EVILICIOUS: Cruelty = Desire + Denial Read Online Free PDF

summarized by the anthropologist Scott Atran and his colleagues, suicide martyrs often come to religious fanaticism late in life, but such fanaticism is not what pushed them into a life of extreme violence. Instead, the best predictors of who will turn to this kind of terrorism as a way of life are social networks of family and friends, concern over national humiliation, and the perception of inappropriate interventions by foreigners. What is important here is the powerful role that sacred values have on some individuals, and how such values can drive a deep desire to harm others, even if this means harming oneself. For many, this is an example of desire run amuck. For others, it is an example of self-sacrifice for the good of the group. Whichever way one leans, suicide bombing is a clear case where an individual’s desire leads to horrific consequences for innocent others.
    Desire is the first ingredient in the recipe for evil. In this chapter I lay the foundation for understanding how desire works, explaining how it arises as a thought or feeling, how it motivates action, and how it spins out of control leading to addictions. I will explain how we acquire and nurture the desire to obtain valuable resources such as food, water, money, and mates, but along the way often harm other individuals or allow harm to happen. The puzzle that I will explain is how a benign process that shapes our aesthetic preferences and motivates our capacity to acquire beautiful paintings, delicious food, and attractive partners can turn into a process that motivates us to kill, using excessive means to reach excessive ends, sometimes for personal pleasure and sometimes with no feeling at all.
    The desire for pleasure
    Imagine that scientists have just announced the discovery of a center in the brain that manages our experience of pleasure. Imagine further that they have invented a consumer device called
Bliss
that, for only $49.99, enables you to ramp up or down the activity in this pleasure center. Want more out of your dinner, movie, tennis stroke, work, or sex? Flip the
Bliss
switch. Want to buffer yourself from the pain of ostracism, a romantic breakup, or a colonoscopy? Flip the
Bliss
switch. Would you buy
Bliss
? Before you answer this question, think about potential side effects. Did you think about the possibility that you might become addicted to
Bliss
or worse, either destroy the feeling of pleasure altogether or end up in a never-ending quest for satisfaction, each dollop of pleasure leaving you wanting a bigger dollop next time around. This may seem like science fiction, but it’s closer to non-fiction.
    Over fifty years ago, scientists implanted electrodes into a region of the rat’s brain called the
nucleus accumbens
. The electrodes were connected to a switch. If the rat pressed the switch, the electrode turned on and so too did the nucleus accumbens. The rats indeed pressed, over and over again, some at a rate of two thousand presses per hour, with no external reward or threat of punishment. Pressing the switch was the reward, or at least the vehicle to a rewarding experience. Pressing the switch was addictive.
    Soon after this discovery, clinicians started using the same brain stimulation technique to treat individuals with neurological complications, including Parkinson’s patients suffering from loss of motor control, patients experiencing sustained pain, Tourette’s patients suffering from motor tics and obsessive-compulsive problems, and even a patient in a coma who had lost, but then slowly recovered the capacity to name and grasp objects. As in the rat work, a clinician implanted an electrical pulse generator within a targeted brain region. When the generator turned on, it stimulated activity in previously malfunctioning regions. But sometimes it stimulated much more than the doctor planned.
    Two patients suffering from chronic pain developed profound
addictions
to the stimulation. In addition to relatively successful