Human beings have varied genetic potentials, and the way they develop is profoundly shaped by experience. Human infants have a strong genetic propensity to develop powerful emotional attachment to their primary caretakers. However, the quality of attachment varies greatly. One widely used classification system differentiates between infants who are “securely attached” (who are secure and comfortable in their relationship to caretakers), those whose attachment is anxious/conflictful, and those whose attachment is avoidant.8 Infants with secure attachment to their parents or caregivers develop more successful relationships with peers in preschool and early school years.9
Moreover, the behavior of the caretaker seems to powerfully affect the quality of attachment. Greater responsiveness to the infant’s needs, more eye contact, and more touching and holding are associated with secure attachment.10 While the infant’s own temperament and actions are likely to influence – evoke or diminish – such caretaking behaviors, their principal determinant is the caretaker. Once a certain quality of attachment appears, it is still changeable. More or less stress in the life of the mother can change the quality of the infant’s attachment, presumably because the mother’s behavior changes.11
We have the potential to be either altruistic or aggressive. Security, the fulfillment of basic needs, the propagation of one’s genes, and satisfaction in life can be ensured as much by connection to other people as by wealth and power. But feelings of connection to many or all human beings require a reasonably secure and trustworthy world or society.
Differences in socialization and experience result in different personal characteristics, psychological processes, and modes of behavior. Some people develop dispositions that make them more likely to act violently and do harm, especially in response to threat. At the extreme, the desire to diminish, harm, and destroy others can become a persistent characteristic of a person (or group). People may also learn to be highly differentiated, good in relation to some while evil in relation to other humans.
Groups as evil or good
Reinhold Niebuhr regarded human beings as capable of goodness and morality, but considered groups to be inherently selfish and uncaring.12 It is a prevalent view that nation-states are only concerned with power and self-interest. Only fear prevents them from disregarding human consequences in pursuing power and self-interest.
I see evil in groups as similar, though not identical, to evil in individuals. It arises from ordinary motivations and psychological processes. Like individuals, groups can develop characteristics that create a great and persistent potential for evil. But they can also develop values, institutions, and practices that promote caring and connection (see Chapters 17 and 18).
Moral constraints are less powerful in groups than in individuals. Groups are traditionally seen as serving the interests of their members and the group as a whole, without moral constraints or moral obligations to others. There is a diffusion of responsibility in groups.13 Members often relinquish authority and guidance to the group and its leaders. They abandon themselves to the group and develop a commitment that enables them to sacrifice even their lives for it.14 This can lead to altruistic self-sacrifice or to joining those who turn against another group. Combined with the group’s power to repress dissent, abandoning the self enhances the potential for evil.
But in both individuals and groups the organization of characteristics and psychological processes is not static but dynamic. As a result, very rarely are either evil or good immutable. Influences acting on persons and groups can change their thoughts, feelings, motivations, and actions.
The more predisposing characteristics a society possesses and the more it progresses along the continuum of destruction – the more the motivation for genocide and the associated institutions and practices develop – the less potential there is to influence the society peacefully. Here my view converges with that of Hobbes: there is a point at which only inducing fear by the use of power will stop perpetrators from destruction. At times not even that will work, because fanaticism overcomes the desire for self-preservation. Single individuals with a strong potential for evil might be checked by the social group. But who is to inhibit groups? Powerful nations or the community of nations have not customarily assumed this responsibility, perhaps because of the tradition that nations are not morally responsible.
Comparison of personal (and social) goal theory and other approaches
There is a substantial historical and descriptive literature on each genocide and mass killing that I examine in this book but surprisingly little analysis of the psychological, cultural, and social origins, except in the case of the Holocaust, but even here no in-depth psychological-cultural analysis exists. To provide a basis for comparison and contrast with my own conception, which uses personal goal theory as a starting point, focuses on motivation and social evolution (and might be called social goal theory), I will briefly discuss some prominent ideas about the origins of the Holocaust.
Compartmentalization of functions and euphemistic language. Raul Hilberg focused on bureaucratization of functions as an important facilitator of the Holocaust.15 Germany had a tradition of bureaucracy with functions and responsibilities divided. Each person could focus on his or her job, without seeing the whole. A person could schedule trains transporting Jews to extermination camps and keep the relationship of this activity to the genocide out of awareness. As Scott Peck noted, the same division of functions and compartmentalization characterized officers in the Pentagon during the Vietnam War.16
Hannah Arendt and Raul Hilberg both emphasized the use of euphemistic language that veiled reality not only from outsiders but also from the perpetrators themselves.17 Instead of extermination squads, there were Special Troops (Einsatzgruppen); the extermination of the Jewish people was described as the “final solution of the Jewish question.” Euphemistic language was used even by the victims.
Bureaucratic compartmentalization and euphemistic language serve to deny reality and distance the self from violent actions and their victims. Denial of obvious reality, though it consumes much psychological energy, allows perpetrators to avoid feeling responsibility and guilt and allows victims to avoid feeling dread.
However,
