Kevin Annett, On the Nature of Evil |439|

Well society rather arbitrarily divides killing people into killing in warfare and murder (plus some other categories). That leaves me with some doubt -
can we imagine scenarios in which murder would be acceptable, and maybe even harming children and rape. I dare say there are people in the former Yugoslavia who are still trying to straighten out exactly those issues after the civil war there.

We have the advantage of living in more peaceful countries - and let's hope they remain peaceful.

David
David,
There's a big difference between killing in war where it's a job that one has been convinced it's necessary and where one would be killed oneself (or have one's buddies killed) if one did not kill first, and enjoying killing people. In between are spur of the moment murder, crimes of passion, cold calculated premeditated murder for profit.

There are truly evil people that kill simply for the enjoyment of the act itself and for the pain and confusion it causes surviving loved ones and society. You must understand that to get what I'm saying.

I don't understand why dropping atom bombs on Japan is considered evil by some. It was a grown up decision in a grey world. Drop the bombs and end a war that had taken millions of life, or don't drop the bomb and have millions more die. My father fought at Okinawa, which was the last battle of WW2. More civilians died in the conventional weapons cross fire there than were killed by either atom bomb. No one cries for them. Yet grown-ups realized that to get Japan to surrender was going to take battles far greater in scope and scale than Okinawa and that in each battle there'd be far more civilians in the cross fire. That was the factor that weighed most heavily on the decision to drop the A bombs.
 
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I had the same reaction about the prairies dogs story. The is NOT normal behavior for kids, is it a sign of emerging psychopathy.

Agree.

I was a pretty tough kid, I get into fist fights and enjoy the fighting, I played ice hockey as hard as I could, etc....... yet.....at age 8 or 9, I shot a bird (a robin) with my high powered air rifle. I was having a fantasy about hunting or something like that when I did it. My shot didn't hit the robin squarely, it just broke its wing and did some other damage. The robin was wounded and hopping painfully on the ground when I approached. It looked up and its eye met mine and I felt sick to my stomach at what I had done. I vowed to never do such a meaningless cruel thing again, and didn't. To this day - and I'm 56 - I sometimes reflect on that incident with shame as I fill the many bird feeders on my property. I don't have a problem putting down a bad human (say like a terrorist), but harming innocent life for no good reason? Nope. I can't do it.
 
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David,
There's a big difference between killing in war where it's a job that one has been convinced it's necessary and where one would be killed oneself (or have one's buddies killed) if one did not kill first, and enjoying killing people. In between are spur of the moment murder, crimes of passion, cold calculated premeditated murder for profit.

There are truly evil people that kill simply for the enjoyment of the act itself and for the pain and confusion it causes surviving loved ones and society. You must understand that to get what I'm saying.

I don't understand why dropping atom bombs on Japan is considered evil by some. It was a grown up decision in a grey world. Drop the bombs and end a war that had taken millions of life, or don't drop the bomb and have millions more die. My father fought at Okinawa, which was the last battle of WW2. More civilians died in the conventional weapons cross fire there than were killed by either atom bomb. No one cries for them. Yet grown-ups realized that to get Japan to surrender was going to take battles far greater in scope and scale than Okinawa and that in each battle there'd be far more civilians in the cross fire. That was the factor that weighed most heavily on the decision to drop the A bombs.
I think the problem is, that there is a continuum between killing in a just war all the way to raping and pillaging in an unjust war.

It is painful to accept that, but unfortunately it is true.

Suppose for example, that part of the reason for dropping the two bombs was to test them out on a real target. Could any of those involved ever disentangle their motives afterwards?

Rape is used in warfare - presumably some soldiers are ordered to rape:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wartime_sexual_violence

How would you assess their guilt in such a case?

David
 
I think the problem is, that there is a continuum between killing in a just war all the way to raping and pillaging in an unjust war.

It is painful to accept that, but unfortunately it is true.

Suppose for example, that part of the reason for dropping the two bombs was to test them out on a real target. Could any of those involved ever disentangle their motives afterwards?

Rape is used in warfare - presumably some soldiers are ordered to rape:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wartime_sexual_violence

How would you assess their guilt in such a case?

