How our hypocrisy makes people act evil
“Hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue”
Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
We have seen before that every human being must have the potential to act evil. But this does not mean that we like to act evil under normal circumstances. Evil behavior may be sometimes rewarding, but it is also dangerous: others (people from the own group or another group) might retaliate. Because this is very likely, we generally much prefer to live cooperatively, in harmony with our group and in a state of ceasefire with other groups.
But when someone is not aware that it is normal to have evil strategies implemented in the mind, the following can happen: he or she comes into a situation where it is favorable to act evil, becomes aware of the strategy and behaves in an evil way according to this strategy. From this moment on, the person will think that it has an evil character, unlike „normal people“. The person will be inclined to repeat the behavior, assuming that it is unfortunately made to behave like this because of its bad character and that it is its fate to act like this again and again.
This is for example how cruel and obedient soldiers are made: a superior officer orders them to commit a severe crime (like raping a woman or killing a child) in a war zone. When the soldier experiences that he was capable of executing this order (and maybe enjoyed this even to some extent), he feels so much guilt that he will not want to go back to normal society. He becomes the willing servant of his superiors in committing more crimes. As doing evil is traumatizing also for the person doing the evil (we will see later why), this is very destructive for this person.
For some sensitive people it is enough that they sense the presence of evil strategies in themselves. They are disgusted and consequently reject themselves which can be very destructive and can also create very dangerous people. The catholic priests of the „holy“ inquisition come to my mind who tortured millions of „witches“ to death not so many years ago. The reason for this is: we see others they way we see ourselves. And if somebody believes that he is an exceptionally evil person, he will see others as evil. We will later see how this works.
Similar arguments can be made for the realm of sexuality. Many people (including women) watch „immoral“ porn and feel guilty about it. They think that they are detestable people and some give up their real sex life in favor of just watching porn. The many rape scenes in „game of thrones“ got often criticized in the media, but most likely a substantial percentage of the spectators (men and women) masturbated to this afterwards (and felt guilty about it). They probably contributed a lot to the success of the movies and made the producers a lot of money.
This is why we should 1. try to become aware of the hidden evil in us (at least to the point that we admit that it must be there) and 2. be honest and not try to make others believe that we are entirely „good“.
We are collectively lying about this all the time: we watch cruel movies where the „bad“ guys in the end gets killed in the most gruesome way. We pretend that we enjoy this because of the element of justice but in reality it is only because we enjoy the cruelty.