8 Inner Demons ut man, proud mon, Dest na litle Bri authority Most ignorant of what bes most assur His las exenc, ike am amar ape, lye such fantastic rics Before high heaven “Asmakes the angels weep “Wiliam Shakespeare, Messure for Meare Fe Secating ofan nara a) de ick 2} hr dee 580 ‘The decine of violence thereby allows us to dispatch a dichotomy that has stood inthe way of understanding the rots of violence for mil Jenna: whether humankind is basically bad or basialy good an ape or an angela hawk ora dove the nasty brate of textbook Hobbes or the noble savage of textbook Rousseau. Left to ther own devices, humans will not fll inc a sate of peaceful cooperation, but nor do they have 3 thirst for blood that must regularly be slaked, There must be at least a {gran of ruth in conceptions of che human mind tht grant it more than ‘one part~ theories like faculty prychology, mulipleinteligences, mental ‘organs, modularity, domain-specific, andthe metaphor ofthe mind as Swiss army kife. Human nature accommodates motives that impel us to violence, like predation, dominance, and vengeance, but also motives ‘that ~ under che right eicumstances~ impel ws toward peace like com ‘passion, fairness, self-control, and reason. This chapter and its successor will explore these motives andthe citcumstances that engage them: THE DARK SIDE ‘Before exploring our inner demons, 1 need to make the case that they ‘exit because there is a resistance in modern intellectual ife to the idea that human nature embraces any motives that incline us toward vio- lence av all! Though the ideas that we evelved from hippie chimps and ‘that primitive people had no concept of violence have been refuted by the facts of anthropology, one sil sometimes reads that violence i per petrated by afew bad apples who do ll the damage and that everyone ‘ls is peaceful at heat. Teds certainly true that the ives of most people in most societies do not end in violence. The numbers on the vertical axes ofthe graphs in the preceding chapters have been graduated in single digits, tens, or at most hundreds of killings per 100,000 peaple per year; only rately a in tsibal warfare or an unfolding genocide, ae che rates inthe thousands. leis also true that in most hose encounters, the antagonists, whether ‘humans or other animals, usually Back down before ether of them can do serious damage to the othe. Even in wartime, many soldiers do not fire their weapons and are racked by post-traumatic stress disorder hen they do. Some writers conclude that the vast majority of humansarc eonitinally ave violence and thatthe high body counts are remot harm ew chose cand, ey conicng Yu that ost oF inca you, ean eed for ves een fi al kelboed we dea rte a to we We can Bai with ott younger sl, ae hud Tenby hn ese ts flee Ther cap and shown thatthe oN wage of ie ea peor even youngalhood Bu the ap ane rb i Toda least soretines Keks, c,h nd ge et ih rt of pysial gpreon then goes eal down i a chino, Temblay remark, abies do ttt oe ase we dow give the acces kes nd ge The cae te ye ben tying taser othe st 30 eas iw sao age (But tars the wrong question The hs Seo bw dey kan not oaggres.” et tana apr sees Have you evened abot i a ou dae In separate siete shales Dogs Peer Dav Bus have posed hi queion toa demos ee vee eceptonaliy low ts of wolece— univers Sens rae hme he oucome’ Benen Po and 90 pet ote sr we prneengoand Bo pre ofthe women, died ong reo homclfatsy te preceding ear When dered Jeno a ere sen shouted Yeah and the thes a ese evry es they may smi wih Clee Datow ee there nvr killed aman, bur Tave read many bias viper pare! he mote for imaginary homies bones overs gare a response toa het vengeance Foran Mastaton or besa and tam confi, roprtonally more oct whch tepar than th loi parents, fen the eee Tied refresh nde in beat ea Hk the es fee ay eerie by Rex Haron while consting 2 honorees Unftrily Yours Oe young an ins 04 ud at hecame hy peren ofhe way evading ter rend nod ied othe mar anc that head ben ta To berand hen made a move on she Bante hil ag with bis: fingers and overlap with those on poli Fin would beak every Bone in his body stati se toes slowly making my way large ones. Then I would puncte his Tangs and maybe a few other organs: Raslly ie him as mach pin at posible before killing him? |A/woman said she had gone 6o percent ofthe way toward killing an ‘exhoyfriend who wanted to get back together and had threatened to ‘Seid a video ofthe swa of them having sex to er new boyfriend and her fellow students: 1 arly did this. invited him ove for diner And ashe was inthe irhen loki tpi peeling the ares make a sald ame hin lntghing gens he woulda suspect anythin. hough about grabbing abn quchy and stabbing him in the ches repeatedly unt he was dead. scully did thes hing bt he aw my inventions, and ean 225 “Many actual homicides ace preceded by lengthy ruminations just ike this The small numberof premeditated murders that are actually car tied out mus be the cusp of a colossal iceberg of homicidal desires submerged in a sea of inhibitions. As the forensic psychiatrist Robert ‘Simon put it ina book tle (paraphrasing Freud paraphrasing Plato), Baa Men Do What Good Men Dream. Even people