Major philosophers have long debated
whether evil stems from monstrous intent or mundane indifference. Hannah
Arendt, in analysing the Nazi perpetrator Adolf Eichmann, coined the phrase
“the banality of evil” to denote how immense crimes can be committed not by
fanatical demons but by ordinary, even unremarkable people. At Eichmann’s 1961
trial, Arendt was struck by his lack of diabolical passion—he was “neither
perverted nor sadistic”, but alarmingly normal in his desire to advance his
career. He performed evil deeds “without evil intentions”, out of an inability
to think from others’ perspectives. In Arendt’s view, this thoughtlessness—a
failure to imagine the real suffering of victims or to question
authority—produced a shallow “ordinary” wrongdoing that nonetheless had
monstrous results. Simone Weil similarly observed that real evil is often dull
and mechanical, not the dramatic villainy of myth: “Imaginary evil is romantic
and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring”. Both thinkers suggest
that much of human evil arises from a void of empathy and reflection—a moral
numbness that permits cruelty.
Other philosophers, however, have explored active or radical
malice. Immanuel Kant argued that humans possess a “propensity to evil”: an
innate tendency to put self-interest above the moral law. This propensity
doesn’t mean each person is destined to do horrific deeds, but it tilts us
toward moral failure unless actively resisted by principle. Kant distinguished
this common radical evil from a purely diabolical evil (doing harm for harm’s
sake), which he thought humans rarely if ever embody—since even wrongdoers
usually rationalise their actions rather than embracing evil as such. Friedrich
Nietzsche famously critiqued morality itself and probed the human impulse
towards cruelty. In On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche notes how
throughout history people have taken festive joy in cruelty, both in punishment
and in spectacle: “Without cruelty there is no festival: thus the longest and
most ancient part of human history teaches—and in punishment there is so much
that is festive!” He viewed the enjoyment of others’ suffering as deeply rooted
in the psyche, however unsettling that may be. Meanwhile, philosophers like
Simone Weil emphasised the privation of good at evil’s core—a kind of emptiness
or refusal to see the humanity of others. Weil suggested that truly looking at
another’s pain is a spiritual act, and evil consists in the failure to make
that imaginative leap. Thus, across thinkers, we get a nuanced picture: evil
can result from the absence of thought and empathy, or an active delight in
causing harm, or simply the ordinary human tendency to favour oneself even at
others’ expense.
Modern psychology bolsters these philosophical insights by
examining individuals who enjoy cruelty versus those who slide into it
mindlessly. Clinical studies have identified a personality trait of everyday
sadism—the tendency to derive pleasure from inflicting or witnessing pain. In
one experiment, researchers gave volunteers a choice of unpleasant tasks (such
as killing insects in a grinder, cleaning toilets, or enduring ice water); a
significant minority chose to kill insects, even expending extra effort to do
so. The more “sadistic” the person (by personality score), the more likely they
were to opt for killing and report enjoyment in the act. Such participants
showed “emotional benefit in causing or simply observing others’ suffering”.
Follow-up tests found that only those high in sadism would, for example, exert
themselves to blast an innocent person with loud noise even when there was no
retaliation—suggesting a pure appetite for others’ pain. This research supports
the notion that malevolent cruelty—harming for harm’s sake—is very real, even
if it’s present in only a subset of people.
Relatedly, the clinical profile of psychopathy illuminates
how evil can manifest as an emotional deficit. Psychopathy is characterised by
a callous lack of empathy or remorse, shallow affect, and often a charming
manipulativeness. Psychopaths can commit cruel or exploitative acts with
chilling detachment because they do not feel the pangs of conscience that stop
others. As one forensic summary puts it, many psychopaths show a “profound lack
of remorse for their aggressive actions… along with a corresponding lack of
empathy for their victims”, which enables them to act in a cold-blooded manner,
using those around them as pawns to satisfy their own desires. Most psychopaths
do not become violent criminals—some channel their manipulative tendencies into
business or politics—but the combination of charm, power-seeking, and inability
to care about others’ suffering makes psychopathy a classic template of evil in
psychological literature. This stands in contrast to Arendt’s banal evildoer
who may feel something (fear, career ambition, peer pressure) but fails to
think morally; the psychopath can think instrumentally but fails to feel
morally, treating people as objects. Moreover, when a psychopath also possesses
sadistic inclinations, the result can be a person who not only lacks empathy
but thrives on cruelty—arguably an embodiment of active evil.
Philosophy and psychology together suggest that human evil
comes in multiple forms. There is the thoughtless compliance that Arendt and
Weil warned about—a void where empathy and reflection should be—making decent
people into agents of horror through routine and obedience. And there is the
intentional malevolence seen in sadists and psychopaths who recognise suffering
and pursue it as a goal or amusement. One might call these the two poles of
evil: the banal and the demonic. In reality, many evildoers combine banal and
malicious elements—for instance, a war criminal might start by numbly
“following orders” and later grow to relish the power over life and death.
Understanding these facets prepares us to examine how entire
societies can sanction evil under lofty guises, and how individuals rationalise
or revel in cruelty. In history, and the present, there are countless examples
where twisted interpretations of beliefs lead to the justification, or even
glorification, of murderous and sadistic tendencies. Such beliefs give a person
an excuse; an identity in opposition to and superiority over other people, who
can be condemned and abused from a position of personal righteousness.