David

David,
Yes. Rape has been used in warfare. That is evil. It is behavior unbecoming military personnel and a human being. I am unaware of any instance where rape has been deployed as a weapon of war by American troops. Sure, some rogue troop(s) has committed rape here and there - and some have faced a courts martial for it - but it is not condoned by the military; quite the opposite. Now in Africa and some other God forsaken hellholes, it is SOP. It's that sort of thing that makes me feel justified in criticizing some cultures.

I'm pretty sure the A bombs were dropped to end the war and to demonstrate to other nations why they shouldn't try to start another one, not to test them on a live target. They had been tested in New Mexico and everyone had a good idea what they would do to a live target. But to your hypothetical point, I think you're still missing what I'm trying to say; which is that there is evil out there that undermines goodness and causes harm to the soul and mind because that is its ambition and nothing else.
 
David,
Yes. Rape has been used in warfare. That is evil. It is behavior unbecoming military personnel and a human being. I am unaware of any instance where rape has been deployed as a weapon of war by American troops. Sure, some rogue troop(s) has committed rape here and there - and some have faced a courts martial for it - but it is not condoned by the military; quite the opposite. Now in Africa and some other God forsaken hellholes, it is SOP. It's that sort of thing that makes me feel justified in criticizing some cultures.

I'm pretty sure the A bombs were dropped to end the war and to demonstrate to other nations why they shouldn't try to start another one, not to test them on a live target. They had been tested in New Mexico and everyone had a good idea what they would do to a live target. But to your hypothetical point, I think you're still missing what I'm trying to say; which is that there is evil out there that undermines goodness and causes harm to the soul and mind because that is its ambition and nothing else.
There is indeed evil, but what I am saying is that there really isn't a sharp dividing line. I don't mind you criticising other cultures, but think about a soldier in such a culture who is ordered to rape - is he evil or not?

It isn't just African countries that did it:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...tar-gathers-detailed-evidence-of-1471656.html

I know it is horrible, but I think Kevin Annett is right in saying that there is a nugget of evil in everyone (or at least most people), that can be activated in certain conditions.

David
 
There is indeed evil, but what I am saying is that there really isn't a sharp dividing line. I don't mind you criticising other cultures, but think about a soldier in such a culture who is ordered to rape - is he evil or not?

It isn't just African countries that did it:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...tar-gathers-detailed-evidence-of-1471656.html

I know it is horrible, but I think Kevin Annett is right in saying that there is a nugget of evil in everyone (or at least most people), that can be activated in certain conditions.

David

A soldier that rapes is expressing evil. A soldier has a duty to disobey an unlawful order. That is official code in the US and for Brits. I don't know about other militaries. There is no excuse.

I think what Kevin says about there being a nugget of evil in everyone is true to extent, but is a dangerous view to hold. It is a ready made excuse for true evil, as I have already mentioned. No, we could not all be SS genocidal maniacs. That takes a special mentality. To say we could all do it diminishes responsibility. The "I was merely following orders" excuse - essentially Kevin's - was dismissed as not worthy. Also, as I said, the idea that all Germany was the equivalent of the SS is ignorant and sophomoric. It wasn't the case. The regular German army - the Wehrmacht - were just soldiers fighting for their country.
 
Well unfortunately rape has been used as a weapon of war - presumably to demoralise and subjugate an enemy population. I think war is the real problem in distinguishing evil from more normal behaviour. Think of the process of dropping even one nuclear bomb on a city. It seems impossible to justify, yet the US did it twice, and the justification was that it would shorten the war and save lives. If you can contemplate that act, including considering the children living far enough from the explosion not to be killed instantaneously, where is the dividing line?

David

I was definitely thinking of war when I asked. This is really a huge part of the issue, and there’s an excellent book, The Origins of War in Child Abuse, that nails it, imo. I think very much about what it does to the psyche of an individual when trained to comprise his higher wisdom in following evil orders. It’s not that we don’t understand these acts are evil, it’s that we justify the evil as necessary. I think this is where we go wrong. It’s not a necessary evil, though in a very few cases maybe a ‘necessary evil’ does exist in the universe, and this has been co-opted by the PTB to exploit this for their benefit. These are the cases where I think the evil becomes like a virus, and why we see so much suicide among returned vets, and CPTSD and other serious issues of the mind. They know the evil has not been justified and this eats at their mind/heart/body. I feel such enormous compassion for these men (mostly men anyway) because I do really think most of them are not actually evil, just indoctrinated that way.