who don’ daydream about killing get intense pleasure from vicarious experiences of doing tor accng it done. People spend. large amounts oftheir time and income immersing themselves in any of, 4 number of gentes of bloody virwal reality: Bible stories, Homeric Sagas, matyrologies, portrayals of hell hero myths, Gilgamesh, Greck tragedies, Beowall, the Bayeux Tapesty, Shakespearean dramas, Grimm’ fairy eales, Punch and Judy, opera, marder mysteries, penny real, pulp Rction, dime novels, Grand Guignol, murder ballads, films noirs, Westerns, horror comics, superhero comics, the Three Stooges, Tom and Jerry, the Road Rosner, video games, and movies starring a certain ex governor of California. In Savage Pastimes: A Cul tinal History of Violent Enertainment, the literary scholar Harold Schechter shows that todays spate films are mild stuff compared to the simulated torture and mutilation tha have stilted audiences for centuries, Long before computer generated imagery, theater directors ‘would apply their ingcnuity to grisly special effecs, such as “phony heads that could be decapitated from dummies and impaled on pikes: fake skin that could be layed fom an actors tors; concealed bladders stsfilled with animal blood that could produce a satisfying spurt of gore ‘when puncrured* "The vast mismatch berween the number of violent acts that run through people's imaginations and the number they carry out in the ‘world els us something abou the design of the mind. Statistics on vie Teace underestimate the importance of violence inthe human condition, “The human brain runs on the Latin adage ‘Ifyou want peace, eepare for wat’ Even in peaceable societies, people are fascinated by the logic of bluff and threat, the psychology of alliance and betrayal, the vulner bles ofa human body and how they can be exploited or shielded, “The universal pleasure that people take in violent entertainment, always inthe teeth of censorship and moralistic denunciation, suggests thatthe ‘mind craves information on the conduct of violence.” A bikelyexplan- ation is that in evolutionary history, violence was not so improbable that people could afford not to understand how it works.* “The anthropologist Donald Symons has noticed a similar mismatch inthe other major content of naughty ceverie and entertainment, sex.” People fantasize about and make art ou of lice sex vastly more often than they engage i it Like adultery, violence may be improbable, but when an opportunity aries, the potential consequences for Darwinian fines are gargantuan. Sfmons suggests that higher consciousness itself is designed for low-fequency, high-impact events. We seldom muse about daily necessities bike gasping, walking, o speaking let alone pay ‘money to see them dramatized. What grabs our mental spotlights ilicit sex, violent death, and Walker Mityish laps of tats. ‘Now to our brains. The human brain isa swollen and warped ver son of the brains of ochec mammals. ll the major parts may be found in our furry cousins, where they do pretty much the same things, such 25 process information from the senses, control muscles and glands, and store and retrieve memories. Among these pats ie a network of regions that has Been called the Rage circuit. The neuroscientist Jak Panksepp of nuclei along the way Each ofthese nell As Panskepp notes, ‘In virtually all ality requires an aserive attitude, so! that Male ssveness normally go together. Indeed, these tended nned throughout the neuroaxis, and 10 che Best of GH catty for this type of aggression is located es strongly with both Rage and Seeking i clogize the anatomy the Seking system lad am tan aagressite challenge with a sles joined and one of them isin dangee of dl — owing the major subeoril verte involved in fighting may give way to blind cage it with each advantage fom thir misdeeds. The enormous volume of mystic Shiota abou atonement and penance and divine este and fhe eis the aributon to igh, detached authority of what actualy nndane, prapate mater dicouragingslnerested compete a ty redoing thei proftabiiy ti the aretre ofthe punishment regime. Asaing that maleate by just deserts, not by deterrence. Evil motives draw harsher sentences 650 “The reforms advoctted by the utilitarian economist Cesare Beccatia uring the Humanitarian Revolution, whch led ro the abolition of cruel vahments, were designed £0 reorient criminal justice away from the Fampulse wo make a ad person sufer and roward the pacts goal BF deereence, The Carlsmith experiment suggests that people today ve not gone all the way into thinking of criminal justice in purely setparan terms. But in Te Blank Slate argued that even the elements our judicial practices cha seem to be motivated by just deserts may lomately sere a deterrent function, Because if a system ever became eo narowly utilitarian, malefactors would learn ro game it Just des- fers ean close off that option.