At What Point Do People Become Evil?

Recognizing, Realizing, and Resisting Evil, Part 4

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If there is a hell, who do you believe will end up there? 

Whoever those people are, they are the ones you identify as irredeemably evil. 

Throughout history, there are people who easily rise to the top of the list because of the destruction they've brought into this world. Their “will to evil” was clear. They acquired the power necessary to make their will a reality for others. Now, they're in history books as warnings to future generations. 

Yet, not everyone saw (or sees) them as evil. Just like any other human, they were the hero in their own story fighting the good fight, not the evil fight. Their supporters at the time certainly saw them as being on the side of good. As do those today who continue to idolize them and what they stood for.

If it sounds like we're running into the same problems that we did with identifying religious and ideological evil, you're right: Who gets to decide who is evil? And (let’s take this to a higher level) can an individual even be evil in the first place?

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The danger of labeling a person as evil

To identify another human as evil is to demonize them, to dehumanize them. We treat them as if they are something completely and utter foreign to the humanity that we participate in.

Labeling another human being as evil is to look at them through a black and white lens. Those who we want to say are evil aren't always doing evil. Sometimes they are even doing good. We forget that the people we label as evil may love their families just like we do. They may have friends they care about deeply just like we do. They put their pants on one leg at a time just like we do. 

Radical othering is generally a form of projection. Projection is where we take the darker parts of ourselves, project them onto someone else, and then condemn those people as being impure. 

We all have the seeds of evil within us as part of the human condition. We all have the potential to become the next Hitler, even if we don't have the opportunity for such power. 

We have to be careful when we label someone else as “evil”, because in doing so we can turn them into a scapegoat that allows us to ignore the fact that we are indeed participating in the same humanity that they are. 

And, in case you forgot, this kind of binary thinking is part of the recipe for bringing more evil into this world.