In an evolutionary world, humans need “salvation” understood as restoring and maintaining well‐being or functioning well. Humans are embedded in, embodiments of, and emergent creative‐creatures of ...the universe. We have evolved also as ambivalent creatures—doing good, harm, and being bystanders while harm is being done. Multiple factors—for example, genetic, neurological, child developmental, and societal—contribute to malfunctioning and harmful behavior, and multiple religious and secular approaches help restore well‐being. I develop a view of Jesus as a “religious genius” who, grounded in a direct experience of God, taught undiscriminating love and engaged in nonviolent political activism against the unjust domination system of the Roman Empire. Christians and others can follow Jesus by engaging in meditative practices that facilitate well‐being out of which compassion for others and a passion for justice flows. Universal love rooted in Jesus is compatible with an evolutionary perspective that all humans are part of a natural family.
This article discusses how findings from social, cognitive, and affective neuroscience might contribute to our understanding of human evil. Integrating theories of personality and social psychology ...as well as the notions of deindividuation and dehumanization with recent neuroscientific insight, the authors elaborate on the nature of human evil and its potential roots in brain systems associated with affective processing and cognitive control.
Little effort has been made in psychology and psychiatry to study pathologies that afflict, not the aberrant neurotic or psychotic individual or social group, but the greater population of the ...psychologically normal. A study of such “universal pathologies” requires a focus on the “evil of banality,” and not the more restricted “banality of evil.” Where the latter phrase was used by Hannah Arendt to refer to the psychological normality of delimited groups of individuals who perpetrate evil (specifically, Nazi leaders during the Holocaust), the “evil of banality” refers to pathologies of normality—to the psychological constitution of the average person that predisposes him or her to participate in aggression and destruction. The article begins by summarizing conclusions reached in the author's The Pathology of Man: A Study of Human Evil (Charles C. Thomas, 2005). This study provides an up-to-date frame of reference within which are discussed the complementary and insightful observations concerning human evil made by two psychologically oriented humanists, Ernest Becker and Arthur Koestler.
Evil Winnington, G. Peter
The Voice of the Heart,
09/2006
Book Chapter
The notion of evil came to preoccupy Peake with increasing acuity. In early works like ‘The Touch of the Ash’ and his Slaughterboard tales, he amused himself with the cardboard characters of boys’ ...stories. InTitus Groan, he depicted a character who consciously and deliberately chooses to do evil in pursuit of power. This led to his most developed – and literary – examination of human evil inGormenghast, as Steerpike’s choices reduce his options until he is cornered, literally and figuratively, and killed. Having done this, Peake began to reflect on the relationship between evil and art.
Between writingTitus Groan