* inal justice cannot monitor is citizens ven the fates system ofc wherever they may be and around the clock. I has to count on them Internalizing norms of feieness and damping their vengeance before it ‘cealates. In chapter 3 e saw how the ranchers and farmers of Shasta County resolved their grievances without cating to the police, thanks to reciprocity, gossip, occasional vandalism, and for minor harms, “Tumping it Why do the people n some societies lump it while others experience a glow in thee eyes, a lame in tir cheeks, and a pounding in their temples? Norbert Elis's theory of the Cvilizing Process suge sts that government administered justice can have knock-on effects that lead its citizens to internalize norms of selcesteaint and quash their impulses for retribution rather than act on them. We saw many examples in chapters a and 3 of how pacification by a government has 2 whopping effect on lethal vengeance, and inthe next chapter we will review experiments showing that self-control in one context can spread imo others. Chapter 3 also introduced the finding thatthe sheer presence of gow ‘exament brings rates of violence down only 50 far ~ from the hundreds ‘of homicides per 100,000 people per year to the tens. A further drop into the single digits may depend on something hazer, such 38 peoples acceptance of the legitimacy of the government and social contract. A recent experiment may have caught a wisp ofthis phenomenon inthe lab. The economists Benedikt Herrmann, Christian Thon, and Simon Gachter had university students in sixteen countries play Public Goods ames (the game in which players contribute money to a pot which is then doubled and redistributed among, them), with and without the 6sstey of punishing one anothec* The researches discovered yp ros ofp sane count ny ayers punished gore ombutorsto the common good rather than stingy one. These acs of ite had predictably terrible effects on the group's welfare, because con te ie orhers, The contributions soon petered out, and everyone trae the antuoil punishers seem to have been motivated by an exces btrevenge When they themselves had been punished for low cont. thon athe than being chastened and increasing thie contribution on the nec round (whichis what participant in the original studies com iced inthe United States and Western Europe had done, they punished thar punisers, who tended tobe the altruistic contributors, ‘What diinguishes the countries in which the targets of punishment repent, such asthe United Sates Australia, China, and those of Western Europe, from those in which they spiteflly retaliate, lke Rusia, Ukraine, Gree, Saudi Arabia, and Oman? The investigators ran a set ‘of multiple regression using a dozen tats of the diffeent counties, taken from economic statistics andthe results of international survey, ‘A major predictor of excess revenge turned out to be civie norms: a rmensre ofthe degree ro which people think iti all ight to cheat on thee income taxes, claim government benefits to which they ate noe tie, and dodge farecolectors on the subway. (Social scents believe that civic norms make up a lage pate ofthe socal capital ofa ‘country, which is more important to its prosperity than its physi resources) Where might the civic norms themselves have come from? “The World Bank assigns couneies a score called the Rule of Law which reflects how well private contacts can be enforced in courts, whether the legal system is perceived as being fag the importance of the Black market and organized crime, the quality of the police, and he ike hood of ern and violence. In the experiment, the Rule of Law of & county significantly predicted the degree to which its citizens indeed inanisoil revenge: the people in counties with an ify Rue of Law were more destructively vengefil. With the usual spaghet of variables is imposible robe certain what caused what, but the results ae cm: sistent wih the idea thatthe disinterested justice ofa decent Levathat ince citizens ro curb thee impulse for revenge before i spirals into deserucive cycle 52 i ee meatal ole ae ee ee psychologist Michael McCullough shows that we do have ths dimmer eee nee cc mes ea ‘Supply and to pull a bus out of the muck, they fell into a truce, overcame ‘their enmity, and even made some friendships across team lines. 63‘The ied modulator of revenge kicks in when we ae assred that he perpetrator has Become harmless. For all che warath and furzines of Fojeeness you can afford ro disarm ifthe person who harmed seu, Tiedy wo do again, So if harm-oer wants to avoid your wrass ant get ack on your good side, he as to persuade you tht he no longer fatbors any motive to arm you. He may start ou by claiming that ks farm was an unfortunate result of a unique set ofc ee eee ere ee oc ‘wrong, sympathize with your suffering, cancel the hatm with resitu, i ee aay otto ee a en ha es a eo ae een we ee 654 blierates self decept ‘vorfortable eth. the guilty party can no longer deny the MeCullough notes that our revenge modulators offer a route to public conflict reduction that can supplement the criminal justice system. The ‘erential payoffcan be enormous because the cour system is expensive, ‘pefcient,uneesponsive tothe victim’ need, and in its own way vio- Tensinceit forcibly incarceratesa guilty perpetrator. Many communities ‘ow have programs of restorative justice, sometimes supplementing a ‘rminal wal, sometimes replacing it.The perpetrator and victim, often fccompanied by family