I think I have done this one before, but I’ve slept since then it probably bears repeating anyway. I found a fascinating book about evil. It is called “The Science of Evil” and it looks at people would label as sociopaths or psychopaths. The entire premise of the book was that “evil” is what I would lovingly call a “variable absolute.”

The concept of evil is culturally based and therefore almost meaningless on its own. Our enemies become evil, but the fact that we look at the world through a prism of allies and enemies might itself be a sign of distress. So, evil has no useful definition that we can use in a clinical sense. There are certainly individual acts we would all recognize as evil, but if you cannot accurately define it then it is impossible to study it in any significant way.

So what Simon Baron-Cohen (the author of the book) does is look at what traits we commonly see in those people that commit acts that we would commonly recognize as evil. It certainly makes sense. How do you know that someone young has the potential to grow up into a monster?

More importantly, can we change this before it happens? What Baron-Cohen noticed is that people we commonly refer to as evil all have one thing in common. They either have little or no empathy. Good and evil is a hit or miss proposition. Empathy is something we can focus on cultivating. It is something we can teach in our schools, our homes, and houses of worship.

Empathy doesn’t require posting something like the ten commandments. It doesn’t require the imposition of values. It simply requires that we teach young people to see a world outside of themselves. It requires taking those painful moments we all experience and using them to understand when someone else might be going through a similar moment.

As hard as we might try, there are some people that are too psychologically damaged to learn empathy. I have a masters degree in counseling, but I haven’t done the research like Baron-Cohen. I couldn’t tell you if that is a failure on our part or if someone is destined never to learn it. I certainly think there are plenty of anecdotal examples on both counts.

What we can do is prioritize empathy in leadership positions. We cannot force everyone to have empathy, but at least we can incentivize it. We can make sure that the leader of the free world, our schools, places of business, and everything in between are caring people. It is a basic test we used to pass with great regularity. It is a basic test we have failed in recent decades.

When we don’t prioritize empathy we hurt ourselves in multiple ways. First and foremost, when we have leaders that lack empathy, they are unable to make decisions that consider the feelings and well-being of those in their organization. Decision are self-serving and therefore only benefit the leader and those that happen to have the same needs.

The secondary consideration might be the more long-term reason. If I want to be a leader I will model myself after the leaders that I know and respect. If the leaders I know have no empathy then I will think it is okay not to have any empathy. I will think that is the proper way to be a leader. In other words, empathy isn’t an added bonus, but a prerequisite.

Empathy keeps us from hurting people physically and psychologically. Some might label that as a conscience or moral compass. In reality it is empathy. We understand it because we can imagine it being done to us. Empathy is basic, but we can’t take it for granted. More and more people lack it and more and more people don’t seem to mind.

I am usually late to these things. I never promised to be first. I promised to give things some thought and come with a more comprehensive outlook. By now, you know that Kristi Noem (governor of South Dakota) is a noted dog killer. She volunteered this information herself in her book. You could even say she was bragging about it.

If you’ve been out of pocket for the last two weeks, she told this anecdote in her book about killing a 14 month old puppy because it was “untrainable.” She also killed a goat because it didn’t smell good and she didn’t like it. Apparently, she was a “farm girl” and that’s just how things are done on the farm.

A part of this is by design. Most progressives live in urban areas. So, if progressives object to this kind of behavior then it just highlights the difference between urban and rural America. Them city folk just don’t know how everything is done on the farm. They aren’t real Americans. They are snowflakes that want to virtue signal and cancel things they will just never understand.

It’s all a crock of bullshit. Anyone that has owned an animal or cared for an animal knows you don’t shoot that animal because “it cannot be trained.” Even if that is true there are hundreds of other options. There are people you could rehome the animal with. There are agencies like Second Chance Pets that will take the animal and rehome it for you. There are places that will allow the animal to roam free. It may not be the best life, but it is a life.

Admittedly, we are animal people. I have had as many as four cats at the same time. We had to put one of them to sleep several months ago. It was a sweet cat that had a horrible disease that was incurable and destined to cause him tons of pain. We also have a dog. He is fairly well trained now, but the first few months were rough. We have had a few hairy moments every now and then. He doesn’t like thunderstorms. He reacts around other dogs. He’s as smart as a whip, but he’s a dog. It’s what dogs do.

I suppose being an animal lover makes me weird. I inherited this trait from my mother. All of our cats have been rescues or second chance pets. Our dog was adopted as well. This is a trait that has been passed down to our daughter. I have always firmly believed that you can tell a lot about a person based on their disposition to animals. I’ve learned a lot about Kristi Noem the last couple of weeks. None of it has been good.

To be perfectly fair, I never was a big fan. However, she has demonstrated a cruelty and callousness that is breathtaking to see. It takes a cold and loveless heart to willingly kill an animal when its only crime was “smelling bad” or “being untrainable.” To brag about it is borderline sociopathic or psychopathic. Hell, the animal community debates euthanizing a chronically sick pet. There are those that believe that pets should be allowed to live a full life regardless of their medical condition. There are others that want to prevent needless suffering.

Then there are those that believe animals should be put down when they are inconvenient. I can’t fathom that. If they think animals are expendable then what do they think about people? Are some of us expendable? Maybe that is why we can play games with immigrants by threatening their lives and busing them half way across the country without their consent. It is only one small step from shooting a dog to discarding a human being. At least it used to be something we didn’t brag about. I guess those days are over.

Some people are more fascinated with evil than others. The biggest rage in the office is the series “Dahmer” on Netflix. Everyone has been trying to get me to watch, but I’d be watching solo at home. I don’t necessarily want to see evil or watch it described, but the idea of sociopaths and psychopaths interests me as someone that has a masters in counseling and has dabbled in some abnormal psychology.

I picked up a book at Barnes and Noble a few weeks ago and was finally able to crack it open. Mind you, I haven’t finished it but I found Science of Evil by Simon Baron-Cohen to be a fascinating read so far. The biggest breakthrough was in the terminology itself. He doesn’t use terms like good and evil. Instead he talked about empathy. Some people have a lot of it and some people have a little or zero real empathy.

As someone interested in mental health, this revelation brings a number of questions that I hope he has answers for. For instance, is empathy something innate that some people simply lack or is it something learned from our environment? For instance, he was able to show different parts of the brain and explain what was happening on a physiological level when someone’s empathy was impaired. Can we successfully teach empathy? Can we develop an empathy pill for those that have biological reasons for a lack of empathy?

What strikes me most of all is that terms like “good” and “evil” come with significant value judgments attached. Empathy can be measured. We may not have a perfect measurement, but we can certainly do better than “evil”. One can say that they are doing something for the good of mankind and yet conduct themselves without a shred of human empathy.

Cohen described it like a spotlight. Those that have empathy have two or more spotlights. One is on them and their thoughts and needs. The other spotlight(s) are on others and their thoughts and needs. Those with zero to no empathy have only one spotlight. There are times in all of our lives when we are down to one spotlight. It happens. Something horrible happens or we feel more vulnerable for one reason or another. However, that condition is just temporary. When our lives stabilize or the crisis abates then our empathy returns to normal.

Yet, what we are seeing is an increasing amount of people that are stuck on one spotlight. Again, I wish I knew whether this was learned behavior or somehow organic. What I do know is that this is a more substantial description of potentially dangerous people than simply calling them evil. After all, a person with a single spotlight can seem good as long as their ends seem in line with everyone else’s. When their interests and the interests of others collide then watch out. Until we can get a pill at the local pharmacy we need to make sure we don’t give those folks too much power.