Indeed, history shows that great evils are often perpetrated
under moral disguises. Cruelty rarely advertises itself as cruelty; instead, it
wears the costumes of righteousness, necessity, or justice. Totalitarian and
extremist regimes in particular have excelled at cloaking acts of barbarism in
high-minded rhetoric. In Nazi Germany, genocide was justified as purification
and self-defence; in Stalin’s USSR and Mao’s China, mass murder was explained
as a harsh but noble phase of building a utopia; in religious crusades extreme
brutality was sanctified as the enforcement of divine law. These regimes did
not lack an ethical narrative—on the contrary, they drowned their followers in
a torrent of moral and ideological justification for wicked deeds.
A chilling example comes from a secret speech by Nazi SS
leader Heinrich Himmler to his officers regarding the Holocaust. Himmler
acknowledges the mass killing of Jews explicitly, but then praises his men for
doing it while supposedly remaining “decent”. He noted that most of them had
seen “100 bodies lying together, 500 or 1,000,” and yet—apart from a few
instances of “human weakness”—“to have stuck it out and at the same time… to
have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard”. In Himmler’s twisted
logic, refraining from enjoying the slaughter was a point of pride; the SS were
to view themselves as morally upright soldiers performing a gruesome duty. He
even called the genocide “a page of glory” in German history that must never be
publicly recorded. This is moral inversion at its extreme: murder presented as
duty, atrocity as honour, and compassion as a weakness to be overcome. By
convincing themselves that they were still “decent” men—just tough enough to do
what was necessary—Himmler and his followers blunted any pangs of conscience.
It exemplifies how propaganda and group ideology can enable cognitive
dissonance resolution: one’s self-image as a good person is preserved by
redefining evil impulses as good or at least necessary, and avoiding direct
confrontation with the full horror of their crimes.
Psychologically, this wilful self-deception is explained by
moral disengagement mechanisms. Albert Bandura identified several mental
tactics by which people who violate their own moral standards manage to
neutralise guilt. They might invoke moral justification (“we’re doing this for
a great cause”), euphemistic labelling (calling torture “enhanced
interrogation” or civilian deaths “collateral damage”) and advantageous
comparison (“yes we’re harsh, but others have done far worse”). They also
displace responsibility to authorities (“I’m just following orders”) or diffuse
responsibility across a group (“everyone was doing it, it wasn’t just me”).
Crucially, they dehumanise or blame the victims—seeing them as less than human
or as deserving their fate. All these tactics appeared in totalitarian regimes.
Nazi propaganda depicted Jews as subhuman “rats” or a bacillus infecting
society; Stalinist and Maoist rhetoric labelled class or ideological opponents
as “enemies of the people”, “vermin,” or obstacles to progress, making their
elimination seem virtuous. Religious extremists paint those outside their fold
as creatures to be righteously punished, where any personal hesitation to
perpetrate brutality can be framed as weakness of faith. Through language and
ideology, perpetrators create a contorted moral universe where cruelty becomes
virtuous.
Social psychology experiments dramatically illustrate how
ordinary people rationalise harm. In a classic study, college students were
asked to administer electric shocks to peers as part of a supposed learning
experiment; some overheard the peers being described in derogatory,
dehumanising terms (“an animalistic rotten bunch”), others heard neutral or
humanising descriptions. Those who heard the victims called animals delivered
significantly stronger shocks on average than those who heard them praised, showing
how seeing someone as less human lowers our moral restraints. Furthermore,
after inflicting pain, participants often adjusted their attitudes to justify
it—for instance, blaming the victim’s character (a form of post hoc
dehumanisation). This aligns with cognitive dissonance theory: harming someone
creates dissonance with seeing oneself as good, so people often resolve it by
convincing themselves the victim deserved the harm.
Another concept relevant here is ideological possession,
when an individual’s identity is so consumed by an ideology that independent
moral reasoning shuts down. In such cases, any act can be justified if it
serves the sacred ideology. During China’s Cultural Revolution, young Red
Guards brutalised teachers and even parents under the sway of Maoist dogma,
believing their victims were bourgeois traitors impeding a perfect society.
Religious fundamentalists, similarly, could commit murder or enslave captives while
convinced they were enacting holy scripture and earning divine reward.
Fanatical belief systems can commandeer moral intuitions, directing empathy
only to in-group members and suspending compassion for out-groups. What might
otherwise be recognised as cruelty is seen instead as purity, justice, or
martyrdom. The result is what Albert Camus called murderous purity—when someone
will massacre others with a deluded conscience.
In fact, cruelty often wears a moral mask. Great atrocities
are rarely committed with a roar of open wickedness; more often they proceed
with a self-righteous drumbeat. Understanding this is vital, because it means
we cannot rely only on spotting obvious “evil intent” to prevent horrors. Good
people can be seduced into serving evil by reinterpretation: by propaganda that
plays on their moral emotions (loyalty, piety, patriotism, justice) and
redefines cruelty as duty. As numerous historical regimes demonstrate, an
appeal to “higher ideals” can sanction virtually any barbarity. Recognising
these patterns of rationalisation and disengagement is the first step in
resisting them. It also sets the stage for examining cases of evil that do not
bother with moral disguise—agents who embrace malevolence more directly, as we
explore through the archetype of Iago.
