Time to move on... http://www.psychologicalselfhelp.org/Chapter7/

Dr Clay writes:

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<font color="blue">I want to give you another example of how science can understand awful (“evil”) acts and thereby avoid the mystical anti-scientific notions embedded in explanations that use “evil.”

Military leaders, as well as psychologists and psychiatrists, observed during the Vietnam War that some soldiers who had been in combat—sometimes captured and tortured—and had seen the brutality involved in war were more likely to become brutal and violent themselves.

Some US soldiers killed old men, women and children without good cause. It may amaze you—it did me—that an estimated 20% of American officers who died in Vietnam were killed by their own men.

A psychiatrist, Jonathan Shay (1995), studied such acts and wrote a book, “Achilles in Vietnam: Combat trauma and the undoing of character.” His title states his thesis, namely, going through the horrors of war, results in the soldier’s own conscience and morals (or impulse control) deteriorating and becoming radically changed.

This is especially likely if the soldier has personally been grossly mistreated or if the soldier has been misinformed or mislead about “what is right” by his own officers or government, and if the soldier has brutalized others.

For some soldiers it becomes much easier to inflict pain, disregard suffering, and to kill—the kinds of things that we might call “evil.” Another consequence to the soldier fighting a war may be long-term suffering of Traumatic Stress Disorder (discussed in chapter 5).

We will also see in this chapter that many “evil” people have grown up without experiencing dependable love, care, and empathy.

Many violent people, grossly mistreated when young, have learned early to enjoy hurting others, e.g. bullying others and hurting animals.

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