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An Invention for Eradicating Individual and Group Evil

A Scientific Understanding of Complex Adaptive Systems Is The Cure for Group Evil:

Justice Instinct and it's Relationship to Group Evil
See how game theory can be used to replace the court's archaic mandate of administrating justice with the mature mandate of administrating respect and cooperation

Understanding Group Evil

Spontaneous Group Evil.
On Nov 19 2005 in Haditha Iraq, our own highly disciplined American Marines massacred more than 24 people including women and children. This happened immediately after a roadside bomb went off and killed two of the Marines. You simply cannot know about incidents like these and fail to understand how fear, anger and shock (lets call this mixture outrage) are linked to a loss of reason and a high disposition towards violence.

The group's high disposition for violence was the natural result of group members trying to dump their fear, anger, and shock. And their loss of reason, which always accompanies outrage, made all non-group members (the civilians) seem like reasonable places to dump it. Those Marines suffered an unspeakable horror and their reaction was equally terrible. While this action was not premeditated or organized, it shows that even the very best and most highly disciplined of us will lose our reason and indiscriminately kill when certain environmental conditions are satisfied. Diabolical people exploit those conditions and sometimes create them in order to incite evil behavior.

When comparing the behavior of these marines, who saw their friends destroyed by a roadside bomb, with the behavior of our entire nation, who saw our countrymen destroyed in the Twin Towers, we cannot miss the similarity. In both cases retribution was taken against people that had nothing to do with the attack, and in both cases the majority defaulted to the judgment of their leaders. Of course we can not excuse these men for what they did, but we must not fail to understand, that not only could any one of us have done the same thing, we in fact did, only on a much larger and more horrific scale. The truth is, if our entire country had not attacked the Iraqi nation in misplaced outrage, then our marines could not have attacked Iraqi people in misplaced outrage. When these men are sentenced, they will be receiving the punishment we all deserve.

Organized Group Evil
The previous article Understanding Evil shows a photograph taken during a lynching. This photograph is extremely difficult to look at. Still, you can't defeat Evil if you won't examine it. Notice all the people standing around totally unafraid to show their faces. This demonstrates that these people can't tell that they are doing evil work. This highlights the deceit component that accompanies acts of organized group evil and explains why this type of evil is able to persist among generally good people. Most of the people in this photo are engaged in this lynching because they have accepted someone else's judgment without question. In acts of organized group evil, (lynching, premeditated massacre, ethnic cleansing, genocide, witch hunts and most wars), there are always a few leaders. The rest are followers that have turned their minds and consciences over to them. What we need to understand is; "how are leaders able to get a group of people to abdicate their conscience, their reason, and the law?" It's simple; all you need do is enrage them. If you do this they will start killing all by themselves. Even the most disciplined people will kill indiscriminately when sufficiently enraged as we know from Haditha Iraq.

In the case of the lynching, we have a group of undisciplined people who are predisposed to bigotry and outrage as a result of cultural programming that started the day they were born. These people have been enraged by group leaders and then told to release that rage by lynching those two men. In their enraged state, most of these people are unable to reason and are extremely receptive to any suggestions that will allow them to vent their emotions and return to a normal relaxed state.

Some group members, on the other hand, are calm, but follow along because they trust their leaders to decide for them what is right and wrong.

Finally, many group members are still thinking for themselves and know that lynching is evil but participate for fear that they themselves might become lightning rods for the release of mindless mob emotion. Or worse, they fear that they might be deliberately targeted by the leaders.

But, what are the leaders responding to?
That's simple. They acting upon one or more of the lies listed in the previous article Understanding Evil. Most of these leaders have been conditioned from birth to believe these lies and have had many years to develop convincing arguments for their validity.

Many other factors are involved in organized group evil, but the most important things to understand are:
1. People enraged are highly prone to violent behavior because violence allows them to dump anger and return to a normal relaxed state.
2. Rage can not be dumped without an object to receive that rage.
3. Individuals and group members have difficulty reasoning when enraged.
4. Thinking individuals are generally afraid to challenge the will of an enraged group.
5. People in groups tend to allow group leaders to do their reasoning for them and are therefore highly open to suggestion.
6. Diabolical leaders deliberately incite group rage and then use suggestion to trigger violence against others.
7. Diabolical leaders are acting upon the belief of one or more of the lies listed in the previous article Understanding Evil

Eradicating Group Evil


Stopping Group Evil Before It Starts
This can be accomplished by providing people with:
1. An interesting and challenging environment where it is possible for people to meet their own needs and develop their full potential.
2. Better communication. The more video enabled mobile phones, computers, and Internet access people have, the less opportunity there will be for group evil.
3. A secure environment with a respectful and responsive police force. People are not likely to be hostile if they feel perfectly safe.
4. A fair and accessible justice system. People will not take matters into their own hands if they believe their justice system will punish those who Harm, Exploit, Molest, Manipulate, Disparage, Dismiss, or Dominate other people.
5. Citizenship training that starts in kindergarten and continues throughout high school where young people are taught tolerance and respect for the well being and autonomy of others and the self, negotiation skills, how to ask for protection, where to apply for conflict resolution, and how to use the courts.
6. Each and every child must be inoculated against Evil in the following manner:
We must teach our children that we become infected with evil the instant we believe that it's ok to Harm, Exploit, Molest, Manipulate, Disparage, Dismiss, or Dominate other people; that we spread evil anytime we represent the well-being and autonomy of others or the self as unimportant; And that we do evil anytime we Harm, Exploit, Molest, Manipulate, Disparage, Dismiss, or Dominate another person. Finally, our children must learn about the list of lies in the previous article Understanding Evil, and fully understand why they must not accept them or act upon them.

Laugh at Evil
Although there is nothing funny about the KKK, it was nearly wiped out by laughter in the 1930's and has never recovered more than a small fraction of it's original membership. What happened is that a mole in the organization collaborated with the writers of the Superman radio show. When the show aired, they gave way all their passwords, lampooned all their bizarre rituals, portrayed them as bumblers, and referred to their leadership structure with the same ridiculous titles that they used in real life. Right after the show was aired; the KKK lost almost all of it's membership and has never recovered. Laughter is the other way to release outrage and its a way to get people to look at your issues. We need to get as many comedians as possible on the frontlines in the war on Evil.

Common Terminology for Communicating About Evil.
As of this writing there is still no widely accepted clinical definition of evil that can be used in our court system. The subject of evil is not taught in schools and as far as I know, no one has ever earned a doctors degree in this field of study. We can't stop evil if we don't understand it, and we can't understand it if we can't even define it. We need a definition of evil that we can all agree on so that we can talk to each other about it. I define Evil as disrespect for the well-being and autonomy of another or the self. I propose that all causes of group evil can be traced back to Evil Thoughts (in the form of disrespect for the well-being and autonomy of others), Sickness (in the form of excessive or misplaced fear, anger, or desire), Panic or Outrage (due to stress or third party provocation), Miscommunications, Entrapment in a Game Theory Dilemma, or Predation by a Complex Adaptive System.