SOCIAL PROPAGANDA

Have you heard about a new book entitled, The Lucifer Effect? The following is copied and pasted directly from a website that sells the book:

What makes good people do bad things? How can moral people be seduced to act immorally? Where is the line separating good from evil, and who is in danger of crossing it? Renowned social psychologist Philip Zimbardo has the answers, and in The Lucifer Effect he explains how-and the myriad reasons why-we are all susceptible to the lure of the dark side. Drawing on examples from history as well as his own trailblazing research, Zimbardo details how situational forces and group dynamics can work in concert to make monsters out of decent men and women"

I happened to come across an interview with the author yesterday while channel surfing. It was on Fox. I found it disturbing. As a nihilist, I of course do not believe in good and evil. I consider such words to be virtual euphemisms of the language. Instead of being honest and saying what we really feel (like fear), we put on an act and substitute another word - evil.

As a nihilist I find that I am somewhat sensitive to language, in ways that a non-nihilist might not be. I will use the word good, but not in any ethical or moral way. I might say, for example, that a piece of pie is good. I will NOT say that a person's behavior is good (or bad), only tasteful or distasteful, desirable or undesirable, and of course what is tasteful or desirable is what I naturally sense to be so. I can honestly say that I have no taste for murder. I can also say (again in complete honesty) that I have no desire to commit murder or to be murdered (or to have someone I care about murdered). But just because I do not want it (or don't have a taste for it) does not mean that the thing (should it transpire) is evil.

I make a clear distinction between the real and the abstract.

Human behavior is real. It may be observed. It is sensible. Our response to human behavior is purely abstract, something that we feel on a purely emotional level.

We do not observe evil in the act of murder. We merely observe the act of murder. To call it evil is to respond to it emotionally. The evilness does not inhere within the act of taking a human life. It is a quality that we apply to it in much the same way that we might apply a coat of paint to a wall or piece of furniture.

On the television show yesterday, I noticed that not only the author of the book used the word evil as if it were an axiomatic given (with several references to Hitler), but that the broadcast journalists conducting the interview (and discussing it amongst themselves afterwards) also used it. They used the word evil without question, as if it were actually a real thing, some sort of measurable quality subsisting in the fabric of the universe, as if people actually behave in ways that are truly evil.

As I said, I find it disturbing that people really feel this way. I have no respect for the masses of human beings for being like this. They do not have the ability to see through the fog and haze of language and the distorted abstract thinking that erupts from that language. In short, they do not have the power to see the difference between the real and the abstract.

To be sure, they probably do have the ability to make such distinctions, but they seem to lack the gumption (or desire) to put forth the effort. So I guess, in a sense, you could say that I don't respect the vast majority of human beings living on this planet because they're just plain lazy.