M Scott Peck and Evil as Smug Self-Deception
According to M Scott Peck, evil is a form of self-righteousness. You feel morally superior to others and enjoy hurting them for not being "moral" like you are. Peck explained that the evil person imputes evil motives to innocent people to victimise them.
The evil person will prefer to pick a target that will be unable to fight back. Children make easy targets.
Peck stated that to be adept at evil you have to engage in self-deception so that your conscience ends up twisted and in denial about how bad you are. Peck said that evil people are not the same as sociopaths - sociopaths seem to have no conscience.
Peck outlined the traits in an evil person.
They include the ability to fool oneself and keep it up. One will be consistent
with the self-deception. One feels the reward is having little or no guilt
feelings and appearing to be an upright person in ones own reckoning and that in
others. These rewards help one stay consistent.
The inevitable result of self-deception is that one's life becomes a lie to
others. That is inevitable and to deceive yourself is to risk deceiving others
and leads to many being fooled.
The person will treat many people normally but will choose some targets for
abuse.
He projects the malice and evil in himself on to them.
She hides her hate for them as love or tough love.
The person will abuse any power he has over others and this abuse might be
covert.
The person tells and lives lies continually to look respectable.
She will not consider how her victim feels and is not interested in seeing
things from the victim's perspective.
He hates criticism even if it is constructive and will pretend to welcome it but
will think of ways to diffuse the criticism.
An evil person is often skilled at spotting when institutions are evil.
COMMENT: This is a good analysis. If true then moral relativists, those who
say morality is not real but just opinion, are disguising their evil as a moral
theory. An evil person likes to observe what evil institutions and customs are
out there and will find something to participate in so that their evil can be
practiced and supported and maybe look good. If religion is evil or a political
party it will attract evil people like that. If self-deception, targeting
children for indoctrination/abuse, accusing others of being sinners, being
dogmatic and refusing to see your religion from the perspective of the person
who says it is man-made and untrue make you evil then why does religion exhibit
all the traits?