And here’s the real kicker, where I think these ideas get a lot of pushback, I blame women equally for this societal catastrophe. If women would refuse to copulate with violent men, guess what would happen!
Don’t worry, I’m not holding my breathe.
 
Kevin Annett is right in saying that there is a nugget of evil in everyone (or at least most people), that can be activated in certain conditions.

Is that what he said? I must go back then and review. That was not what I heard in the moment. Obviously there’s a nugget in everyone, the potential for evil exists in everyone. I acknowledge evil exists in everyone. I do not accept that this then becomes a norm that rules the roost. I reject evil. I know it’s there, I’m aware of it, and I consciously, actively, vociferously, reject it.
 
greed... even just a few years ago this was not acknowledged. despite whatever else we might think about kevin he deserves enormous credit for being one of the few people on the right side of this issue from the beginning... rather stunning really.

TOTALLY AGREED! I do give him enormous credit, I hope my critiques, doubts and need to verify did not overshadow that fact too much!
 
A soldier that rapes is expressing evil. A soldier has a duty to disobey an unlawful order. That is official code in the US and for Brits. I don't know about other militaries. There is no excuse.
Unfortunately all too often the rules of war break down in the heat of battle.

Remember, we are not talking about excuses here, we are talking about to what extent many or all of us could behave evilly under certain circumstances.

One of the reasons I hate war (and therefore approve of Trump) is that war provides the conditions to push many men over the edge.
I think what Kevin says about there being a nugget of evil in everyone is true to extent, but is a dangerous view to hold. It is a ready made excuse for true evil, as I have already mentioned.
Well of course we are discussing this abstractly - it isn't going into an official document!
No, we could not all be SS genocidal maniacs. That takes a special mentality. To say we could all do it diminishes responsibility. The "I was merely following orders" excuse - essentially Kevin's - was dismissed as not worthy. Also, as I said, the idea that all Germany was the equivalent of the SS is ignorant and sophomoric. It wasn't the case. The regular German army - the Wehrmacht - were just soldiers fighting for their country.

There was a famous psychological experiment in which people were told to give an electric shock to someone as a punishment, and the severity of the shock was progressively increased. The receiver of the shocks was part of the experiment, and he faked increasing pain, and eventually collapsed.

I don't know to what extent a person in such an experiment realises they are being tricked, but on the face of it, it implied that someone could be manoeuvred into killing or maiming another human being for pretty trivial reasons. A few subjects resisted persuasion.

David
 
Unfortunately all too often the rules of war break down in the heat of battle.

Remember, we are not talking about excuses here, we are talking about to what extent many or all of us could behave evilly under certain circumstances.

One of the reasons I hate war (and therefore approve of Trump) is that war provides the conditions to push many men over the edge.

Well of course we are discussing this abstractly - it isn't going into an official document!


There was a famous psychological experiment in which people were told to give an electric shock to someone as a punishment, and the severity of the shock was progressively increased. The receiver of the shocks was part of the experiment, and he faked increasing pain, and eventually collapsed.

I don't know to what extent a person in such an experiment realises they are being tricked, but on the face of it, it implied that someone could be manoeuvred into killing or maiming another human being for pretty trivial reasons. A few subjects resisted persuasion.

David

David,
I am very familiar with the experiment you reference - the Milgram experiment. 65% of subjects followed directions to deliver what they thought was a potentially lethal (or very dangerous) shock - but 35% would not. They refused.

Subsequent experiments showed that people could be trained to not follow unlawful orders (training cohort versus untrained cohort put into a Milgram experiment and the trained cohort had a vast majority refuse to deliver dangerous shocks). The US military trains to not commit atrocities and how to refuse.

There will always be a bell curve. 35% refused in the original experiment. Not everyone can or would be an SS executioner. Most people are stupid followers. A good leader can train them to not be evil and that training can last a life time.

