Making Evil: The Science Behind Humanity’s Dark Side

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The Rape of Nanjing by Iris Chang is still unfinished on my bookshelf. It is a well researched book that details the Japanese atrocities in Nanjing during the Sino-Japanese war but it is difficult to face the detailed descriptions of their inhumanity to fellow human beings and I had to put it aside. Maybe I will steel myself to finish it one day.” lwb48_zh Terry uses Berkowitz's interviews as more proof. I found the interviews to be entirely made up of leading questions and Berkowitz playing a terribly obvious game of GO FISH. His refusal to answer reads as ignorance and entertainment on his behalf, not scared hints. This book has definitely started some interesting discussions in our household....my husband and I are still debating what we think about the nature of evil and what situations might lead us to make an "evil'' choice. We had a long discussion this morning about how we perceive those who commit evil acts...do we see them as a person who committed an evil act...or do we judge them as an intrinsically evil person. Are there levels of evil? Are there really "evil'' people...and can "evil'' people have portions of themselves that are good? I think this book is going to be spurring debate in my household for some time to come. Healthy debate is a good thing!

Shaw takes some strange soap-box stances on things such as normalizing abhorrent sexual practices and suggesting that people harm animals because we’re protecting our brains from cuteness overload. PUH-LEASE. This new edition includes the fiftieth-anniversary fully corrected text setting and, for the first time, an extensive new index. From a "how seriously should I take this guy" perspective, I should probably also note that if the transcripts of the interviews Terry and his associates conducted with Berkowitz are accurate, they are at times very leading and allow Berkowitz to make non-committal responses that could be interpreted as supporting Terry's theories. Terry also claims to have found and removed evidence from a crime scene, which confused and dismayed me.Dr. Julia Shaw takes a close in-depth look at evil in her new book. But this isn't the sort of book that most might expect. It isn't a bloody dissection of evil behavior in detail, or a discussion of pros and cons about punishment or treatment for those who commit serious acts of violence or crime. Dr. Shaw instead looks at the science behind human behavior. She points out in her introduction that her book is NOT about philosophy, morality, religious views or about punishment/consequences for aberrant behavior....it's about WHY human beings do the things they do, what in the makeup of human beings allows violent or evil choices, and what behaviors seem to be present in a person to make them capable of evil. Dr. Shaw breaks down the wide concept of "Evil'' into smaller pieces, using science to explain human behavior. It was when Terry started stretching his theory to encompass a vast conspiracy that included the Manson murders that my "suspension of disbelief" really snapped. Everyone seems to want a grand theory for what went wrong in the 70's. And given the hysteria over Satanism and cults at the time we know people can start to make false connections or hear things on heavy metal albums which don't exist. I also thought Terry does this with Berkowitz's letters. That said, Terry's chapter on the Manson murders (despite his reaching) is full of fascinating details about celebrities and seedy drug connections which were largely covered up. In one fascinating set of experiments, he asked people to think about the worst thing that anyone has ever done to them, describe what happened, how they felt as victim of this, and so on. Then he asks people to think about the worst thing that they have ever done to someone else. The two get described in completely different terms. When evil is done to you, you see it as a terrible injustice, you see its effects as long-lasting. But when you describe something that you have done to someone else, there are always mitigating circumstances, explanations and justifications. The language is different. No matter how extreme the act of cruelty, the perpetrator’s story always introduces some factor that explains it: he was forced, or under great pressure, and besides, it wasn’t as serious as the victim says it is. So, we should not summarize a murderer’s character with the label “murderer” because we make mistakes too?! Why would someone attempt to use actions such as lying/infidelity/theft to defend someone who commits murder? This is quite the mental jump to make. If we didn’t label a murderer as a murderer, would that help them to not murder again? Truly struggling here.

After all the op-ed style writing and soap-boxing, everything comes down to the semantics of the word “evil,” instead of the actual science behind people who have dark, objectively negative impulses and how science explains these things. When we understand what leads to harm, we can begin to fight against it. This involves taking action to stop harm, fighting against our own urges to do harm, and helping people who have done harm to get better. And whatever we stand for, fight for, feel for, we must never dehumanise people. 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. All in all, I liked this book because it really made me think. I don't necessarily agree with all of Dr. Shaw's points, but I'm at least willing to seriously think it over and try to wrap my mind around it. This is a previously published edition of ISBN 9781619636071. An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.On murder, Shaw sees no evil: a person who has killed once in the heat of the moment doesn't deserve to be labelled a murderer; even Jeffrey Dahmer was apparently just lonely. There were also a lot of contradicting arguments in the book. One that stood out to me was Shaw’s stance on porn – it’s not that bad and we should stop being so critical of the porn industry and those obsessed with it, and maybe we should allow porn to be used in health classes. But later in the book goes on to wag her finger at misogyny, chastising society for allowing ourselves to become over-saturated with images of women that promote an unhealthy idea of sex and women’s bodies, ultimately leading to demeaning women in society. For Manne, misogyny is a belief that women should act a certain way towards men. When they don’t, violence and cruelty are often directed towards the women to punish them or to bring them in line. ” A sublime and seductive reading experience. Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, this enormously engaging portrait of a most beguiling Southern city has become a modern classic.