Controlling Evil and the Blurred Line of When it Occurs

In this weeks reading we read about how when people are told to do something evil, it creates a confusion about what the line between good and evil is, and that when there is confusion for the line between good and evil, the person is more likely to do the evil act. As well, we read about how people will come up with a argument against an evil act that doesn’t state that it is an evil act but is valid to the person asking them to do evil such as I don’t have the right tool to do this act.

I agree that this happens. It makes sense that people would be more likely to do an evil act if they aren’t even positive that it is an evil act. It also makes sense that people would try to say something valid to authority rather than telling authority. No this is wrong. The author says though that everyone would do this if presented in this scenario. While I cannot see myself doing this, there is no way for me to say whether I or any other person never presented with a scenario like this would do it. But it seems logical given the nature of these situations that these thoughts on how people act would happen.

We also talked about when it is/if it is okay to control someone because we think they have the capacity for evil. A consensus was not made but we talked about different factors like medication, and eugenics.

While medication makes sense to me because, as it is now with medication, there would need to be proper consent given to start someone on medication (a proper procedure), eugenics to me is not acceptable. The blurred line for eugenics already exists and eugenics isn’t even occurring yet. There are already people who argue that eugenics should be used to remove deafness, to which the deaf community responds by saying that doing that would be removing a group of people, a community, a culture – essentially genocide. If this act of evil is already being debated as whether it is in fact evil or not, how could we justify using eugenics the same way to control for people who are evil? A predisposition does not mean they WILL be evil. Thus, we may be taking away an element of society that we don’t need to. For example, people who are less phased by seeing gruesome things, such as doctors, might have qualities that in utero would look similar to someone who is going to be evil. When do we decide that someone is going to contribute to society or that someone is going to be evil? Is taking away evil really worth taking away these productive people at the same time?

In Netflix’s Black Mirror, an episode called Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too, the character Ashley is being prescribed illegal medication by a doctor on her Aunt’s behalf in order to keep her from acting in a dark demeaner. When Ashley does not take this medication, she has a negative outlook on life, she writes about how angry she is, and lashes out at her aunt for doing the things she is doing to her.

Her Aunt probably gives her this medication thinking it is okay to do so because she is keeping Ashley money and therefore there is money coming in to provide for them. More importantly, she is being given this opportunity to give these pills by a doctor that knowingly knows what is being done with them. Although the Aunt knows that they are illegal, she probably does not think that giving them to her is bad when a doctor is enabling her to do it. Then when she can no longer control Ashley, she forces Ashley to overdose on the pills she hasn’t taken because the doctor said it will put her in a coma.

She probably does not see the act of forcing her into a coma as evil because the doctor agrees with her actions. As being a person with power over this situation (to give the medication and knowledge of the coma without acknowledging the evil to this action) the doctor is probably allowing the line of evil and not evil to be blurred. If the Aunt was not provided with the knowledge that it would just be a coma or the medication in the first place, she would probably think to herself, I don’t have access to this resource, so I won’t. A thought talked about in the reading for this week – an objection that is thought to be valid to, in this case, the doctor with the ability to enable and start the actions of the aunt.

This could relate to the idea of controlling someone with the potential for evil so that they cannot commit evil. If Ashley’s Aunt thought that Ashley’s negative attitude could result in evil, the outcome still probably would have been the same: medication being given to Ashley, and a grasp for control by overdosing Ashley when she stops taking the pills and endangers the “happy Ashley.”

An article by Campbell and Vollhardt (2014) hypothesized that there would be a relationship between believing in evil and endorsement of violence to be used to stop evil acts. Measures were responded to online about good and evil, endorsement of using violence to stop evil acts, and questions about the policy of conflicts within groups. The results showed a correlation between believing in evil and endorsement of violence to be used to stop evil acts. It was also shown that belief in evil was a predictor of endorsement of violence to be used to stop evil acts. In other words, having the belief that there is evil in the world predicts that there will be endorsement of violence to be used to stop evil acts.

This shows that if people could control evil that they see in society, they would control it. The line of when to control it seems to be when someone shows evidence that they are going to commit an evil act or are in the midst of an evil act. This act of control does not impose on the internal workings of a person but rather the external actions of a person doing evil. This adds a new element to the discussion of how to control evil and offers one that does not impose on the person’s free will, or human rights.

In relation to the Netflix show, this article can be used to say that the Aunt could have used external controls, such as amendments to Ashley’s contact, in order to keep Ashley as “happy Ashley” producing and performing upbeat happy content for her fans.

Campbell, M., & Vollhardt, J. (2014) Fighting the good fight: the relationship between belief in evil and support for violent policies. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40(1), 16-33.