To not fight Hitler or terrorists because war is icky and evil is, in itself, evil. Like I keep saying, intent is everything when discussing evil. A real man will ruck up and march into hell if need be. He needs to be well trained and needs support when he returns.
 
David,
I am very familiar with the experiment you reference - the Milgram experiment. 65% of subjects followed directions to deliver what they thought was a potentially lethal (or very dangerous) shock - but 35% would not. They refused.

Subsequent experiments showed that people could be trained to not follow unlawful orders (training cohort versus untrained cohort put into a Milgram experiment and the trained cohort had a vast majority refuse to deliver dangerous shocks). The US military trains to not commit atrocities and how to refuse.

There will always be a bell curve. 35% refused in the original experiment. Not everyone can or would be an SS executioner. Most people are stupid followers. A good leader can train them to not be evil and that training can last a life time.

To not fight Hitler or terrorists because war is icky and evil is, in itself, evil. Like I keep saying, intent is everything when discussing evil. A real man will ruck up and march into hell if need be. He needs to be well trained and needs support when he returns.
I get all this... and wonder if another distinction we could make is the appeal to a malevolent force within the extended Consciousness Realm that will help us achieve our ends. I don't know if Satan is "real" but seeking his help to carry out your plan doesn't seem like a good way to earn afterlife brownie points :)
 
Alex, I tend to favor Westall over the anti-Annett smears. Here is a recent Westall endorsement: in a Jan 2020 interview. (There are crazy smears going on, including the claim that in this interview Sarah is a clone. Annett is claimed to be an alien at another anti-Annett website, a website which carried the R. Kavanagh video).


Annett interview with Sarah Westall Jan 2020.
Alex, would you pls acknowledge that you saw this. It took a long time to track it down.
 
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A bit of evil here for you, this time, it narrates the industrial scale rape campaign perpetrated by the Soviet troops in Germany in 1945. millions of German women, ages 4 to 85, were raped, most of them to death. This is from the memoirs of the Russian painter L. N. Rabichev, IIWW veteran who personally witnessed Soviet atrocities in Germany. I quickly translates this chapter from Russian, the translation doesn't pretend to be literary.

February 1945 East Prussia.


We crossed the street. The house is one-story, with several residential and office extensions, and at the entrance there is a horse carriage. Three large rooms, two dead women and three dead girls, all with their skirts up, and between their legs, empty wine bottles protruding outward. I walk along the wall of the house, the second door, a corridor, a door and two more adjoining rooms, on each of the beds, there are three of them, dead women with open legs and bottles protruding from there.
It looked like everyone was raped and shot. Pillows are covered in blood. But where does this sadistic desire come from — to stick the bottles in? Our infantry, our tank crews, country and city boys, all of them have mothers, sisters, girlfriends….
I understand - killing in battle, kill or get killed. After the first kill, one experiences shock, or starts vomiting, or develops a fever. But here, there is some terrible sadistic game, something like a competition: who will stick more bottles between women’s legs, and it’s the same in every house. No, it wasn't us, army communications. These are infantrymen, tankers, artillery guys. They entered civilian houses first …
... Yes, it was five months ago, when our troops in East Prussia caught up with the evacuating civilians from Goldap, Insterburg and other cities left by the German army. By carts and cars, on foot, old men, women, children, large patriarchal families, on all roads and highways of the country were slowly moving to the west.
Our tankers, infantrymen, artillerymen, signalmen caught up with them in order to clear the way, threw in the ditches their carts with furniture, their bags, suitcases, horses, pushed old people and children to the sides of the highway, and, forgetting about duty and honor and about German units retreating without a fight, threw themselves by thousands on women and girls.

