What does it mean when good people do bad things?
This has been an eternal question and one raised yet again as the world watches Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians and the cheering Israelis, most of them, calling for more and more blood, slaughter, and atrocities to be committed against civilians. Not only are they calling for more bombs and bullets, some of them are actively preventing food from reaching the Palestinians, even though they are starving.
How could they do that? How could they let it happen? What sort of a monster commits such atrocities?
There are no simple answers but there are simple truths. Those who commit atrocities are not monsters, they are just ordinary human beings doing monstrous things because they believe they are acting for good. Usually for a greater good which inflates their sense of purpose and righteousness and dims their ability to recognise the evil of their actions.
And in truth, the greater the capacity for denial, the greater the ability to deny the most obvious and clearly demonstrated facts. That is how humans survive when their world revolves around fear. Protect the self, the society, the system, the beliefs regardless of anything and anyone else.
An important first step for committing atrocities, is to either define the group to be killed or hurt as ‘other,’ thereby creating an instant disconnection which enables humans to commit atrocities. That, when combined with a belief that the actions are toward a greater good, diminishes the capacity for objectivity.
Our origins were tribal and survival rested with the tribe, which contained the family, for most of our human history. Perhaps all of it. We may be less divided into obvious tribes but there are systems which still encourage tribalism and religion is one of them. A religion which sees itself as other, as persecuted, as rejected will be more tribal in nature. Judaism has woven persecution, common to all humans and all religions, into its theology.
The other factors which allow, enable, encourage humans to inflict death or pain on others include the human desire to belong, to be good, to remain accepted, to be retained by a group or society and to obey those who are deemed to know better. We have had thousands of years of experience of what happens to those who are shunned by the group. Obedience or the desire to comply will also make it easier to get good people to do bad things.
A famous experiment, done by Stanley Milgram, in 1963 demonstrated the surprising if not shocking, capacity for humans to inflict pain on others.
Milgram concluded: The individual explanation for the behaviour of the participants would be that it was something about them as people that caused them to obey, but a more realistic explanation is that the situation they were in influenced them and caused them to behave in the way that they did.
Israel is a particular example because the State, society and culture are almost cult-like and always have been. What this means is that the citizens are locked into the society and the State far more powerfully and are therefore more easily brainwashed and led. Fear will always create more vulnerable people and Israel was founded on fear, has functioned on fear, is invested in fear, and works to be feared.
The invention of Israel was sourced in a belief, as much imagined as real, that followers of Judaism, Jews, were at risk in the world at large and could only be safe in their own State where they retained total control. Such an ethos demanded obedience from the citizens to those they believed would keep them safe. Most people will believe anything if they think it will keep them safe. And Israelis have believed this for nearly 80 years.
This meant that ‘others,’ largely the native people of the land the Zionists invaded, occupied, and colonised, the Palestinians, would be and would have to remain an eternal enemy. This added another level of fear to Israelis because while the reality of the Palestinians could be ignored, it could not be completely denied.
Zionist Israel was founded in fear, hatred, and a need for eternal domination of all those deemed to be other. What could go wrong?
Israelis are a military society where most serve in the military, many remain reservists, and a state of constant war is both necessary and a reality. Brainwashed from birth to believe that the Palestinians are subhuman and a dire enemy, the capacity for Israelis to dredge up ethics, integrity, morals, honour, and common human decency for the Palestinians has always been slight if non-existent.
There are exceptions because there are always exceptions but they are few. Brave, admirable, honourable, impressive but few in number and ostracised by the ‘cult’ which cannot allow questioning of its dogma or Zionist theology.
Why is it important to try to understand why people do what they do? Because only with understanding can we condemn the acts but not the individual and provide a foundation to work for change, growth, enlightenment, and human evolution. It is a part of our development as human beings to make connections, develop understanding and to come from a place of compassion not judgement. There is a difference between making judgements and being judgemental. That difference elevates us above animals and base, instinctive behaviour.
If people live in a State founded in fear and follow a religion sourced in the same fears, they are doubly bound to the society and its rulers as well as the religion. If as an Israeli you believe that safety can only ever be found in a State run by Jews, for Jews and totally controlled by Jews, then anything which challenges that ‘story,’ and it is a story, will trigger such irrational fears that reason becomes impossible and obedience to the State is the only option.
The problem with such a State of Fear is that nothing ever subdues the fear and it grows stronger and stronger, requiring greater violence and more and more acts of rage and aggression in a desperate attempt to destroy the ‘enemy’ and to maintain the delusion that safety can only ever lie in fear and violence.
And because the level of delusion is so great, the only way to bring them to their senses is for others to force them to stop. It cannot be done by reason because there is no capacity to be rational within Israeli culture – it can only be done when the world at large takes a stand, as it can, as it should, as it must, and forces the Israeli State to change; to become other than the horror that it is.
That is how, for Israelis anyway, we can understand how good people do bad things. And, when good people do bad things, they need good people to stop them doing bad things.
For more on this topic, P&I recommends:
How have we come to this? “Othering” is humanity’s original sin
Roslyn Ross
Roslyn Ross is a former journalist and editor, who has been writing poetry, fiction and non-fiction for many years.
Born in Adelaide, South Australia, she is now settled in the Adelaide Hills. She has spent much of her time living overseas, including Belgium; India; Angola; South Africa; Zambia; ,Canada; United Kingdom and Malawi. She has also spent extended periods in Russia, Portugal and the United States, as well as living across Australia.
She had had poetry published in a number of anthologies, mainly in the US, but also in When Anzac Day Comes Around, 100 Years from Gallipoli Poetry Project, edited by Graeme Lindsay.
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