and friends, sit down together with a faciliaton tho gives the vietim an opportunity to express his or her suffering and ng, and the perpetrator an opportunity to convey sincere remorse, together with restitution for the harm. Ie sounds like daytime TV, but it can at atleast some repentant perpetrators on the stright and narrow, hil satisfying cheir victims and keeping the whole dispute out of the slowly grinding wheels ofthe criminal justice system, (On che international scene, the las two decades have seen an explo sion of apologies by politcal leaders for crimes commited by their governments. The political scientist Graham Dodds has compiled “a fay comprehensive chronological listing of major political apologies’ through the centuries. His list begins in the year 1077, when “Holy Roman Emperor Henry 1V apologized to Pope Gregory Vl for church sate conflicts by standing barefoot in the snow for thre days" History had to wait more than sx hundted yeas forthe next one, when Massachusetts apologized in 1711 tothe families of the victims of the Salem witch tials. The est apology of the 2cth century, Germany's ‘mission to having started World Wat Tin the Treaty of Versailles in +919, perhaps not the best advertisement forthe genre. But the spate of apologies inthe last rwo decades bespeak a new era in the self pres- ‘tation of states. For the fist time in history, the leaders of nations fave elevated the ideals of historical ruth and international reconcii ‘tion above selfservng claims of national infllibility and rectitude. In 198 Japan sort of apologized for occupying Korea when Emperor Mirohto told the visting South Korean president, ‘It is regretable that there was an unfortunate period in this century” But subsequent ‘cades saw a string of ever-more forthcoming apologies from other 655Apolo per decade 8 gor ght 19208 19508 19408 1505 1BEOS 9705 vWBor FOGOE Hoy Fur #6. Apologies by poli and religious leaders, 1900-2004 ‘Sher Data rr Dos, 2038 and Do, 205. Japanese leaders. In the ensuing decades Germany apologized for the Holocaust, the United States apologized for interning Japanese Ames ‘cans, the Soviet Union apologized for murdering Polis prisoners during World War Il Britain apologized tothe Irish, Indians, and Maori and the Vatican apologized for ts role inthe Wars of Religion, the perseu- tion of Jews, the slave trade, and the oppression of women. Figure 8-6 shows how politcal apologies area sign of our times. Do apologies and other conciliatory gestures in the human socal repertoire actually avert cycles of revenge? The political scientists Wit liam Long and Peter Brecke took up the question in their 2003 book War and Reconciliation: Reazon and Emotion in Conflict Resolution. Brecke isthe scholar who assembled the Conflict Catalog which {relied ‘upon in chapter 5, and he and Long addressed the question with num bers. They selected 114 pairs of countries that fought an interstate wat from 1888 10 1991, together with 430 civil wars. They then looked for teconaiaon evens ~ ceremonies itu that brought the leaders of ‘the warring factions together ~and compared the number of mlcaize disputes (incidents of saber-atling or fighting) aver several decades before and after the event tose ifthe rituals made any difference. They ‘generated hypotheses and interpreted ther findings using both rational actor theory and evolutionary psychology, 656 ‘when it came to international disputes, emotional gestures made line difeence. Long and Brecke identified a1 ternational recone ation events and compared the ones that clearly cooled down the belgerents with the ones that left them as dspotatious as ever The sue, cesses depended not on symbolic gestures but on costly signaling. The leader of one or both countries made a nove, voluntary, sky, vlne able, and irrevocable move toward peace that reassured his adversary that he was unlikely to resume hostilities. Anwar Sadat 1977 speech to the lac parliament isthe prototype. The gesture was a shocker, and jz was unmistakably expensive, ater costing Sadat his life. But it led toa peace treaty that has lasted to tis day. Thee were few touchy. fecly tual and today the ro countries are hardly on good terms, but they are at peace. Long and Brecke note that sometimes pairs of eoun- tries that looked daggers at each for centuries ean turn into good ‘buddies England and France, England and the United States, Geemany and Poland, Germany and France ~ bur the amity comes ater decades of coexistence rather than as the immediate outcome of conciliatory cesures, ‘The psychology of forgiveness, recall, works best when the perpetta- tor and victim are already bound by kinship, friendship, alliance, or ‘mutual dependence. ts nor surprising, then that conciliatory gestures are more effective in ending civil wars than international ones. The adversaries in a civil war are at ehe very leas, stuck with each other inside national boundaries, and they have a flag anda soccer team that Purthem ina itive coalition, Often the ties run deeperThey may share a language or religion, may work rogethe, and may be related by webs ‘of marriage. In many rebellions and warlord conflicts the Fighters may literally