Evil: Inside Human Violence And Cruelty [PATCHED]
The author concentrates on the point that instead of punishing the offender, one should initiate the steps to remove the evil mindset which compel that offender to do so. The author firmly believes that if we understand the evil mind which is present inside the person, then society can be free of violence and cruelty. The author firmly believes that the offender should be punished in such a manner that he /she should realize that the factor which drives them to commit any act is not only the enemy of the society but also the enemy of themselves.
Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty
By observing the belief of the author in the aforesaid circumstances we can come to the conclusion that the purpose on which the author solely believes can be attained on the basis of Deterrent theory and Reformative theory. If the judiciary, while imposing any sort of punishment, will emphasize a bit on these theories, the same will be beneficial for the welfare of society at large. Indian Judiciary to some extent may believe in these factors, for instance, capital punishment in India is imposed on very rarest on the rare cases, where it seems that all other adequate punishment will be failed for the purpose of justice which is required to be done. Therefore, by these theories we can kill the evil inside the human being which compels him to commit any offense.
People who do bad things often tend to believe that their actions are on the side of the good, or they rationalize that their actions are justified or not such a big deal. Biological and cultural evolution have conferred many brakes on violence and malice, and have favored cooperation and even compassion. In the long view of history, there has been an uneven but unmistakable trend toward less violence and more interdependent cooperation within and between human societies.
In his book The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution (New York: Pantheon, 2019), the primatologist Richard Wrangham, who has spent his career studying the ecology of primate social systems and the evolutionary history of human aggression, highlights the contrast between the relatively low levels of human aggression within-group (compared with other primates, humans are very tolerant and unreactive to provocation) versus the much higher levels of between-group human aggression. He concludes that reactive aggression (see definitions provided earlier in this article) has progressively diminished much more in humans compared with other primates, whereas proactive aggression (which is more often, though not exclusively, directed at members of another group) remains quite high in humans. (To be clear: while humans have far better control of reactive aggressive impulses compared with other primates, most individual acts of human violence are still reactive rather than proactive). Wrangham hypothesizes that the reduction of reactive aggression in humans was brought about by a process of self-domestication, analogous to the selective breeding of domesticated animals for traits of tameness (or analogous to the domesticated silver foxes experiment in Siberia). He cites bonobos as an example of self-domestication (through different means and driven by different factors, compared with humans). His hypothesis for humans is that self-domestication was achieved in large part by the acquisition of language and also by a process of what amounted to capital punishment: members of a hunter-gatherer group would conspire to kill an individual who was behaving too aggressively or tyrannically. While these would have been relatively uncommon occurrences, the cumulative effect over time would have been to remove the most aggressive men from the gene pool. Wrangham makes it clear that this theory is not an endorsement of capital punishment in modern society. The anthropologist Christopher Boehm also proposed this hypothesis in his book Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame (New York: Basic Books, 2012).
Another very important angle on human aggression comes from evolutionary psychology theories of sexual conflict in human mating, which contributes to a sizeable proportion of all human violence. Those theories are very well articulated by David Buss in When Men Behave Badly: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment, and Assault. (New York: Little, Brown Spark, 2021).
To understand how attitudes could be so vastly different across cultures, I started working with the anthropologist Alan Fiske at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Together, we analysed violent practices across cultures and history. We examined records of war, torture, genocide, honour killing, animal and human sacrifice, homicide, suicide, intimate-partner violence, rape, corporal punishment, execution, trial by combat, police brutality, hazing, castration, duelling, feuding, contact sports, and the violence immortalised by gods and heroes, and more. We combed through first-person accounts, ethnographic observations, historical analyses, demographic data, and experimental investigations of violence.
Sometimes this can have the effect of reassuring the observer. Remember, that from the observer's point of view, the most problematic aspect of the situation is the fact that the perpetrator's action manifestly violated the rules of the dyad, the most blatant violation being the aggressor's refusal to recognize dependency / vulnerability as worthy of protection. That not only turns the aggressor into a dangerous and inhumane person but also undermines the observer's world view: The perpetrator's actions have shattered what the observer considers to be obvious, certain and axiomatic to the understanding of human nature. If the aggressor expresses sincere regret and is prepared to pay a price for his misdeed, compatibility between observer and aggressor could be reinstated. While the transgression is still perceived as very serious and remains unforgivable, some aspect of the fundamental moral matrix within which the observer conducts his affairs is restored. The observer feels more at ease as the dyadic rules have triumphantly reemerged within the perpetrator's mind. The expression of regret may also affect another one of the four criteria for attributions of evil: It may reduce the perception of extreme asymmetry between the sides because, having expressed regret, the aggressor is now perceived as more humane and vulnerable. It is as if the aggressor has once more become part of the human community: The object he perceives is like that seen by the observer.
Emotions constitute an important category of the psychological causes of aggression and violence. Although it would be absurd to suggest that emotions are the sole or primary causes of aggression, they constitute a very important and proximal factor. Ultimately, violent acts consist of individual human beings inflicting harm on other human beings. The emotional states of the perpetrators at those moments can have a decisive effect on the degree of violence and even on whether any aggression occurs at all. 041b061a72