Evil or Just Stupid?

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While living in Seattle, I signed up to participate in a mock jury to make a few extra bucks one Sunday afternoon. At the firm where the session was being held, a total of seven participants arrived and the research team made due with our undersized jury.

Actually, it was less a mock jury and more of a focus group assembled to offer outsider insight on a case that was soon to go to trial. As a prerequisite for participation, we signed a non-disclosure form. Though I’m sure the case has already gone to trial and been resolved, I’ll honor the agreement and only say that the case involved a wrongful termination suit based on alleged sexual harassment. There were multiple parties involved in the suit and the whole mess had apparently gotten quite convoluted.

As we discussed the case and offered opinions, it became abundantly clear that my fellow participants believed personal motivation would be the deciding factor in this case. That is to say, the participants were pretty quick to ascribe malicious intent to one or multiple actors in the suit. When the initial details were laid out, the party accused of sexual harassment received the ire of the group, but as further details came to light, the boss of the accused became the target of righteous fury.

In both cases, the assumption was that one or the other of the involved parties had willfully acted malevolently. The group didn’t all agree who was the malicious party, some believing that the boss was at fault, while others continued to distrust the fired employee. But regardless of who was to blame, the focus group took it for granted that the motivations of the people involved in the suit were, to put it bluntly, evil.

When I spoke up, at first in defense of the employee (who I believed was innocent) and then in defense of the employer (who I believe was at fault) I kept coming back around to the same point: It was far more likely, in my mind, that the actions were the result of poor decision making, not sinister intent.

“In my experience,” I said, “people harm others because they’re stupid, not evil.”

None of us participating in that group will ever know the motivating factors behind the actions, and it’s unlikely any of us ever learned of the outcome. It doesn’t matter. We weren’t brought in to change the course of the decision or to even help the lawyers choose a line of argument. We were guinea pigs used to illustrate how potential jurors think.

I would like to believe that my attempt to be a voice of reason might have had a minor effect on the proceedings, but I’m not naive: Given the choice between assuming benign or malignant motivations, people will always assume the worst.

moto

To consider or not to consider…

Warning: Word nerdery ahead

It’s interesting that words like ‘inconsiderate’ and ‘thoughtless’ have come to equal, generally, mean or rude. If you say, “Bob is inconsiderate,” it’s mostly understood that Bob is a dick. If you were to be as literal as you can be with the words, though, both inconsiderate and thoughtless would suggest an absence of consideration and thought, not the presence of malice.

It unnerves us to think that evil can happen in this world by accident, or even by pure chance. Religion, spirituality and superstition are all ways of assigning cosmic meaning to otherwise unexplainable horrors. The universe certainly runs on ‘Cause and Effect,’ but it’s not enough to acknowledge the casual relationship between events, we must understand why. It’s that need for reason that drives scientific inquiry, so there is good in it. But, in the absence of concrete reasons, it can also lead us down the rabbit holes of supposition and false equivalences.

In recent news, there probably hasn’t been a better example of this principle than in the Trayvon Martin case. On one side are those who say George Zimmerman’s actions were the result of racism and bigotry, while the other side claims Zimmerman’s actions were understandable as necessary self-defense. It seems to me, the reality is in the middle: Zimmerman made a bad decision – an incredibly stupid decision – and while it wasn’t done out of hatred or prejudice, it still resulted in the death of an innocent teen.

The problem with that assessment is that it’s harder to get air time being reasonable. Blame it on the “Mainstream Media” if you want, the 24-Hour News is simply following business rule numero uno: Give the audience what they want.

(Are there more complex and murky societal implications that can be taken from Trayvon’s death? Absolutely, but that doesn’t mean Zimmerman should be the poster boy for them.)

Zimmerman-Martin

Evil?

Are there bad people in this world? Absolutely. Do they wear all black and own islands in the Pacific? From my experience, that’s pretty damn rare. Some of them own peninsulas in the Atlantic.

I don’t mean to give every bad person in the world a pass by suggesting that they were just having a dumb moment. People should be held responsible for their actions, and no matter the motivation, when harm is done, reparations are due.

But we must be careful how quickly we jump to the conclusion that because something terrible happened, even to ourselves, the source must be a wicked heart. Experience has taught me one thing: If given the choice between believing someone is evil or stupid, bet on a daft every time.

We might not all be angels, but that doesn’t mean we’re demons, either.

For more articles and stories by A. Lyttleton click HERE.

About Post Author

J Lyttleton

Travel. Writer. Creator of 10 Cities / 10 Years. Currently in Brooklyn.
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10 years ago

“In my experience,” I said, “people harm others because they’re stupid, not evil.”

What a very wise chap you are old bean.

There is evil in our world but there is, indeed, far more stupidity.

Brilliant contribution if you don’t mind me saying so.

Reply to  Norman Rampart
10 years ago

Oddly enough, I don’t mind you saying. Thank you, sir.

Bill Formby
10 years ago

Good post. Well explained. Ron White had it right, “You can’t fix stupid.”

Reply to  Bill Formby
10 years ago

You not only can’t fix it, you often cannot even fight it because so many people prefer it to the truth.

I forget who it was that said, “most prefer comforting lies to disturbing truths.”

Bill Formby
Reply to  James Smith
10 years ago

Most people prefer to be lemming following the pied piper into the sea.

Reply to  Bill Formby
10 years ago

I do want to clarify that while I think stupidity/ignorance/human error is at fault for a lot of the world’s ills, there is plenty of room for evil out there, too.

Also, while it would be nice to label everyone who disagrees with my personal views as evil or stupid, I must also acknowledge that some people just have different ways of thinking. Not necessarily stupid, but different.

Reply to  A. Lyttleton
10 years ago

Well said Mr. Lyttleton!

Admin
10 years ago

Simple stupidity applies to most cases of simple stupidity 🙂

10 years ago

Wasn’t it Einstein that said, “Never attribute evil intent to that which can be explained by simple stupidity”

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