Literature often provides insightful portraits of evil, and
few are as emblematic as Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello. Iago is a
Venetian ensign who orchestrates the downfall of his general, Othello, by
exploiting trust and stoking jealousy—all while appearing loyal and honourable.
What makes Iago especially unsettling is his lack of clear motive. Unlike many
villains, he offers no grand ideology or righteous grievance to justify his
treachery. He gives various reasons in passing—he was passed over for a
promotion by Othello, he suspects (probably baselessly) that Othello slept with
his wife, he even at one point says he acts out of envy—but none of these fully
explain the elaborate cruelty he unfolds. As the play progresses, it becomes
evident that Iago enjoys manipulation and destruction for their own sake.
Literary critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously described Iago’s behaviour as
the “motive-hunting of motiveless Malignity”. In other words, Iago is
constantly searching for justifications for an evil that fundamentally has no
justification. He is, Coleridge suggested, a being of almost pure
malevolence—“next to the Devil” in fiendishness—who nonetheless wears the
“divine image” of man and interacts in ordinary society. Iago’s agency is
malevolent in a cold, self-conscious way: he knows he is deceiving and ruining
innocent people (Othello, Desdemona, Cassio) and he revels in it with sly
asides to the audience.
The absence of a rational cause for Iago’s hatred makes him
a study in evil as enmity for its own sake. When Othello demands Iago explain
why he did all this, Iago pointedly refuses to speak. His silence suggests
that, ultimately, he has no satisfactory motive to offer—or that giving one
would diminish the dark mystique of his villainy. In contrast, consider
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: Brutus joins a conspiracy to assassinate
Caesar, but he does so believing it a tragic necessity to save the Roman
Republic from tyranny. Brutus is essentially a morally conflicted villain (if
one even calls him a villain)—he justifies his violent act with a principle
(“not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more”). He remains
tortured by guilt and honour. Iago, by stark contrast, feels no guilt and seeks
no noble principle; he delights in the power of causing chaos and watches
Othello’s psychological torment with a kind of sporting pleasure. This makes
Iago more akin to a modern archetype like the Joker of Batman lore than
to Brutus: a character who wants to see the world burn just to enjoy the
flames, versus one who commits evil under a wilful self-delusion of doing good.
This contrast highlights a spectrum of villainy: on one end,
the ideological villain (however twisted the principle) who at least professes
to believe in some cause beyond mere destruction—Brutus believing in republican
virtue, and even Shakespeare’s Macbeth, who is driven by ambition and later
remorsefully reflects on the futility of his crime. On the other end is the
nihilistic or malevolent villain exemplified by Iago—one who cannot claim any
creed except perhaps will to power, who treats life and people like pieces on a
chessboard to be moved and knocked over for his personal pleasure. Iago offers
us a portrait of evil stripped of excuses. He is important because he lays bare
an uncomfortable idea: that some evil is done with full awareness and little
remorse, requiring no grand ideology at all. It is enmity for its own sake, or
for very petty motives exaggerated into mania.
Shakespeare crafted Iago as a warning of what intellect
unguided by morality can do. Iago is intelligent, articulate, and perceptive—he
understands Othello’s principled but credulous heart and how to poison it. Yet
all that wit is employed destructively, without empathy. In Iago, we see the
thrill of power over others in its pure form: he calls his manipulation of
Othello a “sport” at one point, and when his plots lead Othello to murderous
rage, Iago coolly observes the chaos he’s made as if admiring a piece of art.
This is evil not as a means to an end, but as an end in itself.
Understanding Iago’s kind of evil helps complete our
picture. Not all perpetrators are banal functionaries or ideologues deceiving
themselves; some truly relish the suffering they cause. By recognising Iago, we
acknowledge that motiveless malignity exists—and it must be countered not by
appealing to the perpetrator’s conscience (they may have none), but by robustly
upholding justice and preventing such individuals from acquiring unchecked
power.
Evil is not only a matter of individual psychology or
isolated acts; it can be built into social institutions and norms. Looking
back, we find eras when forms of cruelty we now recognise as heinous were
accepted as routine, even celebrated. Human sacrifice, slavery, torture as
public spectacle—these have all, at various times, been normalised.
Understanding this history is sobering but also instructive: it shows that our
moral circle has expanded over time, and what once was common can later become
unthinkable (and vice versa, cautionary).
Throughout most of history we have behaved like members of
ant colonies: attacking, destroying, and enslaving each other, with the added
horrors of sadism and sexual violence, often led by one murderous sociopath
after another. History is predominately one of brutalised, traumatised,
confused people living in pain and subjugation. Humanity has mostly now
progressed to recognise the depraved evils that were socially accepted in
previous times—yet a person of those times would have gone along with the
accepted norm, assuming it was right because everyone else said it was right.
They were wrong. Only the strength of compassion would have made a person
question the chorus of excuses for cruelty in their society. Without true
compassion, a person is simply “of their time”, allowing themself to
automatically conform to whatever happens to be contemporary popular thinking
and belief-controlled behaviour. In an evolutionary process, that rule of
wrongness would hold true for people today, relative to future generations.
