Cancel Culture and the Myth of Pure Evil
I read an insane amount of books, and most are average and some just aren’t that great at all. But then, there are certain books that I read that I wish I could make mandatory reading for everyone. These are books that completely shift our perception of the world and help us remove the distorted lenses we’ve been wearing our entire lives. Most of these books are rooted in evidence-based psychological research, evolution, or philosophy. Some manage to combine all of these fields, and the book that book that’s at the top of this list for me is Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty by Roy Baumeister.
When I look at the world that’s filled with extreme polarization, cancel culture, and a push for limiting free speech, I’m regularly thinking about how it’s based one what Baumeister calls “the myth of pure evil”.
This piece was inspired by a Twitter rant I just went on while in the parking lot after getting groceries. One aspect of my mental health issues is rumination, and if I don’t get what’s in my brain on paper or talk about it, I can ruminate for hours on the same topic. A lot of my ruminations never reach the public and just bless the eardrums of my wonderful girlfriend. But then there are topics like this where I feel this urge to write about it publicly because I feel people either A) aren’t discussing it or B) aren’t looking at it from a specific angle.
Twitter is the worst place on earth for nuanced conversation, so I decided I wanted to dive a bit deeper into the topic. But here’s what I tweeted:
I was listening to Michael Shellenberger’s newest book San Fransicko and was thinking about how much shit he gets. After posting my podcast conversation with him about the addiction epidemic, I instantly had someone from my audience say the following:
Dove deep down a research hole on this guy and asked four journalists who know him and he is quite intent on shaming the homeless. Sigh.
And Michael isn’t the only one. I regularly have guests on the podcast who have written books that are seen as controversial. Two others that instantly come to mind are Carole Hooven for her book T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us and Kathryn Paige Harden for her book The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality.
The list goes on and on and on.
But aside from our innate tendency towards laziness and not forming our own opinions, when you actually sit down and talk with people about their ideas, opinions, and views, you see their humanity. In my recent podcast conversation with Monica Guzman about her upcoming book I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times, she hit the nail on the head. During the podcast, she brought up the fact that anger often comes from a place of concern. As a recovering addict, I found that anger and resentment also come from a place of fear.
So, I’m sitting here and ask myself, “Why do people want to cancel, silence, or deplatform people without even hearing them out?” and, “Why do our brains justify our anger and hatred towards someone without collecting as much information as possible for such a powerful emotion?”
Each time, I always come back to Roy Baumeister’s myth of pure evil.
While I highly recommend that you read his entire book on Evil, based one what I’ve already written here, you should know that my expectations aren’t too high that people will actually read a book. So, if you’d like, he actually wrote a paper on the specific topic about the myth of pure evil that you can find here.
And if you don’t feel like reading the entire paper, he’s the abstract:
We have a massive problem with black and white thinking as well as perspective taking. For all of my fellow Marvel Cinematic Universe nerds out there, one reason Black Panther was perceived as such a great movie was because we empathized with Killmonger. While we didn’t agree with his solutions, we empathized with the fact that he perceived what he was doing as good and justified.
What’s crazy is that when we look at the landscape of those who are being cancelled or even the backlash against the uncancellable like Dave Chappelle, none of them are trying to murder anyone.
The myth of pure evil is why we believe that there’s no room for discussion and we should just shut down conversations. It’s so much easier to just label somebody as evil than to even take a second to try and understand where they’re coming from or why they’re concerned. We believe that we have reached the peak of Moral Mountain and we see everything clearly. Those who disagree with us must be morally bankrupt and evil, so why should they even be allowed to speak or share their ideas?
I ask you to take just a few minutes and really sit on this question: what does it mean to be evil?
When we think of evil, we think of someone who has no regard for other people or living things. We think they get some twisted sense of pleasure from the suffering of others. And if you even think about that for a minute, you realize why evil is a myth.
The easiest way to snap out of the myth of pure evil that I’ve found is to take just a second and remember that they have families who they love deeply. Hell, some of them even have a pet that they would die for. If someone is willing to take a bullet for someone they love, how on Earth can we label them as evil?
Once we step back and realize everyone we instantly label as evil monsterous deeply cares about someone, the myth is dispelled. You can’t simultaneously be evil and have unconditional love for someone.
Again, I highly recommend you read Roy Baumeister’s book or other books on evil. There’s a tremendous amount of psychological research on the worst of the worst people. They cover serial killers, child murderers, pedophiles, and more.
And as I will continue to remind you, the authors, comedians, politicians, and others we want to label as level haven’t done most of these terrible things. If I had a gun to my head and had to put people at the top of my list that are even close to evil it’d be as follows:
Presidents, politicians and military people in power who have lied to the public and/or made decisions that resulted in drone strikes and other massive amounts of civilian casualties.
The same people who fund warlords doing child sex trafficking and committing genocide
And how they take money from massive corporations while people are dying due to a lack of healthcare
These people are as close to evil as I think you can get, but even still there’s much more to take into consideration.
So, getting back to cancel culture and trying to silence people we find “evil” or think they have dangerous ideas, they’ve done nothing close to this, and they aren’t running our countries.
Even the internet trolls who just want to watch the world burn don’t fall into the category of “evil” and shouldn’t. Most of them are extremely lonely and depressed, which has led to their nihilism that’s a direct effect of outside influences.
I’m against victim mentality and want to hold people accountable for their wrongdoings, but the myth of pure evil completely skews our way of thinking.
I’ve been on a recent kick trying to convince as many people as possible to fully consume the content from people they think are “evil” or even dislike tremendously. I’ll give you a quick list of people I despise, but I’ve read their entire book. This means that I’ve spent hours listening to nobody else’s thoughts or opinions but theirs. I’ve also included some who I’ve listened to them for hours on their podcast while monitoring my boiling blood.
Gad Saad
Dave Rubin
Tim Pool
Dinesh D’Souza
Donald Trump
James Lindsay
Sure, I get furious while consuming this content, and Joe Rogan is definitely inching towards making my list. But even with Joe Rogan, as a content creator, I understand where he’s coming from. He’s just some random guy who happened to blow up, so now his opinions have far more weight than he ever expected. Rogan is a very difficult discussion involving ethics and responsibility, and I don’t necessarily have all the answers.
For all of the others, they fall into what I see as people fueling polarization for their own personal gain, but I wouldn’t label a single one as “evil”.
I’m not trying to toot my own horn, and I don’t think I’m all that special. But I do hope I can endure enough torture to inspire others to at least consider doing the same.
The first step towards healing is seeing at least an ounce of humanity in the people we dislike. The second you dehumanize anyone, you’re becoming what you claim you’re against.
I’m currently writing a book about how we’re manipulated by the news, social media, technology, advertisers, and each other. It dives into the psychological history of manipulation, our biases, tribalism, and more.
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