Wickedness

When people think of evil, they tend to think of infamous historical figures such as Hitler, dastardly fictional characters like Voldemort, or horrendous organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan. They often think of the large-scale damage that was done, the killings, the maimings, and the societal devastation surrounding them. They do not tend to think of the small things that went mostly under the radar. For that matter, they do not tend to think about how everyday people can be just as awful, without causing as much damage.

But what brings someone to commit such unspeakable acts? If you ask The Misfit in A Good Man is Hard to Find, he might tell you it was never a choice. He does not remember killing his father and does not believe that he did. However, as it is implied in the story that his father abused him in some way.

“Daddy was a card himself,” The Misfit said. “You couldn’t put anything over on him. He never got in trouble with the Authorities though. Just had a knack of handling them.”

It is likely that that one action that set him on his path was a flight or fight response. His upbringing set him on a path of evil, and he could not get off it.

Some people do not have a good reason, though. In My Last Duchess, pure jealousy drove the speaker to order the killing of his wife.

"Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt

Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without

Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;

Then the smiles stopped together. There she stands

As if alive. "

Most people, however, will only be wicked if societal pressures drive them to do so. According to Melissa Dittmann in the article “What makes good people do bad things?” featured in American Psychological Association, anyone can be good, and anyone can be evil. It is all dependent on the rhetoric we are around, and how long we are around it.

Dittmann mentions the electric shock experiment conducted by psychologist Stanley Milgram, where participants delivered fake electric shocks (that they thought were real) to other participants when they got an answer wrong.

“They semantically changed their perception of victims, of the evil act, and change the relationship of the aggressor to their aggression – so ‘killing’ or ‘hurting’ becomes the same as ‘helping’”

This point is further emphasized by Malcom Gladwell in the article Thresholds of Violence. Gladwell talks about Mark Granovetter, a sociologist from Stanford, and his theoretical model that sets out to explain riots. His model says that everyone has a “level,” or threshold, that must be met before they participate in a riot. Those with a threshold of zero start the riots – they do not need anyone else to do it first. Then comes the person with a threshold of one, then two, then three, and so on. The last ones to join in have the largest threshold – everyone around them must be participating in the riot for them to join in.

Once we understand that who one is surrounded by helps shape their moral code, it can be easy to see how someone can fall into wickedness. Consider this scenario: Bobby has been raised in a family that sees gay people as the epitome of what is wrong with society. All his life, he has gone to a church that preaches against homosexuality. His family may have even banned any media images that depict homosexuality. When Bobby finds out one of his employees, Julia, is a lesbian, it is no surprise when he starts acting differently towards her, both subconsciously and consciously. He starts avoiding her, stops assigning her to projects that would earn her a nice commission, passes her up for a promotion. How he was raised is now affecting her life, and her livelihood.

Now, let us change the scenario up a little bit: Bobby is still raised by a family who holds prejudices against gay folk. He still goes to that same church; his family has still banned media with homosexuality. But Bobby makes a friend at school, Linda. They become the best of friends, and Bobby even becomes a bit protective over her. After several years, Linda comes out as lesbian. She tells her best friend, who now has an internal battle waging in his brain. All his life, he had been told that gay people were abominations who would burn in hell. But Linda is lesbian, and she is not an abomination. There is no way she is going to hell.

Later, when Bobby finds out about his employee Julia, he is still uncomfortable, but he remembers Linda. This means he does not avoid her. He assigns that project because he knows she can handle it, he promotes her because of her exceptional work ethic.

One little disruption in the rhetoric he was surrounded with created a butterfly effect that positively impacted another person.

Yes, wickedness can come in large packages, but it does not have to. Your family member who clutches her purse when she sees a black person, that man on the news who does not see the problem with refusing to serve gay people, your neighbor who thinks the person that shot up the mosque down the street was a stand-up guy, they are all wicked in varying degrees. Part of that has to do with how they were raised, who they surround themselves with – but none of it is okay.

Works Cited

Dittmann, Melissa. “What Makes Good People Do Bad Things?” Monitor on Psychology, American Psychological Association, Oct. 2004, www.apa.org/monitor/oct04/goodbad.

Gladwell, Malcolm. “How School Shootings Spread.” The New Yorker, 12 Oct. 2015, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/thresholds-of-violence.

O'Connor, Flannery. A Good Man Is Hard to Find: and Other Stories. Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019.

Robert Browning. “My Last Duchess.” Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43768/my-last-duchess. Accessed 5 December 2020.