Women, mothers and their daughters, on their backs right and left along the highway, in front of each one there is a cackling mass of men with their pants down.
Those who are hemorrhaging and fainting are being pulled aside. Children, rushing to help them, are shot. Cackling, growling, laughing, shouting and groaning. And their commanders, their majors and colonels are standing on the highway, chuckling and directing, no, rather, regulating, so that all their soldiers, without exception, take part. No, not for the sake of mutual implication, and not at all for the sake of revenge on the accursed invaders - just for the sake of this hellish deadly group sex.
Permissiveness, impunity, impersonality and the cruel logic of a crazed crowd. Shocked, I sat in the cabin of the truck, while my driver Demidov stood in the rape line, and I was imagining Flaubert’s Carthage, realizing that one couldn’t blame everything on the war. The colonel, the one that was directing the show, couldn’t take it anymore and got in line himself, while the major was shooting hysterical children and elderly that were witnessing this horror. “Enough! Into the cars!” Behind us there is the next army division. Then, another stop, and I can not stop my soldiers from forming new rape lines, and my telephone girls are choking with laughter, and my nausea rises to my throat. Mountains of rags, overturned carts, corpses of women, old people, children, all the way up to the horizon.
The highway is free for traffic. It's getting dark. Left and right there are German folwarks (ranches). We get the order to camp for the night. This is part of the headquarters of our army: the artillery, air defence and political department officers. Me and my platoon control get a folwark two kilometers from the highway. In all rooms, the corpses of children, the elderly and raped and shot women. We are so tired that, not paying attention to them, we lie down on the floor between them and fall asleep.
... Well, I’m helping to carry out the corpses. I suddenly froze by the wall of the house.
Springtime, the first green grass on the lawn, the bright hot sun. Our house has a pointed Gothic-style roof, covered with red tiles, probably about two hundred years old, a courtyard, paved with stone slabs, about 5 hundred year old.
In Europe, we are in Europe!
I was daydreaming, and suddenly two sixteen-year-old German girls entered the open gates. In their eyes there is no fear, but terrible anxiety. They saw me, ran up and, interrupting each other, started trying to explain something to me in German. I do not know the language, but I hear the words “Mutter”, “Vater”, “Bruder”.
It becomes clear to me that in a panic-driven flight they had lost their family somewhere.
I feel terribly sorry for them, then I realize that they need to run away from our HQ as fast as they can, so I tell them:
- Mutter, Vater, Bruder - nicht! - and point with a finger at the second distant gate - there, go! And I start pushing them.

Then they understand me, they are running away, disappear from sight, and I sigh with relief - at least I saved two girls, and go to the second floor to my telephones, to watch the movement of military personnel, but less than twenty minutes pass before I hear shouting, yelling, laughing, cursing.
I rush to the window.
On the steps of the house there is Major A. and two sergeants, who are twisting the arms of those same two girls, and right in front of them, all the staff officers — the chauffeur, the orderlies, the scribes, the messengers.
- Nikolaev, Sidorov, Kharitonov, Pimenov ... - orders major A. - Take the girls by the arms and legs, skirts and blouses off! Form two lines-ho! Undo your belts, pants and pull them off-ho! Right and left, one by one, start-ho!
A. commands, and my signalmen, my platoon, run down the stairs from the house and take place in lines. And two girls “saved” by me lie on ancient stone slabs, hands in grip, mouths are crammed with kerchiefs, legs spread apart - they are no longer trying to break free from the hands of four sergeants, and the fifth tears off and rips apart their blouses, bras, skirts and panties to pieces.
My telephone girls run out of the house - laughter and cursing.
And the lines do not get shorter, some rise, others descend, and there are already pools of blood around the martyrs, and there is no end to the lines, the cackling and the cursing.
The girls are already unconscious, but the orgy continues.
Major A. directs proudly with his arms up in the air. But now the last one gets up, and the sergeants-assassins attack two half-dead bodies.
Major A. pulls a revolver from his holster and shoots into the bloodied mouths of the martyrs, and the sergeants drag their mutilated bodies in the pigsty, and hungry pigs begin to tear off their ears, noses, breasts, and in a few minutes only two skulls, bones, vertebrae is all that’s left of them.
I'm scared, disgusted.
Suddenly, nausea rushes to my throat, and it turns my insides out.
Major A. - God, what a scoundrel!
I can not work, run out of the house without thinking where to go, I walk around, come back, I can’t , I have to look in the pigsty.
There are bloodshot pig's eyes in front of me, and mixed with the straws and pork manure there are two skulls, a jaw, several vertebrae and bones and two small golden crosses - two girls “saved” by me.
L. N. Rabichev



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two girls “saved” by me.

