Making Evil: The Science Behind Humanity’s Dark Side

Product Information

First, I’d like to start by saying that as a fan of true crime, sinister stories, and exploring the “dark side”, I waited anxiously for this book to hit the shelves. Russell’s book is a paradigm case of what a good philosophical text ought to do when examining a difficult and essentially contested concept. Russell offers a careful, thorough, and closely argued case for the existence of evil actions and evil persons and defends what he calls ‘a restricted pluralist view of evil’. His strategy is to use the method of conceptual analysis which considers a broad range of actual and possible cases of evil to establish necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of the concept of evil. This is not a view taken by many writing on evil, since a historical, metaphysical, or religious lens is often preferred. However, Russell’s approach is deeply attractive to those who seek to understand the notion of evil in its 21 st century context, and how it is used by largely secular persons in societies where the previous religious notions are no longer seen as credible. Your final book is Kate Manne’s Down Girl, which does engage with specific real-life cases of the consequences of misogyny, many of which occur in the context of relationships. She’s not just interested in the abstract question of what misogyny is. She has a very interesting line on what misogyny is. Yes. And he’s appropriately cautious about that. These stories have been told many times, and they’ve become sanitised in the retelling. What’s interesting is that sometimes new things emerge. He’d have these discussions, and at the beginning he’d ask, ‘Have you ever killed a child?’ And the person would say, ‘No. Never….I would never kill a child.” Then they would talk a bit more, and the old man would add: “But, well…there was this one time when a woman was holding a child, and she wouldn’t put him down, and she ran away, and then we shot and killed them both. But besides that one time, no! Well, maybe one other time…’ What’s revealed in this sort of conversation is fascinating and at the same time horrible.

In The Ultimate Evil we find a lot of such descriptions. But not only that, we find – if we do choose to believe in it – a whole theory about serial killers. Maury Terry, journalist, wrote this book originally in 1987 but it’s reprinted now with an introduction from Joshua Zeman. Joshua Zeman is a producer and director with several titles on his name that deal with urban legends and conspiracies. He calls The Ultimate Evil one of the most terrifying books he’s ever read. While it's tempting to write this off as, yes, a conspiracy theory, the fact remains that it is entirely possible that groups with stations across the country are involved in drug-smuggling and dealing and Terry suggests motives behind the Tate-Labianca murders that make far more sense than the "Beatles told me to do it" theory of Vincent Bugliosi (to be fair, Bugliosi was stressed for time and had to get a conviction on Manson - he had plenty of other theories, some of which support Terry's, but the police's refusal to look beneath the surface of a crazy story - like Burkowitz's dog - hindered much of it).

Subscribe

Terry offers an interesting and novel look on the Son Of Sam killings that terrorized America. He delivers the notion that Berkowitz did not in fact act alone, rather, he was merely a scapegoat to divert the attention away from what was apparently 'really going on'. Terry's theory is that a nation wide Satanic cult, with connections in the highest and widest places is responsible. He even goes on to identify the cult as an apparent off shoot of the Process church. Connections are then swiftly made to involve many other murderous crimes, including the Tate-La Bianca murders. It could indeed be true that there is a conspiracy involved in the Son Of Sam killings, but Terry's outrageous reasoning and step-by-step fact making doesn't prove a thing. Here is an example of how he finds the hidden meaning in a letter sent by Berkowitz to a journalist: This is a book which I have just finished reading. I don’t know how much methamphetamine there is in Britain. It’s a drug that in World War II was used by soldiers on both sides of the war in milder doses. It is basically something that keeps you awake and charged up and gives you a high. This book is an account of how it has become a plague of sorts in American farming communities. Terry often comes off as entirely too credulous, too willing to accept things at face value, and too willing to interpret the evidence to fit his theories. He sees a lot of things as enormously significant and as evidence for cult activity, such as Satanic and Nazi-themed graffiti in parks and pentagrams in magic marker near crime scenes. He seems to forget that whenever teenage ne'er-do-wells congregate, you will find swastikas, pentagrams, and the names of heavy metal groups, and this does not necessarily indicate the presence of an organized cult. He also seems to view any occult/pagan/New Age group as at least potentially Satanic, which gets a bit tiresome after a while. Pretty soon things get heavily into urban legend territory: snuff films, child pornography rings, virgin sacrifices, etc.

Stephen de Wijze is senior lecturer in political philosophy at the University of Manchester and the co-editor with Thomas Nys of The Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Evil . The Lord of the Rings tells of the great quest undertaken by Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring: Gandalf the Wizard; the hobbits Merry, Pippin, and Sam; Gimli the Dwarf; Legolas the Elf; Boromir of Gondor; and a tall, mysterious stranger called Strider. Cinderella and Snow White have studied in this peculiar institution. But also have the most despicable villains, which side will these two girls choose?

He talks a lot about the fascination we have with these men, and in particular he talks about the moral issues we have when we struggle to understand them. ” Beginning with a short story appearing in "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction" in 1978, the publication of Stephen King's epic work of fantasy-what he considers to be a single long novel and his magnum opus-has spanned a quarter of a century. I resonate to her way of thinking because it chimes well with my own interest in the ‘moral’ quality of violence: when people who do bad things think they are doing the right thing, out of a sense that they are morally right. Morality explains a lot of the terrible things that we do to one another. This claim isn’t unique to Manne or to me, of course. Another book that could have ended up on my list is Virtuous Violence by Alan Fiske and Tage Rai which argues that a lot of violence is motivated by moral principles—it summarises a lot of interesting research in this area.

Agreed! This is a very timely book in the light of the current ‘Me Too’ movement. She describes sexual harassment and sexual assault, and she has a moving chapter on strangulation. She spends a lot of time on the case of Eliot Rogers, this man who felt he was always rejected by women, and then went on a shooting spree, killing many people, and finally killing himself. She describes these cases in some depth, and provides a really interesting analysis. I see this analysis as the mirror image of David Livingstone Smith’s, although they could both be right for different cases. Shaw momentarily brings up the idea that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” but abandons the point without too much exploration. Again, subjectively true, but in purely rational terms, there must be some kind of agreement on what is right and what is wrong or else we fall apart as a society. Despite the bad rap the book gets from the skeptics - and the embracing of it by crazy fundies and crazy tin-foil hatters alike - Terry doesn't really focus hugely on so-called cults. While he refers to some (such as the notorious Process, the so-called Chingons, a cult centered around Yonkers, etc.) the book is more about dope than the Devil and if any cult is truly involved, it would appear to involve Scientology moreso than Satan.

The Exorcist by William Blatty. I read it when I was 13. After only a few chapters, Regan’s behaviour disturbed me enough that I became terrified, not just of the contents but of the book itself, so I buried it under a pile of other books in my bedroom. The next day I hid the book in the garden shed. Yet even then I sensed its supernatural powers would reach me. So the following day I cycled some distance from home and threw it in a bin … I’m over 60 and have never returned to the novel nor will I.” ID2765618 It seems like the book is one of those cases where if you put enough time, effort and energy into searching for any possible clues, a thousand can be fabricated. But even more than that, Terry seems to even create evidence which he later announces is 'fact'. What a hero! Yes. The consequences of this are extremely serious. When one person is violent to another this sometimes leads to what the victim sees as a justifiable and proportionate retaliation; but in the eyes of the person whom he takes action against, that retaliation is going too far, and so it provokes an even greater counter-reaction. And so on. If Baumeister is right, the escalation of violence in these sorts of circumstances is inevitable since the recipient always sees the violence against him as worse than anything he had previously done.