-Caveat Lector- The heart is deceitfull above all things-Jeremiah >All About Evil > >A moral philosopher makes the case that the 20th century >was even worse than we thought. > > >By STEVEN PINKER > >Barbarism was by no means unique >to the past 100 years, Jonathan >Glover tells us, but ''it is still right that >much of 20th-century history has been a >very unpleasant surprise.'' This was the >century of Passchendaele, Dresden, >Nanking, Nagasaki and Rwanda; of the >Final Solution, the gulag, the Great Leap >Forward, Year Zero and ethnic cleansing >-- names that stand for killings in the six >and seven figures and for suffering >beyond comprehension. The >technological progress that inspired the >optimism of the Victorians turned out >also to multiply the effects of >old-fashioned evil and criminal stupidity. > >Glover is a moral philosopher, whose >stock in trade is the hypothetical moral >dilemma. (A trolley is hurtling out of control. Five workers down the >track don't see it and will be killed if it continues. You can throw the > >switch and save them, but it will cause the death of one person standing > >on a spur. What should you do?) In this ''moral history of the 20th >century,'' Glover deftly analyzes some of its real and terrible moral >dilemmas. Is the bombing of civilians ever justified if it would shorten >a >dreadful war? Should the Allies have accepted Adolf Eichmann's offer to >trade a million Jews for 10,000 trucks? What kind of risk to self and >family should a moral person be expected to take in opposing a >terrifying >regime? > >But when it comes to the choices made by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, >Milosevic and their henchmen, moral dilemmas are beside the point. >Glover wants his profession to help us understand how great evils can >happen and how they might be prevented. That requires not just >philosophy but history and psychology. > >Most of ''Humanity'' is history: an account of the major atrocities of >the >century. In novelistic detail, Glover describes the wrenching realities >behind the just wars and the utopian social projects. The descriptions >are >heartbreaking, enraging, at times unbearable. No matter how bad you >thought the century was for human rights, Glover will convince you that >it >was even worse. The following vignette, though lacking the death and >gore of the others, encapsulates for me how the century's political >movements could obliterate all that we value in life: > >''A French ethnologist captured by the Khmer Rouge . . . befriended a >girl of about 3 whose father was marched away to probable death. He >played with her and grew fond of her, but she was forced to attend >indoctrination classes. Her smiling response to him was replaced by >sullenness. One evening, looking him in the face, she tried to insert >her >finger between his ankle and the rope that bound him. Finding that she >could, she called the guard to tighten the ropes.'' > >Glover's history is not original, of course, but his psychology is, >dramatically so. The prevailing wisdom among many intellectuals has >been that evil has nothing to do with human nature and must be >attributed >to political institutions. The anthropologist Ashley Montagu, at a time >when the ashes of 35 million victims of World War II were still warm (or > >radioactive), urged Unesco to declare that ''biological studies lend >support to the ethic of universal brotherhood.'' In 1986, Unesco and >several scholarly societies resolved that ''it is scientifically >incorrect to say >that war or any other violent behavior is genetically programmed into >our >human nature.'' Scientists who have dissented from this saccharine view >have been picketed, smeared and likened to Nazis. > >Glover does not let our species off so lightly. He shows that >distinctive >patterns of cruelty and callousness pop up repeatedly in history, >cutting >across times, places and political systems. He insists that ''we need to > >look hard and clearly at some monsters inside us,'' not to make us >pessimists but as ''part of the project of caging and taming them.'' For > >Glover argues that human nature encompasses not just destructive >impulses but ''moral resources'': humane impulses that sometimes recoil >from the intentions of the monsters. The course of history, and our >hopes >for the future, are shaped by struggles among these impulses inside >countless minds. > >The great contribution of ''Humanity'' is a dissection of these motives. > >This is not, as some might fear, an attempt to reduce history to >psychology. Glover makes it clear that the motives are responses to the >larger community and manifest themselves in different ways in different >social and political contexts. > >Here are some of the monsters. Pure, amoral self-interest. Sadism and >the thrill of the battlefield. Tribalism, which elevates the group above >the >individual and turns personal enmity into feuding, war and genocide. >Ideology, which can convince people that a struggle between groups -- >races for the Nazis, classes for the Marxists -- is inevitable and >necessary >for progress. The ''Hobbesian trap,'' in which a nation is tempted to >attack a neighbor out of fear that it would otherwise attack first, like >an >armed homeowner who surprises an armed burglar, tempting each to >shoot first to avoid being shot. > >Glover sees two countervailing moral resources. Human responses -- >sympathy, empathy and respect -- occasionally break through in people >committing vicious acts. Sometimes they are triggered by the intellect. >A >British World War II navigator, safely home after a bombing raid, says >to >the pilot, ''What about those poor sods under those fires?'' Entrenched >soldiers say, ''We don't want to kill you, and you don't want to kill >us, so >why shoot?'' At other times they are triggered by tangible signs of a >target's humanity. A soldier sees a fleeing man holding up his trousers. > >The mundane detail turns him from ''fascist'' to ''person,'' and the >soldier >loses the will to fire. An Afrikaner policeman chases a South African >demonstrator, club in hand. She loses her shoe, and chivalry makes him >hand it back. Their eyes meet, and he finds it impossible to club her. > >The other resource is moral identity, or self-respect -- the answer to >the >question ''Am I the kind of person who could do this?'' People >sometimes resist the pressure to harm others when it conflicts with how >they want to see themselves. A moral identity can come from a religion, >a >culture, professional mores (like the Hippocratic oath), a cosmopolitan >humanism or sometimes just an insistent voice inside us. > >In Glover's analysis, the horrors of the century took place when the >moral >resources were deliberately or accidentally disabled. Again and again he > >finds that atrocities are accompanied by tactics of humiliation and >dehumanization: pejorative nicknames, degrading conditions, humiliating >dress. They flip a mental switch and reclassify another individual from >''person'' to ''nonperson,'' making it as easy to torture or kill him as >it is >for us to boil a lobster alive. Some of the most indelible images in >''Humanity'' are of the ''cold jokes'' that brutes all over the world >have >used to strip their victims of dignity and make cruelty come easier. >Those >who poke fun at ''politically correct'' names for ethnic minorities will >be >reminded that they originally had a humane rationale. > >Sympathy can be turned off by physical distance from the victims, as in >aerial bombardment and remote-control warfare. It can also be >suppressed by sheer willpower. It is frightening to think that our >vaunted >ability to subdue emotional urges through the force of intellect and >conscience (allowing us to defer gratification and resist temptation) >also >allowed Nazi guards to overcome their visceral horror at what they were >doing and to persevere with distasteful acts that they thought served a >higher purpose. > >Like sympathy, the moral resource of identity can be insidiously eroded. > >No one is a saint, and most people calibrate their conscience against a >level of minimum decency expected of people in their peer group or >culture. When the level drifts downward, people can commit horrible >crimes with the confidence that comes from knowing that ''everyone does >it.'' Euphemisms like ''resettlement to work camps,'' phased decisions >(in >which bombing targets might shift from isolated factories to factories >near >neighborhoods to the neighborhoods themselves) and the diffusion of >responsibility within a bureaucracy can lead conscientious people to >cause appalling outcomes that no one would ever willingly choose on his >own. > >GLOVER draws hope from the recurring breakthroughs of moral >resources and from the happy episodes in which they conspired to avert >disaster. During the Cuban missile crisis, Nikita Khrushchev and John F. > >Kennedy were reminded of the human cost of the nuclear brink they >were approaching, Khrushchev by memories of two world wars fought >on his soil, Kennedy by a graphic briefing of the aftermath of an atomic > >bomb. And each understood they were in a Hobbesian trap. Kennedy >had just read Barbara Tuchman's ''Guns of August'' and saw how the >leaders of great nations could sleepwalk into a pointless and awful war. > >Khrushchev, thinking like a game theorist, wrote to Kennedy: > >''You and I should not now pull on the ends of the rope in which you >have tied a knot of war, because the harder you and I pull, the tighter >this >knot will become. And a time may come when this knot is tied so tight >that the person who tied it is no longer capable of untying it, and then >the >knot will have to be cut.'' > >By identifying the trap, they could set the shared goal of escaping it. >In >the teeth of opposition from many of their advisers, both made >concessions that may have literally saved the world. > >In discussing topics of such gravity many authors would be tempted to >flaunt a moral superiority, but Glover does not. Though ''Humanity'' is >a >passionate book, the voice is measured and elegant, the arguments fair >and carefully reasoned. There are also moments of dark wit. Glover tells > >how the Bolshevik leaders cultivated a reputation for hardness, down to >their assumed names: Kamenev (man of stone), Molotov (the hammer), >Stalin (man of steel). He notes, ''A democratic politician who changed >his >name to 'Man of Steel' would, one hopes, have his political career >finished by the laughter.'' A mordant portrait of the Nazi philosopher >Martin Heidegger should be required reading for the many academics >who continue to treat him seriously. > >Glover took on a fearsome subject, and at times it got the better of >him. >Topics come and go unpredictably; arguments sometimes dribble off >without resolution. Relevant literatures in moral and political >philosophy >and social and evolutionary psychology are barely touched. No matter. >This is an extraordinary book: brilliant, haunting and uniquely >important. >Almost 40 years ago a president read a best seller, and the world >avoided a holocaust. I like to think that some of the leaders and >followers >of tomorrow will read ''Humanity.'' > > >Steven Pinker is the Peter de Florez professor of psychology at the >Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of ''How the >Mind Works'' and ''Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language.'' <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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