Very provocative and speaks to Alex’s question precisely—at what point is the individual, the observer, implicated in evil?
At what point is just recounting the story enough? He proved himself a coward at the precise moment he could have been a hero—does recounting the story make him feel relieved from his guilt? Of course he knew he was not ever helping those girls, from the first moment he said it. At what point does the soldier break from the brotherhood to stand for the innocent? Where are those stories, I wonder? Who are those heroes?
 
Very provocative and speaks to Alex’s question precisely—at what point is the individual, the observer, implicated in evil?
At what point is just recounting the story enough? He proved himself a coward at the precise moment he could have been a hero—does recounting the story make him feel relieved from his guilt? Of course he knew he was not ever helping those girls, from the first moment he said it. At what point does the soldier break from the brotherhood to stand for the innocent? Where are those stories, I wonder? Who are those heroes?
This was the Soviet Union. The very moment he would open his mouth he would shot by the military intelligence SMERSH. One has to understand what the Soviet terror was really like. The USSR even considered its own captured troops as traitors, they would not sign the treaty with the Red Cross to allow visits to Russian prisoners of war in German camps, and, when they would "free" their POW, they would execute them right away or send them to GULAG. When Soviet troops would attack the enemy, they always had SMERSH troops behind them with machine guns. Anybody stopping or taking a step back would be immediately shot. That's how horrific the Soviet reality was. No, the author couldn't do anything. Nothing.
 
No, the author couldn't do anything. Nothing

That’s not really true. I can agree with all you said but that. I’m sure it was a horrific nightmare worse than anything I could imagine and I don’t pretend to know a man’s heart when he’s in such a situation. But as the reader of that story I knew a hero would sacrifice himself for the innocents, because that’s what a hero does. What if he’d martyred himself, for example? Might that extraordinary action potentially have snapped the a few of the men out of their violent trance? Could he even have shot the commander before himself, which would’ve caused such mayhem that the girls would have a chance to escape? I speculate here because while I don’t know a man’s heart in such a horrific situation, I do think if he ever recovered from witnessing this it would be surprising. He experienced a soul death I’d say, and once that happens how valuable is your physical life anyway?
 
That’s not really true. I can agree with all you said but that. I’m sure it was a horrific nightmare worse than anything I could imagine and I don’t pretend to know a man’s heart when he’s in such a situation. But as the reader of that story I knew a hero would sacrifice himself for the innocents, because that’s what a hero does. What if he’d martyred himself, for example? Might that extraordinary action potentially have snapped the a few of the men out of their violent trance? Could he even have shot the commander before himself, which would’ve caused such mayhem that the girls would have a chance to escape? I speculate here because while I don’t know a man’s heart in such a horrific situation, I do think if he ever recovered from witnessing this it would be surprising. He experienced a soul death I’d say, and once that happens how valuable is your physical life anyway?
Yea, I agree...
 
I was reminded of an old psychology study when Kevin mentioned that gerbils crowded into cages start eating their young. I wish I could remember who did it, but he built a mini-city w/ high rises & streets w/ lots of places to live & then he put in lab rats who had access to an unlimited supply of food & water. First, the rats began to abandon their babies as the population grew; the babies became gangs of children who roamed about to feed themselves. They often specialized in attacking rats who moved about by themselves; some "gangs" bit the tails off of other rats, molested weak rats, etc. Then the rats began to exhibit homosexual relationships, not bothering to mate. What can we learn from this? Can people model the effects of over-population this way? I think it's irresponsible to ignore the parallels demonstrated by the rat studies. If parents don't have to have both members working to support the kids & themselves, then the kids benefit. In short, birth control benefits everyone, the planet, our future as a civilized society. Scum like the WOB (Catholic Church) or other religious sects that encourage people to breed freely beg us to end our freedom as human beings & bow to the evil that is unrestrained mercantilism. Capitalism flourishes w/ large groups of workers to exploit to work @ extremely low wages, w/o protection from those who take advantage of over-worked & under-paid employees.
 
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