be sons, nephews, and neighborhood kids, and communities may have ro welcome back the perpetrators of horsbl atrocities against them f they are ever to knit ther communities together These and ather tis that bind can prepare the way for gestures of apology and reconcli- ation These gestures are more effective than the mechanism that leads 'o peace berween states, namely the costly signaling of benevolent inten tions, because in civil conflict the two sides are not cleanly separated ‘tities, and so cannot each speak with one voice, exchange messages in safety and resume the status quo if an initiative fails. Long and Brecke studied 14 reconciliation events since 1957 that ‘mbolcally terminated a civil conflict. With 7 of them (64 percent) “7here was tn lene. Tat eis imprese mong am shen oa gr bees memos ces ody 9 ome ag go nema ar coer ee gis ena a aa cae Bosc ever ahr than poi ato an a ie err ae eran core cain eet eerie aa ata sal ren ero nook te ces br relaton te aa ee nod, Comey eth edhe fom tee eee ccas aires adet acura) aa een gucci te sey of ceive tenet ae utp a he desi fr use prea indians sae coun atonal er ec pr ecm arent el tac bt may holes haven stn Thema perpetrate bar “Re nauype for econiaton ara il confi Soh Mia Ini he Kons conept of uber brotha, Nao Man Sent Demond Tied stom of erate ar an a perfor ay al hecourn she ocd ot enn eer he spel opine Ae wih he ci te asta Manila ad Tv eae je ot aceon contd he poo of for oie con re a ania programs, Long and Dreske coed, he Space Morambig Ageia Clergy 8 ese ay ry fourteen “ie ny ond of snmp nga ano oe tse may tae the form of ath and esnclton a ih erperaors poly own wp oe aes ‘fads or of national fact-finding commitess, whose reports ae wie 7 io ly endorsed, These mechanisms ake dis ra pchley tha stokes tie Morazaton Go. Ths oa be nnn egies a pine emnns ann ncn inte form of shame, guilty and et rch meral weapons claim oiness To Siar ference between ie tat COD Sn eerste There? as common knowledge. Just as losing ‘and 658 apology more effective, the public acknowledgment of a wrong can sre the rule of arlatonship between group. Msccond theme in sucessfl reconciliations is an explicit rerting af pope social idests People redefine the groups with which they + iy. Theperpetol victims of a vocey may ake respon fr seine it. Rebels become poitians, bureaucrats, or bsiepedpl ‘he mibry surrenders is claim to embody the maton and demanes ico thir security guards. The hed theme appears tobe the mont important: incomplete just ie Rather than seling every sore, a society bas to daw ae unde past violations and grant massive amnesty while prosecuting only the Tixae ringleaders and some ofthe more depraved foot solders. Even thn the punishments ake the form of histo their reputation, prestige, tnd prveges rather than blood for blood There may in adton, be reparations but their erative valve is regintered more onan emo- ional balance sheet shan aan one Lng and Brecke comment Inevery instanceof successful reconciliation save Mozambique jsice was meted out, but never in fll mesure, This fat may be lamentable, even teagi, rom certain legal or moral perspectives, et ii onsite eth the requisites of restoring soil oer pstlated in the frgvenes pet i. nal ass of sce econcition,cetbutv juice could neither ‘be gnored noe uly achieved... Daturbing ast may be, people appeat twbesbletotolrate a substantial amount of ijstie wrought by amnesty inthe name of soil peace” In other words, pel off the bumper sticker that says IF you want Peace, work for justice’ Replace it withthe one recommended by Joshua Goldsteins‘ you want peace, work for peace!" Finally, the belligerent have to signal their commitment to a new ‘clationship wth a burst of verbal and nonverbal gestures. As Long and Brecke observe, ‘Legislatutes passed solemn resolutions, peace accords ‘ere signed and embraces exchanged by heads of formerly ral soups, ‘atues and monuments to the tragedy were erected textbooks were ‘ewriten, and a thousand other actions, large and ema, were under- ‘aken to underscore the notion that the past was diferent and the frre "ore hopeful’ ‘The conflict between Iralis and Palestinians stands in many people's 69Pere Oza what a solution will have co look like: “rage can be essed in oe of 40 ways there ithe Shakespearean rosion and heres the Chethovian one At the end ofa Shakespearean phe sage issn wih dead bodies and maybe hee some jus ‘ehoveringtigh above. A Chekhov tragedy, onthe other hand, ends wth ret dilsionedenbirered heartbroken, disappointed, absoltely ‘hoeed,besil alve,AndT want Chekovian relation, not a Shake- Spenrean one fr the IeaeliPlestnian tragedy" SADISM Ws hard o single tthe most heinous form of human depravity there ate so many to choose from ~ but if genocide is the worse by quantity, sadism might be the worst by quality. The deliberate infliction of pain for no purpose but ro enjoy’ a person's suffering isnot just morally mon- stcous bu intellectually baffling, because in exchange for the agony of the vitim the torturer receives no apparent personal or evolutionary benef. And unlike many other sins, pure sadism is not a guilty pleasure that most people indulge in their