[LINK] "A Person’s A Person, No Matter How Evil"

[rfmcdonald]

As the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, as speculation about the identity and motives of the bomber continues, I thought I'd help publicize in the blogosphere this Wonkman post. Responding to an Internet meme calling for intentional, practiced ignorance of terrorists' identities and motives, Wonkman makes the point that intentional blindness does nothing at all to help prevent, diagnose, or otherwise deal with terrorist violence.

We want to live in a world where only bad people do bad things, and where bad people are clearly and readily identifiable. We want to live in a world where every pedophile has a tragic past and a creepy mustache, every serial killer is a muttering schizophrenic, every terrorist has been brainwashed until no traces of humanity remain.

We don’t want to contemplate the lives and choices and motives of these people, because that involves engaging with parts of our own humanity that (rightly!) make us uncomfortable.

And, ultimately, we simply don’t want to reckon with the fact that the capacity to do evil things rests within us all. Evil is not some lightning bolt that comes out of the sky, hits a random target, and inspires them to go on a rampage, but something inherent to all of us as human beings. Evil is the thousand and one sins that linger within us all: temper; jealousy, jadedness; ego and pride; entitlement; zeal for control; privilege; substance dependency.

[. . .]

We need to get over this cringe: this belief that evil acts are only committed by obviously evil people. We need to recognize and discuss the capacity that exists within everyone to be evil. And most importantly, we need to sit up and pay attention to that capacity within ourselves and others.