Theodicy

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Theodicy

• Jay M. Uomoto, Ph.D.
• Seattle Pacific University

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Necessary Evil

• Molinsky Margolis (2005). Necessary evils and
  interpersonal sensitivity in organizations.
  Academy of Management Review, 30, 245-268.
• Individuals perform an act that causes harm to
  another person in the service of achieving a
  great good.
• Layoffs
• Delivering tough love in counseling
• Health care workers performing painful procedures
• Negative feedback on assignments
• Police officers evicting people from homes

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Necessary Evil

• In all cases, performers of necessary evils must
  knowingly and intentionally cause pain and
  suffering as part of the requirements of their
  professional positions (p.245).
• Acceptable in the field of medicine
• A significant consideration in research
  institutional review boards

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Necessary Evil

• Necessary evil (in the context of business)
• a work-related task in which an individual
  must, as part of his or her job, perform an act
  that causes emotional or physical harm to another
  human being in the service of achieving some
  perceived grater good or purpose (p.247)
• Evil acts

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Necessary Evil

• Three distinguishing characteristics
• A valued objective requires that they be done,
  hence making them necessary
• They inflict ineradicable harm, and they
  therefore entail evil,
• They are integral to the role the performer
  occupies thus making them mandatory

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Evil Behavior and Intent

• Are there evil people and evil institutions?
• Is it just business? Downsizing to Right
  Sizing
• Monopolies - Bell Telephone Microsoft
• Institutional racism
• Ageism and discrimination
• Nazi movement White Supremacy Hate Crimes
• All break community

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Evil Behavior and Intent

• Individual evil
• Some people believe abortion is an evil
• Stem cell research causes an evil
• Antisocial personality psychopathy sociopathy
• Evil Acts versus Evil People versus Evil Drives
• Human responsibility will and evil acts
• All break community

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Evil Intent

• Henry Richards, Ph.D. in T. Millon, et al. (eds.)
  Psychopathy Antisocial, Criminal, and Violent
  Behavior
• Paranoid-Narcissistic Spectrum
• Aggression as a central organizing principle
• normal guild and self-esteem are rarely, if
  ever, experiencedguilty intent, does not exist
  on a subjective level for such individuals.
  Instead, pathological identifications and
  renunciations, both at the unconscious level of
  object relations and at the conscious level of
  belief systems and values, engender intentions
  centered on aggression and destructiveness. This
  evil intent, or ill will, becomes essential to
  the individuals self-cohesion (p.69)

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Evil Intent

• impediments to developing the will to be
  morally responsible, abnormal or defective moral
  conscience, ineffective inhibitory
  mechanismsself-regulation hinges largely on the
  use of aggression (p.69).
• Violence and destructiveness are addictive since
  violence and aggression are self-regulatory.

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Evil Behavior

• Are people who have certain personality disorders
  evil?
• Do people who have personality disorders act
  evil?
• Does one have the capacity suppress evil?
• Do those who have certain personality disorders
  pre-wired for evil acts?

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People of the Lie M. Scott Peck

• A psychology of evil
• Pecks 8-year-old son Why, Daddy, evil is
  live spelled backwards?
• Evil is in opposition to life
• Evil is that which opposes the life force
• It has to do with murder, unnecessary killing,
  killing that is not required for biological
  survival (p.42)

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People of the Lie

• Evil is that which kills spirit. Murder of the
  body or spirit
• Evil, then, for the moment, is that force,
  residing either inside or outside of human
  beings, that seeks to kill life or liveliness.
  And goodness is its opposite. Goodness is that
  which promotes life and liveliness (p.43)

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People of the Lie

• When a child is grossly confronted by
  significant evil in its parents, it will most
  likely misinterpret the situation and believe
  that the evil resides in itself (p.62).
• Evil engenders a sense of confusion in us. Lies
  confuse (p.66). Could the patient be doing
  something to confuse me?
• Evil people are characterized by the consistency
  of their destructiveness. (p.71).

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People of the Lie

• Scapegoating a common feature of those who are
  evil. (p.73)
• Project their evil on the world, on to others.
• Often maintain the appearance of moral purity.
  While they seem to lack any motivation to be
  good, they intensely desire to appear good.
  Their goodness is all on a level of pretense.
  It is, in effect, a lie (p.75)
• Malignant narcissism pride goeth before the
  fall

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Examples?

• My Lai Massacre
• Timothy McVeigh
• Jeffrey Dahmer

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Pecks DSM Definition of Evil

• A type of personality disorder
• Abrogation of responsibility
• A. Consistent destructive, scapegoating
  behavior, that may often be quite subtle
• B. Excessive, albeit usually covert, intolerance
  to criticism and other forms of narcissistic
  injury
• Prounounced concern with a public image and
  self-image of respectability, contributing to a
  stability of lifestyle but also to
  pretentiousness and denial of hateful feelings or
  vengeful motives
• Intellectual deviousness, with an increased
  likelihood of a mild schizophrenic-like
  disturbance of thinking at times of stress.

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Are Ordinary People Evil

• The capacity for evil ingredients
• Fallen individuality
• Fallen community
• Fallen nature

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Are Ordinary People Evil?

• Fiske, Harris Cuddy (2004). Why ordinary people
  torture enemy prisoners. Science, 306,
  1482-1483.
• the power of the interpersonal situation
• Abu Ghraib resulted in part from ordinary social
  processes, not just extraordinary individual
  evil.
• Cf. Stanley Milgram studies
• Virtually anyone can be aggressive if
  sufficiently provoked, stressed, disgruntled, or
  hot

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Are Ordinary People Evil

• 800th Military Police Brigade guarding Abu Ghraib
  prisoners
• Provoked and stressed
• In constant danger
• Taunted and harrassed by some of the very
  citizens they were sent to save
• Comrades were dying daily
• Their acts may not be evil yet the context may
  have been