fantasy lives; few of us daydream about watching cats burn to death, Yee torture isa recurring disfgure tment in human history and current events, appearing in atleast five Sadism can grow out of instrumental violence. The threat of torture «can teri politcal opponents and it mas at least oecasionally be used 10 make the threat real, Torture may also be used to extract information ftom a criminal suspect or politieal enemy. Many police and national security forces engage in mild torture under euphemisms like the third egre; ‘moderate physical pressure? and ‘enhanced interrogation? and these tactics may sometimes be effective And as moral philosophers since Jeremy Bentham have pointed out,in theory torture can even be ju ‘fable, most famously in the ticking-bomb scenario in which aeriminal ‘knows the location ofan explosive that will kill and maim many innocent people and ony torture would foce him to disclose its location. 660 ver among the many arguments against the use of torture is that i eldom 27s instrumental for log. Torte et crn aoe ‘They if s0 mach suffering on ther vitins shat he vce wily ying #9 make i top, oF Become so delirious with agony ae he incapable of responding.” Often the victims dig, which motes the aration of information moot. And in cases like the abate of ta pusoners by American soldiers at Abu Ghrib the ase of torture, ne Fo serving a useful purpose, was a strategic catastrophe forthe coun try that allowed i to happen, inflaming enemies and alienating fiends, 'A second occasion for torture isin criminal and religious punish: mene. Here again there isa granule of instrumental motivation, namely to deter wrongdoers with the prospect of pain that would cancel out their gain, Yet as Beccaria and other Enlightenment reformers pointed fut any calcul of deterrence can achieve the same goals with punish nents that ae less severe but more reliable. And sucly the death penal, ifitis applied at all isa sufficient disinentve to capital crimes without needing the then-customary practice of preceding it with prolonged sriesome torture. In practice, corporal punishment and excruciating «capital punishment escalate into orgies of cruelty forts own sake. Entertainment itself can be a motive for torture, as atthe Roman Colosseum and in blood sport like bearbitng and eat burning, Tach. ‘man notes that towns in medieval France would sometimes purchase ‘condemned criminal from another town so they could entertain theit «ens with a public execution. Hideous tortures and mutilations can accompany a rampage by sal dies, ters, oF militiamen, especially when they have been released from porchenson and fas the phenomenon tat Randall Cains calls forward panic. These are the atrocities that accompany pogroms, geno Sie pice brutality, and military routs, ining those in tial Finally there are serial Killers, the sickos who stalk, kidnap, torture, ‘iat, and kil hei itn for sexual gratification, Seria kil like Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer are not the same as {arden-varety mass murderers Mass. murderers include men who fon amok, lke the enraged postal workers who avenge a hurbiation dmrore the porency by taking as many peoples they can wih hem Want sicdal outburst. They also include spree killers, like the ‘shington, D.C., sniper John Muhammad, who stretch out theeee =e ae byte popenetce i ih et be bin Bren he mow ald ok Seti ne et a cmcing oat ee St a et epee Te Sel Rls Ne et mo maith sted te a ae ee See ae Se tothe called Blaerey ake acer etre mau eee ae ee ee ee trators in all, and they killed around 70 victims a year. In the 1990s, er aera aie ere seid cane ney seal ile prey on tuner So eeepc ee aya mae eae eee feces ora Uc eae Seer eteary tapos fas uy Eason of be oon La kita atag no Scteche shows thet conty tos com mi er of itr for leni Calgl Nev Ber Fe er the teeny tg ils de Ra Ve Reser epee peoirenta eri ear aa anne cea ing the ame forth mothe, shih caer kc mon famous seal orc of aes eee cet ta amo te Marquis de Side Ie aan lee were fled moder Rend, losis m= dsm of serial killers is historically rare, the sx ‘Though the florid sadism of serial kill, i ism of inguisitors, campagers, public execution spe od fansand Colosseum ances no, And even srl Mo om id Lup with their avocation because of any gene, of to be victims hood experience we can identify2” (They do rend £0 be 62 iho sexual and physel abuse, but 50 are milion of pope w Son grow up tbe eral les) Sots conesable tae ebony ‘Seralligcanshed ht onthe pthvay hat adsornatreey Ziad aswell How can we make sence mone snectoe cote? Te deelopment of sai requires two things: motives oejoy the tae of ther, ad aremovl othe resins that oly hee Fel fom acting on them hough espinal 0 adi human nature comes equipped wih a tes four sive totake ntsfction nthe pina aves Greinr noe bid fascinarion withthe vulnerability of ving thingy, 2 phenomenon pha bs caer by the word macabre Thi's what a yo pul gf grasshoppers and fy ans with magniing ae Kaa wo rabereck atthe scene of automobile aden rae thane pra for ms ando fork over heir dopo come toread and wach gory entertainment The ultimate mote may bem tery overth vig wer incdng our own sf, The pli on efrmacabre voyeurism may bet forthe swerve aa ween whl or ‘erlocked one dor ht could have hapered oe" ‘Another appeal of feeling someone pains dominance. 