One stark example is the Roman Colosseum and gladiatorial
games. For centuries, Romans flocked to arenas to watch people (often prisoners
of war, slaves or criminals) kill each other or be killed by wild animals for
entertainment. The Colosseum stands today as “a glorious but troubling monument
to Roman imperial power and cruelty,” as one historian notes. Inside that
magnificent amphitheatre, “Romans for centuries cold-bloodedly killed literally
thousands of people… as well as professional fighters and animals”. These shows
were not fringe events; they were core to Roman culture—used by emperors to win
popularity and display the might of the empire. The populace cheered as humans
were dismembered and died in agony. To us this is abhorrent, but to many Romans
it was normal leisure, justified by saying the victims were condemned
criminals, enemies, or merely slaves whose lives didn’t count. A few voices
(like the philosopher Seneca) condemned the bloodlust of the arena, but they
were minority voices. The Colosseum is a reminder that institutionalised
cruelty can persist for ages with communal approval. It took the spread of new
values—in this case, Christian ethics valuing each soul, and perhaps simple
fatigue and economic burden—for the gladiatorial games to be abolished in the
5th century CE.
Another vast historical evil is slavery. For millennia,
societies around the world practiced slavery with little moral qualm. In
ancient civilisations, war captives and their descendants were routinely
enslaved. Enslaved people were dehumanised as property—whipped, branded, raped,
worked to death—yet these practices were defended by appeals to nature,
economics, and even religion. Such rationalisations allowed cultured
individuals to participate in or tolerate horrific cruelty (like the separation
of families, or routine physical torture) while maintaining an image of
decency. Slowly, very slowly, the moral circle expanded. This hard-won progress
underscores that what is socially accepted is not fixed: moral norms can
evolve, and cruelty need not be permanent.
Consider the Belgian Congo under King Leopold II. Colonial
agents in the late 1800s forced villagers to harvest rubber under threat of
horrific punishment; failure to meet quotas often resulted in hands being cut
off. An estimated 10 million Congolese died from violence, famine, and disease
during Leopold’s reign. Yet in Europe this genocide was long downplayed;
Leopold presented himself as a philanthropist spreading Christianity and ending
Arab slave trading. Only later did missionaries and activists expose the truth,
shocking the public. Across empires, we see patterns of systemic cruelty
(massacres, concentration camps, cultural erasure) normalised by colonial
ideologies. These ideologies insisted the colonised were uncivilised or
childlike, thus needing firm (if brutal) governance for their own good. Again,
we observe moral disengagement at scale: labelling slaughtered rebels as
“savages” made their killing palatable to the imperial public.
Despite these dark eras, there has been measurable moral
progress. Historian Steven Pinker and others have documented a long-term
decline in many forms of violence—from the outlawing of chattel slavery to
reductions in judicial torture, capital punishment, and bloody spectacle.
Philosopher Peter Singer encapsulates one aspect of this progress with the
image of “the expanding circle” of moral concern. In early human history, our
sympathy and moral duty likely extended only to our kin or small tribe. Over
time, through reason and cultural development, that circle expanded—to include
one’s clan, then tribe, then nation, then all races, and even, as Singer
argues, all sentient beings. “Beginning with our own family or tribe,” Singer
writes, moral concern enlarges to “include larger groups, nations, families of
nations, all humans and perhaps even nonhuman animals”. Key intellectual
moments aided this: the Enlightenment introduced universalist ideas that all
men (eventually all people) are created equal and endowed with rights. The
concept of human rights took hold strongly after the world wars, leading to the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, which declared the inherent
dignity and rights of every member of the human family—a stark rebuke to the
dehumanisation underpinning regimes like the Nazis.
Moral progress has also been driven by empathy and
compassion fostered through culture. The spread of literature—novels that
invited readers into the inner worlds of people living very different lives from
themselves—is thought to have increased empathy. For instance, Uncle Tom’s
Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe vividly humanised slaves to many readers
in the U.S. and Europe, fuelling abolitionist sentiment. The graphic horrors of
war described in accounts of World War I helped turn public opinion against
seeing war as glorious. Over the 20th century, practices once common—child
labour, public lynchings, animal cruelty for sport—have been challenged or
outlawed in many countries as sensibilities became more compassionate. The
“moral circle” certainly hasn’t expanded everywhere evenly, and backlash is
real. Yet the broad trend is that the circle has widened; humanity’s baseline
for acceptable cruelty has shifted towards greater condemnation of violence and
suffering.
It’s important to note this progress, not to rest on laurels
but to recognise that moral change is possible. The fragility of compassion,
however, is also evident—gains can be reversed in times of fear or turmoil.
Civilised norms collapsed in Nazi Germany, a highly educated society, showing
that moral progress is not linear or guaranteed. Still, the overall expansion
of the moral community gives some hope that compassion can gain ground over
cruelty.
