The Banality of Evil

Nothing is good or evil in itself.  Evil is a concept that people who are not religious have trouble understanding.  It can be thought of as an absence of good, but action or inaction can push things to one side or the other.  When they hear the word evil, non religious people might think of torturers, murderers, dictators, or regimes, but what puts these villains on the wrong side of the fence is their actions.  Those who have power are adept at justifying their actions, whether they are for the common good or the common ill.  Their actions will be judged negatively if they are based only on expediency, selfishness, ignorance, or neglect. 

The tabloid press was recently occupied by a 35 year old mother who in a hot July went on a trip to another city with a new boyfriend and let her 18 month old child die of thirst and hunger.  She originally gave birth to the baby in a washroom because she didn't know she was pregnant, and had been heard to say the baby was an obstacle to getting on with her life.  She defended herself by saying "Nobody liked me when I was a child, I had no friends." but she had employed enough mental gymnastics to allow her helpless daughter to die.  Some mothers suffer from postpartum depression and have been known to kill their children.  Was her inaction evil?  Was it a mental illness?  

People who do evil are aware of the consequences of their actions but mentally ill people are not cognizant of the results. The evil one is assumed guilty while the person with a serious psychological problem is not. Psychiatric conditions are considered to be involuntary, while in behavioural disorders, choices are made.  One of the choices available is inaction with full knowledge of the probable consequences. If a person has a toothache they can go to a dentist to have the problem resolved or they can do nothing.  Their inaction will probably result in even more pain, but there may be factors that stop them from doing the right thing, like fear or finances.  Their teeth might completely decay and they will have painful abscesses, but they will not act as if by closing their eyes and ignoring the evidence, magical thinking will make the problem go away.

The mother who allowed her baby to die, was able to convince herself to stay away from home longer than she knew was reasonable, but she deceived herself into believing everything would turn out fine.  She left the child with two bottles of milk, two of water, and one of iced tea for the few days she was away, but when day three came around and she couldn't get a ride home, she figured the baby would be good for another day.  If anyone she knew asked her about the child, she told them her sister was looking after her daughter. Perhaps in her mind she believed it. She was afraid to ask her new companion to take her home because he didn't want to know about the baby and was full of insults about her stupidity.  When enough days had passed and she began to doubt her own fantasy that someone had gone into her flat to look after the child, she also knew it was too late and that the child might be dead.  If the child was already dead, there was no hurry to go home, so she stayed away for 6 days, while a small part of her brain continued to believe she would find the child alive. The deceased child had eaten part of her diaper.  The mother said she never meant to harm her daughter.
"I was worried about her," she said, "but I was afraid of my boyfriend's reaction. I was afraid to talk to him because he was aggressive. Once he pushed me against a glass shopfront in an argument. I was nervous about asking him again to take me home.  He said he loved me, but it wasn't true. He just used me.”

She claimed she was abused as a child at the hands of a family friend, shunned by her family, and was sad and solitary.  There were drunken parental fights, missed birthday parties, no gifts, and no school friends because they all thought she was too serious.  She said she failed at school because she had no interest in studying, married young but miscarried and her husband divorced her because he said it was her fault.  Her family disputed all of these claims and said she was a normal child, perhaps on the slow side.

As a writer I am curious what her thoughts were while she put off going back home to save her child.  "If he's in a better mood tomorrow morning, I'll ask him again if he'll drive me home. I could take the train but that costs money I'd rather spend on other stuff.  Maybe the baby hasn't hasn't finished all of her bottles.  I left her five, which should be almost enough for at least two days.  Yesterday would have been the right day to go back, but my boyfriend was really affectionate in the afternoon and asked me to stay for another day.  He told me if I loved him, I'd stay, so that's what I did.  Sometimes the baby slept so soundly she went through the night without a bottle, and that was ten hours, so she could go for a while before she got hungry.  She was a chubby little thing anyway, everyone said so, but I really must go tomorrow one way or the other."

"It's already the fourth day and I should have gone back yesterday, but he didn't feel like going out to take me to the station.  Maybe my sister stopped by.  She knows where I leave the key.  Did I leave it there the last time I used it?  The baby would be so happy to see my sister because she would have been lonely and calling for me. I knew what being lonely was like.  I'd gone away for a day or two before and the baby wasn't any the worse for it when I got back.  She'd have to be an independent sort to make her way in this world.  Maybe she'd even found her way out of her crib.  She could stand up if she held onto something, and if she was hungry or thirsty enough she could get out."

"I really should get home no matter what he says.  Maybe he'll have time tomorrow.  The baby's going to be really hungry by now.  I know I would be starving after five days, but then she's just small and doesn't need much to keep her going. For sure my sister must have passed by and the baby is all right.  It would have been polite if she phoned me to tell me what she'd done, but then she was one of those who said I should have given the baby up for adoption so I don't  trust her. My phone is out of minutes and I asked to borrow his phone to call my sister but he told me I needed to learn to be independent.  What did I care about my family?  They'd never done anything for me.  He was right.  If I called my sister and she hadn't checked on the baby, she'd give me an earful I didn't want to hear."

The ability of a person to convince themselves of something that is contrary to all logic, is boundless, even if it means the death of an innocent.  "They probably had it coming," they'd say.   People are killed in so many tragic circumstances one wouldn't think the human race needed to add to the carnage by engaging in wars for territory or resources.  The way humans are able to mobilize their populations to go off and kill other people, is the same way that humans are able to kill their fellow man, is by Othering.  If a person, a tribe, or a nation are not like us, it is easy to put them into a box called "Them."  They are less human than we are.  If these people look different from me, dress differently, have different customs, worship differently, it is easier to keep them at a distance, and our fear of the unknown encourages that.  Governments are adept at manipulating their people into believing that the others are the bad guys, while the opposite government does the same.  Judging others as separate from ourselves is easy to do, and some factions, let's call them the evil ones, or the bad actors, encourage us to exaggerate our differences instead of appreciating our differences.  So-called evil, or incorrect behaviour can lurk just under the surface of any of us and is usually kept under control by our society's expectations, but it doesn't take much of a scratch in the surface of a supposedly good citizen, to reveal a darker nastier selfish side.  The tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde illustrates this idea.  The surface of Dr. Jekyll's respectable life is disturbed when he ingests a drug.  Although the good doctor can't remember the details of the nasty things he did as Mr. Hyde, this does not excuse the fact that he was the one who took the wrong action. He and not Mr. Hyde is the guilty party because the sane Dr. Jekyll knew there was a risk but he took it anyway.  Hitler and his ilk knew the consequences of their actions but undertook them anyway.  Whether we are soldiers marching off to a so-called patriotic war, or shrinkers from the truth and responsibility, the scales of good and evil can easily be tipped in the wrong direction.

When the court gave the neglectful mother a life sentence, they accepted the theory of evil, and ruled that although the mother had certain delusions, she was sane enough to know what she had done was wrong.  Once the sentencing was over and the mother was back in prison, she went on a hunger strike, which some thought was fittingly ironic, but she was in the hands of the judicial system, who didn't permit her to make a serious error of judgment on their watch.  She should be alive to remember what an evil thing she had done.