1 canbe exoyableoscehow themihty have allen especial ey hate en org your torments And when oneislskng downoad inte of paris resring 0 krow that you cn eer the per donna res shoul the ned arise, Te una form of por oer someone is the power cause them pain at wl Nowa crs wl le pple i mage ook at ie about any human experience. Though no one, to my heeled, tos sued sm in he scanners a vecent experiment Toke a he ied serio sade Mal Janse de ay ina ML fae and were asked to put thems the shoes shee “oon fora jb na multinational information echnology company baa mee aes, tbs hi jb serve, wt the Bech bash cu, ends up witha low-paying bina etal ore hvesin 2 y apartment, and hs no glen At hi cllee eu he meets {elasatewho works fora mlinatinal corporation ies nahn) condo, ‘ Condo owns a fancy eg ins at French restates with, "0 eckend vacation spots andh may oppmunite met esgies after work: The patcipant also imagines meeting two other lass. tates, one successful, one unsuccessful, whom the Japanese researchers > assumed ~ correctly, as i turned out - would arouse no envy in the pa ticipane because they were women. The participant, stil imagining himself the lose, then reads about a string of misfortunes that befall kis” envied but increasingly Job-lke classmate: the classmate is falsely Sccused of cheating on an exam, he becomes the victim of ugly rumors, "> his gelftiend has an affas his company gets ito financial trouble, his ‘bonus is small, his car breaks down, his watches are stolen his apa. ment building i sprayed with graffi, he gets food poisoning atthe — French restaurant, and his vacation is canceled because of a typhoon ‘The researchers could literally read the gloating off the participa’ bans As the participants rea ofthe misfortunes of thee vrtal beter {though nor of the nonthreatening women}, cei stratum, the part of the Seeking circuit that underlies wanting and liking, it up lke a Tokyo boulevard. The results were the same when women contemplated the downfall ofan enviable female rival "A thitd occasion for sadism is revenge, or the sanitized third-party vession we eal justice. The whole point of moralistic punishments hat the wrongdoer suffers for his sins, and we have already een that revenge an be sweet. Revenge literally turns ff the empathic response in the brain fat least among men), and itis consummated only when she avenger knows that the target knows that his suffering is payback for hhc misdeeds" What better way for the avenger to be certain in that knowledge than to infit the sufering bimsel? ly erie sad, Sad tc nota ommon pene sion _ among people who indulge in SSM, far more of them are ite Jerr atma the but milder forts of domination and degradation se not uncommon in pornography, and t facethat males are the more ardent anf ver The circuits for sexuality and aggression ‘fe tmbic ytem, and both espond ro restora. ‘Male aggression has a sexual compone iors describe battlefield routs in expliciy ert terms. Os ereran eid To some people, carrying gun was ike havin Ty, von, Kwa a pate sexual tip every fe YOU £0 op Tom Another agreed: “There is «just this ‘are intertwined i mt. In interviews, many sO cent hat rigger! they may be a by-product of the i females the mote discriminating) ms. One Views / sen ling ve pope... -The oly wy Lem ean sea Cane antares or of ret, You lao Nae a eco Weta Send eras ae aio rian as havo teen srealy macecracdoheas 2a media mec hetendom, enero of ae ste dnerod a vomen roger toner™ Awe see Seo ca cans ol meats erase aclag ia ei ck ands ci tabads ae pure peapons cn creature sad mulation And ovement police states have often been reported to be aroused by thee atrocities Tid dese count einony fom srr alte Helse “The SS eamp commander stood closet the whipping post throughout the logging. His whole face was aleady red with lascivious excitement Hishands were plunged deep his trouser pockets and it was quite clear that he was masturbating chroughout....On more than hry occasions, myself have wimesed SS camp commanders masturbating dating fonsings* 1 serial killers represent the taste for rough sex taken to an extreme, the gender difference among serial Killers, who come in both sexes, is instuctive, Schechter is skeptical of sel-anointed ‘profiles’ and "mind hunters; like the Jack Crawford character in Silence of the Lambs, but heallows for one kind of inference from the modus operandi ofa serial Killer to a characteristic trait: “When police discover a corpse with its throat slit, its torso cut open, its viscera removed, and its genitals excised they are justified in making one basic assumption: the perpeta tor was a man.2” Ie's not that girs can never grow up to be serial killers; Schechter recounts the stores of several black widows and. angels of death, Bue they go about their pastimes differently. Schechter explains “There ae unmistakable parallels berwcen [mae sel killers] kind of ‘lence - phallic aggressive, penetrate, rapacious, and (insofar a8 it ‘commonly gratis itself upon the bodies of ranges) undicriminating = andthe ypc pattern of male sexual havior For thiseasn, it posible of noenal ‘0 se sadistic mutilation murder as a grotesque distortion mle sexuality, 66sFemale psychopaths are noes depraved han thee male counterpans, ‘ae, weer, brat penetration fot wha rs thems on, The Acne comes not frm vilting the bode of stranger with pha Shp but fom a roteaque, sadistic travesty afitimaey and lve fom Spooning poisoned medicine into the mouth of tasting Pint, for aaenlesor mothering sleeping hl in its bed la shor, from tendely eon end, fay member or dependent into a corpse fom nurae. ing them co death With so many sources for sadism, why are there so few sadists? Obyi- ously the mind must be equipped with safety catches against hurting ‘others, and sadism erupts when they ae disabled. “The fiat that comes to mind is empathy. If people fel each other's pain, then hurting someone else wil be felt as hurting oneself. That is ‘why sadism is more chinkable when the victims are demonized or deh Imanized beings that lie outside one’s cirle of empathy. But as I have ‘mentioned (and as we shall explore inthe next chapter), for empathy to bbe a brake on aggression it has to be more than the habit of inhabiting another person's mind, After all, sadists often exercise a pervered ingenuity for intiting howe best to torment their victims. An empathic response must specifically include an aligament of one's own happiness with that of another being, a faculty that is better called sympathy or ‘compassion than empathy. Baumeister points out that an addtional ‘emotion has to kick in for sympathy to inhibit behavior: guilt. Guilt, he notes, does not just operate after the fact. Much of our guilt is antcia tory we refrain from actions that would make us feel bad if we carried them out! “Another brake on sadism is a cultural taboo: the conviction that Aeliberate infliction of pain is not a thinkable option, regardless of whether it engages one’s sympathetic inhibitions. Today corture hat been explicitly prohibited by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and by the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Unlike ancient ed eval, and early modern times when torture was 2 form of popula entertainment, today the infliction of torture by governments i lms entirely clandestine, showing that che taboo is widely ack ove ‘though lke most taboos, it is at times hypocritially luted. 19 220 though like most taboos, pe ne the legal scholar Alan Dershowitz addressed this hypocrisy jgned to eliminate sub rosa torture posing a legal mechanism desi -_ democracies." The police in a tcking-bomb scenario would have to get ‘Qiwarrant from a disinterested judge before torturing the ifesaving information out of a suspect; all other forms of coercive interrogation ‘would be flatly prohibited. The most common response was outrage By the very act of examining the taboo on torture, Dershowitz had violated the taboo, and he was widely misunderstood as advocating torture father than seeking to minimize it. Some ofthe mote measured critics frgued that the taboo in fact serves a useful function. eter, they said, to deal with a ticking-bomb scenario, should one ever occur, on an ad hoe basis, and perhaps even pur up with some clandestine torture than to place torture on the table as a live option, from which it could swell from ticking bombs to a wider range of real or imagined treats." ‘But perhaps the most powerful inhibition againse sadism is more clemental: a visceral revulsion against hurting another person. Most primates find the sereams of pain ofa fellow animal tobe aversive, and they will abstain from food if tis accompanied by the sound and sight ofa fellow primate being shocked." The distess isan expression not ofthe monkey's moral scruples but of ts dread of making a fellow ani- smal mad as hell. (fe also may be a response to whatever external threat would have caused a fellow animal to isue an alarm call)*” The pare ticipants in Stanley Milgeam’s famous experiment, who obeyed instructions to deliver shocks to a bogus fellow participant, were visibly distaught as they heard the shrieks of pain they were inflicting" Even in moral philosophers’ hypothetical scenarios lke he Trolley Problem, survey-takers recoil from the thought of throwing the fat man infront of che wolley, though they know it would save five innocent lives Testimony on the commission of hands-on violence inthe real world ‘consistent with the results of laboratory studies. As we saw, humans don't readily consummate mano a mano fisticuffs, and soldiers on the butefield may be petrified about pulling the trigger: The historian Christopher Browning’ interviews with Nazi reservists who were ordered to shoot Jews at close range showed that ther inital reaction asa physical revulsion ro what they were doing." The reservists did ot recollect the trauma oftheir frst murders in the morally colored ays we might expect ~ neither with guilt at what they were doing, nor With retcoactive excuses to mitigate their culpability. Instead they ‘eclled how viscerally upset they were made by the seams, the gore, ‘and the raw feeling of killing people at close range. As Baumeister sums 667