If cruelty is one side of humanity’s moral struggle,
compassion is the other. Compassion—the capacity to feel sorrow at another’s
suffering and the desire to alleviate it—has been extolled as a virtue in
nearly every religious and ethical tradition. It is often described as the
antidote to cruelty, the emotion that binds us to others’ humanity. However,
compassion is also fragile: it can be hard to extend beyond our immediate
circle, and in cynical or brutal systems it is readily dismissed as weakness.
Virtually all major religions place compassion at their
moral core. In Buddhism, compassion (karuṇā) for all sentient beings is a
principal virtue. Buddhist practice includes meditation specifically aimed at
cultivating limitless compassion and loving-kindness (Metta meditation),
reflecting a belief that compassion can indeed be expanded with effort—from
one’s family to friends to strangers and even enemies. In Christianity,
compassion is likewise central: Jesus’ teachings urged love not just for
neighbours but for perceived enemies, and parables like the Good Samaritan
enshrine mercy toward the stranger as true righteousness. Christian charity and
the ideal of caritas (selfless love) inspired countless acts of kindness
(alongside, admittedly, episodes of religious intolerance—humans are nothing if
not contradictory). Stoicism, often caricatured as a cold creed, actually
advocated a form of compassionate cosmopolitanism: Marcus Aurelius wrote that
we are all citizens of one universe, made for cooperation, like “feet, like hands”
working together—therefore to act against one another is against nature. The
Stoics valued sympatheia, a mutual interconnection; they counselled
understanding others’ misdeeds as products of ignorance rather than pure
malice, which is a stance that encourages a kind of compassion (or at least
pity and forgiveness).
Modern philosophers have further explored compassion’s role.
Martha Nussbaum calls compassion “the basic social emotion” that underpins
humane law and justice. She defines compassion as “a painful emotion…
occasioned by the awareness of another person’s (or other creature’s) undeserved
misfortune”. In that definition, key components are evident: the suffering is
not deserved, the person recognises the other’s suffering could befall
themselves or someone they love (common humanity), and this engenders an altruistic
response. Nussbaum and others argue that without compassion, our commitment to
justice and the common good withers—laws become harsh and utilitarian, politics
becomes a mere power game. Peter Singer, from a utilitarian perspective,
asserts that reason can amplify our innate empathy; by logically considering
others’ interests as comparable to our own, we correct the biases of tribalism
and expand moral concern. He points to the spread of vegetarianism/veganism and
global humanitarian aid as signs that compassion is widening to include
non-human animals and faraway strangers—something unprecedented in scope.
Is compassion innate or learned? Research in developmental
psychology shows even very young children exhibit rudimentary empathy: babies
will cry in response to other babies’ cries, and toddlers will try to help an
adult who appears hurt or in need. This suggests a basic empathetic
responsiveness is hardwired. There is also evidence from neuroscience that
seeing another person in pain can activate some of the same brain regions as
experiencing pain oneself (mirror neuron systems, etc.). So, a capacity for compassion
is part of our biological heritage—maybe because in social species, attending
to others’ well-being had adaptive value (a tribe of caregivers would survive
hardships better than a tribe of indifferent egotists). However, while the seed
of compassion is natural, its growth and scope are greatly influenced by
culture and training. Humans are quite capable of limiting empathy to their
in-group and denying it to outsiders. Thus, many traditions stress cultivating
compassion. Buddhist monks spend years training in compassion meditation to
extend love to all beings. Parents and educators try to instil empathy in
children by encouraging perspective-taking (“How would you feel if…?”).
Philosophers like Nussbaum suggest that education in the arts and humanities—literature,
history, theatre—can expand our imaginative empathy by exposing us to diverse
lives and struggles.
Compassion indeed often needs cultivation to survive in
“cynical systems”—environments that reward selfishness or pit groups against
each other. In extremely competitive corporate cultures or authoritarian
regimes, compassion may be scorned as a weakness or distraction. For example,
under strict communist regimes, showing too much personal sympathy for those
deemed “class enemies” could make one suspect; under extremist ideologies,
mercy might be seen as betrayal of the cause. Yet even in such systems, compassion
finds ways to persist. There are inspiring accounts of individuals who at great
personal risk acted with compassion amidst terror. Compassion can be vulnerable
to fear, propaganda, or fatigue, but it is also resilient in that it never
disappears entirely. Often it survives in the shadows, ready to blossom when
conditions allow.
In the modern global context, compassion faces new tests.
The scale of suffering is enormous—wars, refugees, disasters—leading some to
feel “compassion fatigue”. We are not psychologically evolved to emotionally
process the pain of millions of strangers at once. There is a risk that
constant exposure to suffering through news and the internet can either numb
people or lead them to tune out rather than engage compassionately. Some
thinkers, like psychologist Paul Bloom, have even argued “against empathy”,
suggesting that unfocused empathy can be biased or paralysing, and that
rational compassion (guided by principle rather than raw emotion) is what we
need. This debate underscores that compassion must be paired with wisdom to be
effective. Structured compassion—as seen in effective altruism movements (which
try to channel compassion through evidence-based action) or restorative justice
programs (which channel empathy into reconciliation processes)—might offer ways
to systematically combat cruelty and injustice.
