While we are on the subject of evil I would like to bring up a marvellous book that I am sure you all know of by Anthony Burgess. The infamous " A Clockwork Orange."
The anti-hero Alex, is an evil piece of work. He is an evil human being.
His crimes were going to land him in prison. He is remorseless and completely a-moral. Yet the author gives him such a convincing narrative we want to know what will happen to this Mozart listening hedonistic deviant.
We are pulled into the novel by the playful language, the slang that is interspersed with Russian influenced phrases and by the callous crimes this gang parade on every night in a near dystopian future. They embark on rampage style violent sprees. And Alex speaks of rape like it is just gratification like a junkie seeking heroin.
He was not going to stop unless he was caught and imprisoned.
He is all ready on the radar of officials, a doctor visits him at home, an early interventionist to try and deter him from where he is inevitably going - staja. State prison. A murder sees that he is incarcerated indefinitely and the doctor spits in his face before he is led away.
In part two of the novel, Alex the sociopath that he sure and certain encapsulates, befriends the prison preacher and concvinces him he is willing to volunteer for a new rehabilitation technique that will see his early release.
It is a work of fiction, the psychological technique but it draws on behaviourist conditioning. Alex is essentially "conditioned" to be good. At the end of the programme the doctors have trained his mind to not think of evil deeds as he physically becomes unwell and sick at the thought. But deep down Alex does not want to change his ways. He just wants out of jail. And a member of the audience at the psychologists presentation asks is it better to choose to be good and not conditioned to be. He questions that even though the ludovico technique has worked, the doctors have taken away this "victims" freedom of choice or freewill.
Alex is released in part three. Painted to be a victim of the state. He is set up by a man whose wife his gang raped and tortured and committed suicide. In despair that everyone has moved on since staja - his gang and parents have no place for him and that he cannot enjoy not only his malevolent violent ways but his music either as the technique inadvertantly included his beloved symphonies - He attempts suicide himself by jumping out of the window. And when the novel concludes, the technique is reversed and he is free and reverts to his old ways. Burgess uses a vicious thug in order to ask an age old question about Freewill. And stoke our suspicions on psychology apparently being used for good but is it moral to eradicate a persons sense of free will in order to make them a law abiding citizen. When Alex is freed from prison he is not really free. He has been programmed like a robot to not commit crime. Even though he is a wicked piece of work we sympathise with him in parts. As we question the state policing us, as in Owells 1984 but the more prominent philosophical question of free will.