Evil Men

"This is a book of interviews with Japanese perpetrators of extreme evil during the Sino-Japanese War. These men are elderly men, but in the interviews they describe rapes, horrific torture, mass murder, murders of children—absolutely gruesome stories. Dawes has a lot to say about this. At one point, he points out something which Baumeister also discusses, which is after you’ve done something once, it gets easier to do it again. Often these men say that it was tough to rape or maim or kill the first time, but after that, well, it went smoother. Dawes also talks about the role of groups where if everyone else is doing something, you want to do it too: you don’t want to be seen as weak, you don’t want to be seen as cowardly or not manly enough. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . What I found really interesting about the book, and why I put this on my list, is that he talks a lot about the fascination we have with these men, and in particular he talks about the moral issues we have when we struggle to understand them. One observation that he gives, which is very moving, is that these are nice guys: they are elderly Japanese men, they are very contrite about their actions, they’re often funny and gracious hosts, and interesting people to talk to. Dawes found himself liking many of them, and he talks about what that feels like. But he’s not in a place to forgive them—he wasn’t a victim, nothing was done to him. So how do we deal with this? He also talks more generally about the pornography of violence that draws us to atrocities—to the Holocaust, slavery, and so on. He does make that connection. The response to horror movies, and our response to the Holocaust , or to Nanking, are not entirely dissimilar. There are similar itches that are being scratched. One might be for recreation and one might be for scholarly study or concern about the future of humanity, but there is a lot of common ground. “He talks a lot about the fascination we have with these men, and in particular he talks about the moral issues we have when we struggle to understand them. ” This is an extraordinary book that defies classification. He doesn’t have a single pitch or argument to make, but it is a beautiful exploration of evil, not just of what motivates the perpetrators, but also about how we see the perpetrators. Yes. And he’s appropriately cautious about that. These stories have been told many times, and they’ve become sanitised in the retelling. What’s interesting is that sometimes new things emerge. He’d have these discussions, and at the beginning he’d ask, ‘Have you ever killed a child?’ And the person would say, ‘No. Never….I would never kill a child.” Then they would talk a bit more, and the old man would add: “But, well…there was this one time when a woman was holding a child, and she wouldn’t put him down, and she ran away, and then we shot and killed them both. But besides that one time, no! Well, maybe one other time…’ What’s revealed in this sort of conversation is fascinating and at the same time horrible. Yes. And in general, the same accusation could apply to experimental moral psychology. Philosophers and psychologists both like sanitised cases, clean examples. It’s not surprising that the trolley problem caught on so much in our field—it is simple, easy to understand, you can modify it in systematic ways, you don’t upset the undergraduates. But it might be too far from reality. A related complaint is that philosophers and psychologists study, almost exclusively, interactions between strangers. But in the real world, moral questions often come up within families and other intimate relationships, and so we miss a lot of the complexities of actual morality, concerning obligations, promises, expectations and so on. It’s a shame that these sanitised cases with strangers have come to dominate our field."