It’s also worth examining if compassion has limits. Are
there people or situations where compassion fails? For instance, how do we
respond compassionately to perpetrators of evil? Some argue that extending
compassion to evildoers is necessary to break cycles of violence (e.g.
rehabilitation rather than purely punitive justice), while others fear that too
much empathy for the wrongdoer can lead to excusing harm. This is a delicate
balance. Perhaps the ideal is to have compassion for every person’s basic humanity—recognising
even perpetrators were often victims of something—but still hold them firmly
accountable out of compassion for their victims and potential future victims.
True compassion doesn’t mean the absence of accountability; it means we aim for
outcomes that reduce overall suffering and transform conflict, rather than
simply revenge.
Compassion stands as the counterforce to humanity’s often-evidenced
worst impulses. It expands our moral circle, motivates us to alleviate
suffering, and humanises those whom indifference or hatred would render
invisible. It has deep roots in our nature but needs nurturing by culture,
reason, and practice. Its fragility lies in how easily it can be overridden by
fear, hate, or sheer scale, but its strength lies in how profoundly it
resonates with our sense of meaning—people generally admire acts of compassion
and often find personal fulfilment in caring for others. As technology and
social change make us more interconnected, cultivating a robust, wise
compassion may be our best hope to counter new forms of dehumanisation.
The 21st-century landscape of digital communication and
media has altered the way we form moral judgments and sympathies—not always for
the better. In theory, the internet could spread understanding by connecting
diverse people. In practice, it has also given rise to echo chambers,
misinformation, and tribalism that distort moral clarity and empathy. The term
information pathologies can describe how the very channels by which we learn
about the world may be infecting our moral discourse.
One issue is the echo chamber effect on social media and
online forums. An echo chamber is an environment where one only encounters
opinions and “facts” that reinforce one’s existing beliefs, with other views
filtered out. The algorithms of online platforms curate content that align with
users’ preferences and engagement history. Over time, this creates a feedback
loop—conservatives see mostly conservative content, liberals see liberal
content, etc., each side growing more convinced of its own righteousness and
often more extreme (a phenomenon sometimes called polarisation by opinion
amplification). Studies have found that social media does foster clusters of
like-minded people who rarely interact with outsiders; these bubbles “limit
exposure to diverse perspectives and… reinforce presupposed narratives and
ideologies”. When we only hear our own “team’s” moral narratives, our capacity
for empathy toward the “other team” erodes. Instead, out-group members are
easily caricatured or demonised because their humanity or reasonable concerns
are never presented to us in the echo chamber. This digital siloing thus fuels
tribalism: people identify strongly with their virtual tribe (be it a political
party, a fandom, an ideology) and may heap scorn or abuse on perceived
outsiders. Online, it’s easier to engage in hate speech or cruelty because one
often operates at a psychological distance—known as the online disinhibition
effect—where the other is just a faceless avatar, not a full human before you.
Misinformation and propaganda thrive in such polarised,
emotionally charged environments. Unlike in the broadcast era, the internet is
an open battleground of information where the outrageous often outcompetes the
measured. False or misleading content spreads rapidly, especially if it
triggers anger or fear—two emotions that can short-circuit compassion. For
example, during recent crises, conspiracy theories and rumours on social media
have scapegoated certain groups, leading to real-world violence. The structure
of online engagement itself often distorts moral discussion. Platforms reward
content that generates strong reactions—and outrage is a potent driver of
engagement. As a result, outrage culture has flourished: people perform their
moral stances aggressively in order to gain validation from their in-group.
This sometimes leads to performative cruelty in the name of righteousness
(e.g., online “pile-ons” or cancel culture episodes, where individuals are
hounded and dehumanised for missteps, with little room for empathy or
forgiveness). It’s a bitter irony that tools which could have deepened our
understanding of each other have, in some cases, made us less empathetic and
more judgmental. Complex human stories get reduced to tweets; genuine dialogue
gives way to flame wars. The anonymity or distance of the internet can unleash
a latent sadism in some—a tendency to troll, bully, or joy in someone’s
downfall in ways they likely wouldn’t face-to-face. This is a new kind of banal
evil: ordinary users, perhaps otherwise kind in person, can become cruel in
online mobs, not fully grasping the real harm to the target.
Identity and tribalism online also mean people’s moral views
become entwined with their group identity (national, political, etc.). When
facts or empathy for others threaten one’s identity, they are often rejected.
For instance, climate change science or pandemic advice might be dismissed by
some not purely on intellectual grounds but because accepting them feels like
siding with the enemy tribe. Similarly, calls for refugee aid can meet
reflexive hostility in those for whom such issues have been framed as partisan
battle lines. Identity-driven moral bifurcation erodes the ability to see merit
in “the other side’s” humanity or arguments.
Another pathology is the sheer speed and overload of
information. We are bombarded with news of suffering—humanitarian crises,
tragedies—to the point of numbness. Activists coin terms like “compassion
fatigue” to describe how people, after a certain saturation point, stop
emotionally responding to appeals for help. The constant stimulation also
rewards snap judgments over careful deliberation; thus, nuanced moral issues
get condensed into viral slogans or memes. Misinformation can manipulate
emotions: so-called “fake news” often uses startling, emotionally charged
falsehoods that spread faster than fact-checks can catch up. In the confusion,
many lose a clear sense of truth, making them susceptible to demagogues who
scapegoat and oversimplify. This epistemic chaos undermines empathy because
empathy relies on understanding reality accurately—one cannot truly empathise
with those one’s been misled about. If a person is convinced, falsely, that
immigrants are mostly criminals, they will feel justified—even virtuous—in
having no compassion for a drowning migrant or a child separated from parents
at a border.
