The (Em)path Least Traveled
The issue of evil is disconcerting to many people. If you don't believe in a God, then the idea of moral absolutes like good and evil are highly problematic. Likewise, attributing something that is undesirable or morally wrong (at least by current, relativistic standards) to evil ends up creating all manner of mess. If we're moving along the path to humanist self-improval and enlightenment, we have to jettison archaic notions of evil as something beyond explanation and beyond repair.
Enter this handy little theory. Simon Baron-Cohen has devised an explanation for evil - it's a lack of empathy. On the surface it sounds appealing. People who do bad things aren't necessarily motivated by a desire for badness. Rather, they're deficient in a desirable quality - the ability to identify with other people. Baron-Cohen has devised a scale of seven degrees of empathy, ranging from zero empathy (for folks who have no ability to empathize with others) to six (for those who are highly empathetic).
This theory allows for the pursuit of various means of modifying people's behavior, from teaching empathy at early ages in school, to even the possibility of genetic alteration of identified empathy-related genes (though Baron-Cohen seems uncomfortable with this). Overall, treatment is viewed as the way to weed out people who - through no fault of their own - are deficient in their genetic make up, their hormonal make up (testosterone seems to be inversely proportionate to one's empathy). We can fix it, in other words.
This takes things beyond the morally dubious realm of recent history, where exoneration was dependent upon mitigating social issues. A bad upbringing, early trauma, these sorts of things were deemed to be mitigating factors in someone's choice to be a mass murderer. However, these things aren't necessarily sympathetic. After all, plenty of people have rough childhoods and don't grow up to be serial killers or psychopaths. By pinning the blame on empathy and bio-genetic factors, we have a new means of potentially dealing with undesirable qualities.
However, one of the major flaws I see in this system is that it makes no account for those who are willfully desirous of causing harm to others. Baron-Cohen's scale goes to zero, where someone has no demonstrable empathy for another human being. But this ignores those who appear to hurt others precisely because they do empathize with them, so that empathy which provides enjoyment of their victims pain or fear or degradation is precisely what drives them in their actions. Baron-Cohen seems willing to see people as deficient completely in empathy, but he doesn't seem to account for those who hurt precisely because they know it hurts others, and the thrive on that.
And from a theological perspective, this once again takes God out of the picture. Evil is not something real that we need to be rescued from, it's simply a biological or genetic aberration that can be corrected through any number of possible means (including, I'm sure, pre-natal screenings so that problematic babies could be aborted beforehand). This is hugely optimistic, given our catastrophic and continued failure to deal with the issue of evil through training and education and all sorts of social pressures.
Posted by Paul Nelson at 9/5/2011 10:27 PM 
Categories: Science, Theology, Education, Life, Health, Current Events
Categories: Science, Theology, Education, Life, Health, Current Events
So it looks like we'll all be drinking soy milk from now on.
First off somebody is going to have to explain why a lack of empathy is bad. After all evolution is a bloody messy thing. We don't want too many 'softies' diluting the gene pool.
Second what if we pump too much empathy into people and they start empathizing with the unborn. I think getting the balance just right is gonna be tricky. Obviously the humanists haven't thought this all the way thru yet.
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Shhhhh...it would be nice if they don't recognize this until *after* The Modifications have begun!
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