals who had committed evil acts and who had no problems relating those acts to a psychiatrist, who just happened to be Peck. He wrote the following about evil:

“When I say that evil has to do with killing, I do not mean to restrict myself to corporeal murder. Evil is that which kills spirit. There are various essential attributes of life -- particularly human life -- such as sentience, mobility, awareness, growth, autonomy, will. It is possible to kill or attempt to kill one of these attributes without actually destroying the body. Thus we may "break" a horse or even a child without harming a hair on its head". I would add that evil people often kill more than one of these attributes. That is their goal.

And then I got to thinking about a scientific article I read recently that I can highly recommend for anyone interested in this subject: The Psychology of Wickedness: Psychopathy and Sadism by J. Reid Meloy, PhD, published in 1997 in the journal Psychiatric Annals: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John_Meloy/publication/269476584_The_Psychology_of_Wickedness_Psychopathy_and_Sadism/links/54979b670cf20f487d31687f.pdf

Meloy wrote the following about psychopathy, and I cannot help but see the similarities between his description of a psychopath and Peck's description of evil:

"Some of the psychodynamics of the psychopath bring us closer to what we see as their evil, or their wish to destroy goodness. Psychopaths are aggressively narcissistic, and this aspect of their character pathology is often expressed behaviorally by the repetitive devaluation of others, not predominantly in fantasy, as we see in narcissistic personality disorder but in reality. Psychopaths generally do this for two reasons: first, to maintain grandiosity, or their sense of being larger than life, and second, to repair perceived insults or emotional wounds by retaliating against those they hold responsible. This repetitive devaluation of others, which may range from verbal insults to serial homicide, also serves to diminish envy.........Envy is the wish to possess the 'goodness' perceived in others. If the 'good object' cannot be possessed, it must be destroyed or damaged until it is not worth having".

Meloy goes on to describe how psychopaths can even manipulate the psychotherapists who treat them. That by itself is disturbing enough, but ultimately not surprising since psychotherapists are only human. He also talks about psychopaths' emotional detachment and inability to truly bond to other human beings. He writes:

 "......the psychopath appears most concerned with dominating his or her objects to control them. This pattern reduces threats to the psychopath and stimulates his or her grandiosity, but also diminishes the probability of empathy and inhibition of aggressive impulse. It is phylogenetically a prey-predator dynamic, often viscerally or tactilely felt by the psychiatrist as an acute autonomic fear response in the presence of the patient without an overt behavioral threat: the hair standing up on the neck, goosebumps, or the more inexplicable 'creepy' or 'uneasy' feeling. These are atavistic reactions that may signal real danger and should never be ignored..........."

So what do you do when you get that creepy or uneasy feeling in the presence of some (very few) people? When the only way you can describe the person in question to another person is to say that the person makes you extremely uncomfortable or gives you the creeps? What is it about them that triggers that response? What do you do when you do not want to be in the same room (or elevator) as them? I myself have met only two men whom I would describe as psychopaths. They were/are highly-intelligent people, intelligent enough to know how to read you and your body language. They know when they have found your weak points, and they will manipulate them for all they are worth. They are very charming and manipulative; these aspects could describe non-psychopaths as well, but the psychopath seems to have perfected both. It's hard to explain unless you've been on the receiving end of them. What I can say is that if a person leaves you in a complete state of bewilderment and self-doubt each time you talk with them, your alarms should go off. But what do you do when you understand that a person you have known for a long time, or a person you have worked together with for a long time, is a psychopath? When you know that that person has tried to destroy, without compunction, the lives and careers of several people you know? The sad thing is that there is no one answer and no easy solutions. The best piece of advice I could give is to try to avoid such people--give them a wide berth. Do not engage them.

If you have no choice but to deal with them (in a work setting, for example), I believe the best path to follow is to read about psychopathy in order to learn as much as possible about psychopaths. Forewarned is forearmed, as the old saying goes. In that context, I recommend the following article, Suffering Souls--The search for the roots of psychopathy, by John Seabrook, published in The New Yorker in 2008:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/11/10/suffering-souls

I also recommend Meloy's article (see link above) and Peck's book (https://www.amazon.com/People-Lie-Hope-Healing-Human/dp/0671454927/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=).