All is not lost, however. The same technology that enables
echo chambers also allows unprecedented cross-cultural communication and
exposure to real stories. Social media has facilitated empathy at times—viral
images or videos of suffering have pricked the world’s conscience and spurred
aid. The internet hosts countless initiatives for dialogue, charitable giving,
and spreading awareness of others’ plights. The challenge is to fight the
pathologies: by promoting digital literacy (teaching people how to recognise
false information and seek diverse sources), by tweaking algorithms to
prioritise reliable information and perhaps even empathy-evoking content rather
than just incendiary posts, and by consciously stepping outside our online
comfort sones. Individuals can curate their feeds to include different
perspectives, practice restraint in online arguments, and remember the human on
the other side of the screen.
In this age, maintaining moral clarity and empathy requires
deliberate effort. It may mean occasionally unplugging from the rage-inducing
news cycle to reflect. What’s clear is that if we allow our information
ecosystem to remain poisoned, our capacity for compassion and rational moral
agency will decline, and that vacuum can easily be filled by authoritarians and
extremists.
Modern media has, in effect, globalised the “banality of
evil” problem: passive scrolling and sharing can make us unwitting participants
in spreading harmful ideas or normalising cruelty. But it can also globalise
compassion: a generous crowdfunding response to a distant disaster shows the
upside. The moral struggle continues on new terrain, and we must learn new
skills of discernment and digital empathy to carry compassion forwards.
As technology advances, humanity is on the cusp of wielding
powers once relegated to gods and fables. Artificial intelligence, genetic
engineering, mass surveillance, autonomous weapons—these emerging domains hold
immense promise but also grave peril. They raise a stark question: Will our
moral wisdom and compassion evolve quickly enough to guide these powerful
tools, or will we succumb to new forms of tyranny and catastrophe? Thinkers
like Nick Bostrom and Elieser Yudkowsky have warned that certain technologies,
especially a superintelligent AI, could pose existential threats—risks that
could wipe out humanity or drastically curtail our future. Moreover, even
without apocalyptic scenarios, these technologies could enable unprecedented
oppression if abused by authoritarian regimes or unscrupulous actors.
Imagine Orwell’s 1984 but with modern tech: it’s
easier for a government to be near-omniscient about citizens’ daily lives now.
The social credit system in China—rating citizens based on various behaviours
and associations—is another facet, using algorithms to reward or punish and
ultimately to shape behaviour. Other countries are eagerly importing Chinese
surveillance technology, spreading this model of digital authoritarianism. If
such tools had existed in the 20th century, one shudders to think how much more
efficiently the Gestapo or KGB could have crushed dissent. The peril is that
these technologies give unprecedented leverage to power, and if that power
lacks compassion or accountability, tyranny can reach terrifying precision.
Autonomous weapons—often called “killer robots”—are already
in development. These are AI-driven drones or machines that can select and
attack targets without human decision. They could operate at speeds and scales
impossible for humans to control. The danger here is not only accidents (an AI
misidentifying civilians as combatants) but also the ease of mass violence: an
authoritarian could deploy swarms of tiny armed drones to eliminate dissidents
en masse, or a terrorist could release AI-guided explosives that anonymously
hunt people of a certain profile. Without compassion or conscience, machines
make warfare even more indiscriminately lethal. International campaigns are
urging bans on fully autonomous weapons, akin to bans on chemical weapons,
precisely because of the moral horror they portend.
Given these hazards, what hope is there for mitigation? One
path is trying to imbue our emerging tech with ethical safeguards—essentially,
to encode compassion or its functional equivalent. AI ethics researchers
propose various guidelines: ensuring AI respects human rights, is transparent,
and is under meaningful human control. There are efforts to develop AI
“principles” that emphasise beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. Some
suggest we might need AI to have empathy: for example, robots in caregiving
roles programmed to detect distress and respond kindly. Whether genuine empathy
is possible for AI is a deep question, but at minimum, AI can be constrained by
rules that mirror compassionate values (e.g., a self-driving car must
prioritise not harming pedestrians). Yet, pessimists note that a
superintelligence might circumvent any rules we hard-code unless it truly
understands and endorses our values—a very hard thing to guarantee.
Writers like Toby Ord speak of humanity being in a critical
period—this century may decide whether we fumble our god-like powers and
collapse, or harness them for a flourishing future. Nick Bostrom has used the
metaphor of humanity being like “children playing with a bomb”—we have powerful
science but not the maturity to handle it safely. Julian Savulescu and Ingmar
Persson go so far as to argue that we might need to biologically or chemically
enhance our moral capacities (e.g., increase empathy or impulse control through
drugs or gene mods) to ensure we don’t abuse our technological might. They note
it’s far easier for one malicious person to harm millions today (with a
superbug or AI) than it is for one good person to similarly help millions,
creating a dangerous imbalance. While “moral bioenhancement” is
controversial—it raises spectres of mind control or loss of free will—the fact
it’s even floated underscores the desperation of some thinkers about our moral
preparedness. They highlight that evolution gave us Stone Age emotions, prone
to tribalism and short-termism, but now we have nuclear weapons and synthetic
biology. To be “fit for the future”, they argue, we might need deliberate
intervention to boost our altruism or global empathy, or else risk catastrophe.
