A Look at the Holocoust
One might not view Adolf Hitler as a great leader because of his horrific attempt to exterminate the Jewish race, but in fact, his ability to draw an entire nation together to systematically murder six million Jews between the years of 1933 and 1945 would indicate otherwise.
Looking throughout history, massive moral inversions have occurred underneath the watchful eye of otherwise “moral” beings. If we find ourselves believing that this type of event could never happen again, we would need only to look at the many massacres that have occurred since and are taking place now to realize that we are all capable of performing evil tasks. And, if not capable of “pulling the trigger” per se, our inaction and indifference is the timid man’s evil. Evil is consistent in its nature and will always find an outlet as is good. The difference in the two is merely the outcome; the steps to achieve such a feat are the same.
Human beings can be taught to do nearly any task, no matter how sinister, as long as a certain level of tolerance is reached. Tolerance is reached through a variety of methods namely by the diffusion of personal responsibility, group identification and legitimacy. The Milgram Experiment shows ever so clearly how capable the human mind is to quickly become evil when given the opportunity to transfer accountability. In this experiment, a normally “good” individual became willing to transmit an electrical shock to a complete stranger simply because their way of thinking about a situation was changed. The rapid de-individualization of self and dehumanization of the people were the driving forces that enabled these research subjects to deliver potentially fatal electrical shocks. One interesting, yet truthful statement I discovered about this experiment is: “All evil starts with 15 volts.”
It’s important to realize that it wasn’t Hitler