Sunday, September 11, 2011

A Decade of Mourning


Ten years ago today, around 3pm Norwegian time, I was at work and one of my colleagues met me in the hallway of our research institute and told me that the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane. I remember standing there in the hallway looking at her for a few moments in disbelief, and then I quickly ran into my office to check the internet for news. And then I called my husband and asked him to pick me up earlier than usual so that we could go home and watch the TV news. That was the beginning of a long period of nearly uninterrupted TV watching—where the news became something to dread rather than to look forward to in the evenings after work. But I sat there glued to the TV anyway—my connection to my home state and to the country of my birth. No matter where I turned, 9/11 was there. After the disbelief came shock, then tears, more tears, an explosion of emotions I never thought I had, grief, and then more shock when I talked to those people I know in New York who had lost someone or who knew of someone who had lost someone or many people. My sister knew a man who had lost most of his employees who worked at the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center. My brother knew several people who had witnessed people jumping from the Towers and who were forever haunted by that sight and by the sounds of bodies hitting the pavement. Besides the sheer tragedy of horrific deaths that smashed into us that day and destroyed whatever feeble walls of defense we had, the sight of the Towers themselves crashing down is a sight I will never forget. To this day, I cannot watch this footage without becoming emotional. I guess this was how it was for our parents’ generation when Pearl Harbor was bombed. All I know is that the unthinkable became reality on 9/11. It changed me forever, and I was thousands of miles away from the tragedy that unfolded. So I can imagine how it must have been for those who experienced it firsthand or who lived in the area around the Towers or who lost friends and family on that day. My first instinct was to want to take the first plane back to the States to help, in any way possible. But I couldn't do that for economic reasons--that was the same year my mother passed away (in March) and I had already flown back and forth to New York several times in connection with her illness and death. I remember my sister and me talking after 9/11 and saying that it was best that my mother had passed before the events of 9/11. She was spared that atrocity. I still feel that way.

The American Embassy here in Oslo had a small memorial celebration today to honor the tenth anniversary of the events of 9/11 and to pay homage to the dead. I wanted to go and then I didn’t want to go, was very ambivalent right up until it happened, and ended up not going. I am not sure how I would have reacted to being there, and I was not sure that I wanted to feel again all the feelings of that day and the time afterwards. I feel sometimes like we have been in mourning for ten years, as a country and as individuals. I know that I feel that way personally. That day had a momentous impact on me, in part because I was not there when it happened, and that made it all the more poignant and intense. It was also the year that my mother died, and the grief of that year will stay with me for always, indelibly imprinted on my mind and soul. Although the news coverage of 9/11 faded in Europe sooner than in the USA, it was intense enough so that my feelings were always right on edge. It was impossible to get distance from the happenings, and that’s a good thing. But now that a decade has passed, it is a good thing to have some distance, without having become blasé.  It would be impossible for me to become blasé because I am very much wrapped up in what happened that day in New York and in what happens in the USA generally. I may live abroad but I never think of myself as anything other than a citizen of the USA, for better or for worse. And now that Norway has experienced its own 9/11 (the terrorist attacks of July 22nd), I understand even more how it must have been for those I know who witnessed the events of 9/11 firsthand. The past decade in the USA appears to have been characterized by a focus inward—trying to figure out the whys and the meanings of that fateful day in September 2001. For my own part, I don’t know if the whys will ever be answered. There is evil in the world, and each generation has seen it—seen the atrocities resulting from the specific evil, be it world wars, or the Holocaust, or the destruction caused by the atomic bomb. Every time I think that evil does not really exist, I need only think of these events, and then I know that it does. After ten years of trying to come to some understanding of evil, it is time to move toward the light again, to focus outward. Because too much focus on trying to understand evil will not lead to much good. It is the same in Oslo after 7/22—there is no point in trying to understand the terrorist Anders Behring Breivik’s twisted views about immigration and the world—they will only drag us deeper into despair about what is happening in the world, and despair can immobilize us. That is why it is heartening to read the stories of 9/11 heroes like Jeff Parness who reached outward—starting an organization like ‘New York Says Thank You’, which sends volunteers from New York City to disaster-stricken communities every year (http://edition.cnn.com/2011/US/04/21/cnnheroes.parness.new.york/index.html), or which has gathered volunteers to help sew back together the tattered American flag that flew at the site of the Towers (http://national911flag.org/?page_id=37). These are positive and uplifting endeavors that move us toward the light—for those actually working in these organizations but also for those reading about them. As I read about these efforts across the ocean here in Oslo, I am filled with hope, hope that the decade of mourning will evolve into quite something else—a new spirit of empathy and activism and a real desire to eradicate hate and pain in the world. It is, as the old Chinese proverb says, ‘better to light one candle than to curse the darkness’.

The world we live in

 A little humor to brighten your day from one of my favorite comic strips-- Non Sequitur .......