What evil looks like

Generally, people who do evil things don’t look any different than those who do good things. They smile and laugh. They eat. They sleep. They enjoy hobbies or activities. They watch TV or movies. They listen to music. They work. They love. They have friends. They have families. They do all of the normal things you and I do.

You may know people who have done evil, whether you know about it or not, whether they have been caught or not. You may walk by strangers that look normal, but have committed heinous acts. You may be one such person yourself. Not all evil is big. Much of it is small. But small things often lead to bigger.

“S/he seemed like a nice person,” the neighbors always say when some evil is found out and the person arrested.

Evil doesn't look like a movie villain! It hides in plain sight.

Evil people didn’t start that way. Have you ever seen a baby and thought, “wow, that kid is the next Hitler for sure!” NO! Of course not! Each child is innocent, and although they definitely come with their own built-in personality, the knowledge, values, and experiences they acquire, coupled with the choices they make are what molds them into who they become.

Put another way, every evil person could have made choices to become a good person.

You may know someone who could have become evil - someone who suffered abuse at the hands of supposed loved ones - who decided that the abuse ends with them and they would not perpetuate that abuse. They could have chosen differently. They could have chosen evil. They chose good.

This gives us hope that none of us has a fate not of our own choosing.

So how do people become evil?

The simple answer is: one small choice after another.

Just as the building of a skyscraper takes many, many steps to complete, our character likewise takes any number of steps to complete, with the formative and early adult years being the most critical. Few people change dramatically in their later adult years without serious effort.

The known histories of most evil people do not detail all of those little steps. Most such steps are private. Most such steps may be unknown to others. A lie here. Breaking a commitment there - even to oneself. Such acts cultivate selfishness. Justifications for increasingly bad behaviors are easier the more important one feels relative to others. Denial of responsibility also contributes. If one claims an evil act is because someone else "made them", or because "that's the way it is", or "I had no choice", it aids in justification to oneself.

Another avenue to evil is how malleable the brain is. By repeating almost any act, one can wire one’s brain to trigger the pleasure response when doing that act. This can be done with mundane and harmless things - like eating or drinking something that is an “acquired” taste - meaning, eating/drinking something any child or non-cultural-native would think tastes like garbage. It can also be done with disgusting and heinous things - like causing the pain of animals, for example.

Similarly, proper emotional responses to things can be encouraged or diminished. Compassion or cruelty can be the result of either trying to feel what the other person feels, or in taking pleasure at their misery. There is a choice there, though it may not be obvious.

Once small steps toward evil are taken, like pride, selfishness, or heartlessness, bigger steps become easier. You’ve seen it in the news before. A killer may have started with bugs, then mice and rats, then larger pets, before finally making the step to humans.

Police officers have made similar steps. They began viewing those not in their uniform as ‘other’, or ‘enemy’. From there, they feel superior. They feel they have some authority or that they ARE the authority. They abuse that power in small ways at first, then more and more, until they are planting evidence, making false arrests, shaking down shop owners for cash, stealing evidence, and so on. In police states, they may justify detaining civilians for no reason, or because a neighbor made a claim the person talked against the state. From there, imprisonment, starvation, torture and murder are a common result.

Soldiers also can find themselves taking these steps. We have ample examples in the history books of mass murder, rapes, torture, and even cannibalism.

All of the people who have done these things started out the same as you and me. They could have chosen good. Why didn’t they, and what does it take to ensure one doesn’t choose evil?

While there are a lot of reasons people choose evil, there are two main reasons good people choose evil when pressure mounts: fear and convenience (or expediency).

Consider the abused child. For the duration of the abuse, they feel helpless to do anything about it. They fear every encounter. As a result, once they are old enough to perpetrate the same acts upon others, that fear has worked in them a dire need to feel control and they exert that control by abusing others.

Consider the Nazi police officers of WW2 Germany. There were some who were already policemen when the Nazis rose to power. They saw what happened to those who spoke out, so to protect their own lives, and maybe their family’s, they kept their mouths shut, then did what they were told. They felt it was expedient to not rock the boat. But they were also fearful of what would happen if they didn't follow orders. Eventually, they would round up Jews and other dissidents and ship them to concentration camps or kill them.

There are two things that people must have in order to become good people: an understanding of evil and good, and courage to choose good.

Consider those who operated the Underground Railroad before the US Civil War. They had courage to do something they knew was right despite grave consequences if they were discovered.

Consider Viktor Frankl who decided in a Nazi concentration camp that although all of his outward liberties were taken from him, that he remained the master of his mind and his emotions and did what kindnesses he could for other prisoners.

When we think of evil, we often think of great leaders that managed the killing of thousands or even millions of people. But did they kill all of those people? No, of course not. It took followers who actually did the acts, and like their leaders, they all started out as normal people. So are the leaders any more evil than those who acted out their wishes? How can they be?

So what does evil look like? It looks like you and me.