The peril of power in the technological era is both an
external and internal moral test. External, because technology can drastically
amplify the reach of both good and evil—a compassionate policy can save
millions (say, a cheap vaccine distributed widely), whereas a malicious use can
kill millions. Internal, because wielding such power responsibly demands
virtues that our species has struggled to practice consistently: humility,
foresight, empathy for the unseen other.
Standing at this precipice of history, it is clear that
humanity’s moral struggle—between evil and compassion, unchecked power and
responsibility—is reaching a new intensity. The future could unfold into
dystopia or utopia, or something in between, depending on the choices we make
now. What must change to tilt the balance toward a humane future?
Moral evolution begins with the psyche. If humans have
innate tendencies to bias, selfishness, and fear of the other, then individuals
must consciously cultivate counter-tendencies: critical thinking, empathy, and
a sense of human-beingness. This means teaching children from a young age how
to perspective-take (imagine life in another’s shoes), how to resolve conflicts
peacefully, and how to spot and correct their own biases. Likewise, promoting
media literacy is crucial in the digital age—young people (and adults) should
learn how propaganda and misinformation work, so they are less easily
manipulated into hatred. Essentially, we need to “inoculate” minds against the
virus of dehumanisation, much as we do against biological viruses. On a more
experimental front, techniques like compassion meditation (derived from
Buddhist practice) have been shown to strengthen brain pathways associated with
empathy and altruism. If we consider that prejudice and callousness are, to
some degree, habits of mind, then deliberately training the opposite habits can
yield more compassionate individuals.
We often treat technology as an autonomous force, but it is
shaped by human choices. We should aim to design technologies that by default
promote empathy and understanding rather than isolation and division. For
example, social media algorithms could be tweaked to promote cross-cutting
content that exposes people to constructive dialogue instead of only
reinforcing biases. Online platforms could prioritise compassionate
communication—perhaps through features that encourage users to pause and
consider before posting an angry comment. There are interesting experiments:
one project found that prompting users to imagine the perspective of someone
from the opposing political party before reading that person’s post led to less
toxic replies. Small design changes like this can nudge users toward empathy.
In AI development more broadly, implementing the principle of “Ethics by
Design” is key. Just as security and reliability are built into systems, so
should ethical considerations be—whether it’s an AI medical diagnosis tool
being made transparent and bias-checked to treat patients fairly, or an
autonomous vehicle programmed to prioritise human life in split-second
decisions.
Preventing dystopian outcomes by nurturing a more
compassionate civilisation is a vital undertaking. It requires aligning many
pieces: the human heart, the structures of society, and the tools we create. We
will have to be both idealistic and pragmatic—idealistic in holding fast to
visions of a just, empathetic world, and pragmatic in implementing incremental
changes and safeguards that move us in that direction. The moral struggle of
humanity is ongoing; there is no final victory where evil is vanquished once
and for all. But neither is there a final defeat so long as people of
conscience remain vigilant. Each generation must contend with the nature of
evil, the vulnerability of compassion, and the peril of power in its own
context. Our generation’s context is one of hyper-connection and super-powered
technology, which raises the stakes extraordinarily high.
If there is a silver lining, it’s that many solutions
reinforce each other. A more compassionate society tends to be more resilient
and less prone to totalitarianism. A populace educated in critical thinking is
less likely to fall for hateful demagogues. In essence, moral progress feeds on
itself, just as cruelty feeds on itself. We must actively choose and cultivate
the better angels of our nature, or the worst demons of our nature—whether
banal or wilfully malevolent—may rise with catastrophic force. It is a choice
each person and community faces.
Ultimately, understanding how easily cruelty can be
normalised or rationalised steels us to reject complacency. Appreciating how
fragile yet vital compassion is inspires us to protect and enlarge it. And
recognising the peril of power—that any tool or authority can be turned to evil
if not guided by conscience—means we must demand ethics at the core of
innovation and leadership. These are the reflections and lessons that emerge
from humanity’s long moral struggle, and upon them rest the prospects of our
shared future.
Amongst more auspicious outcomes, these two disastrous
scenarios are possible for our near future: the self-extinction of humanity
through war; or a dystopian, psychopath-controlled world. Under the malevolent
central control of all-encompassing surveillance and guidance technology, and
without any hope of the system’s collapse, the latter outcome is even worse
than the former.
Authoritarian governments will find it ever easier with
technological advancements to zombify and control their populations. When such
a government, helped by surveillance AI, is able to know what you are thinking
and feeling, where you are and what you are doing, has control over all the
information you receive, and knows your personality impulses precisely—what
hope has anyone to escape from the hell constructed for them by the resident
psychopaths?
The pressure to evolve to survive has mounted for humanity;
given the stakes and the alternatives, we have to get better. The time window
for resolving the problems and mitigating the risks is now, and we may never
get the chance again.
