“THE evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones. So it will be with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.” So said Judge George O’Toole before sentencing Tsarnaev to death for his part in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. During the trial, it emerged that the killer was well liked by his teachers and friends, had been compassionate to people with disabilities and had apologised to victims and their families. But, said O’Toole, his goodness would always be overshadowed by his hateful act.
The human capacity for both good and evil, often within the same person, has long been recognised and puzzled over; O’Toole was quoting the Roman general Mark Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. What is it about us that endows us with such diametrically opposite propensities?
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Evolutionary biology has an answer, and it doesn’t reflect well on human nature. Acts of both good and evil are driven by altruism – and that is ultimately selfishness in disguise.
For a long time, altruism was a biological mystery. The prime directive of evolution is to pass on our genes to the next generation. Engaging in costly behaviours with no obvious survival pay-off seems to go against that grain. The polymath J. B. S. Haldane eventually twigged it: individuals mostly make sacrifices for close relatives, and hence help to usher copies of their own genes into the next generation. As Haldane put it: “I would lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins.” Acts of true selflessness exist, but these are explained as reciprocal altruism, where kindness to strangers (who may in fact be relatives) is banked for the future.
“Evildoers often see their acts as being for the greater good”
That’s all good, but what about evil? Evildoers often see their acts as being for the greater good. This “pathological altruism” lies behind some of the worst atrocities in human history, including wars of aggression and genocide. The Boston Marathon bomber apparently thought that radical Islam was a good enough cause to maim and kill for.
We don’t come fitted with categories of people that are targets of our empathy or cruelty, says , author of The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why violence has declined. “Whether we’re good or evil depends on what side of the sympathy boundary a particular individual is found,” he says. That largely depends on whether we see them as part of our “tribe” at any given point. If we don’t, we can treat others exploitatively or instrumentally, says Pinker. “We can keep slaves, we can engage in ethnic cleansing, we treat people like vermin.”
Even members of our in-group cannot count on our good intentions all the time. Our sense of justice is often indistinguishable from our sense of revenge, so we can be cruel when we think a person “deserves” it, says Pinker. A desire for dominance can lead us to disadvantage those we see as standing in our way, he says.
But humans also have the capacity for self-control and, perhaps uniquely, self-reflection, which has allowed us to suppress or moderate some of our baser evolutionary impulses. Innovations such as the rule of law, courts and the police go some way to reduce our power, or our incentive, to disadvantage others for personal gain. The continuity and stability this provides to our societies is one reason why, contrary to popular belief, evidence suggests evil is on the decline, says Pinker – and means our good need not always be interred with our bones.
