{"id":965,"date":"2019-01-02T23:47:06","date_gmt":"2019-01-02T23:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/?p=965"},"modified":"2019-01-02T23:47:06","modified_gmt":"2019-01-02T23:47:06","slug":"medicating-the-problem-of-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2019\/01\/02\/medicating-the-problem-of-evil\/","title":{"rendered":"Medicating the Problem of Evil"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img width='350' height='232' border='0' hspace='5' align='right' src='\/~totl\/skywritings\/uploads\/water_pollution.jpg' alt='' \/>Is evil a &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/mg22830471-000-syndrome-e-can-neuroscience-explain-the-executioners-of-isis\/\">pathology<\/a>&#8220;?<\/p>\n<p>No \u201cprofessional\u201d opinion, as I&#8217;m not a professional in this (or any) area. <\/p>\n<p>My belief happens to be that (apart from the inevitable, but small, quota of genetic psychopaths) what we call \u201cevil\u201d is a consequence of learning and culture rather than genes or \u201cpathogens.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Is learned cruelty a \u201cdisease\u201d? Perhaps the way gambling and alcoholism are, in the sense that they can sometimes be unlearned (\u201ccured,\u201d or at least pushed into remission) by \u201ctherapy\u201d (and some are born with more of a propensity towards it than others).<\/p>\n<p>But calling such learned behaviors a \u201cdisease\u201d is just playing with words. If the effects of air pollution are a disease, what is it when the pollutant is cultural (\u201ccognitive\u201d)?<\/p>\n<p>Or maybe the question should be whether nationalism, religious zealotry, xenophobia, machismo and other malign \u201cmemes\u201d are \u201cpathogens&#8221;? That\u2019s probably literally true in some sense, yet still remains more metaphorical than medical (just as a lot else that passes for psychology does). \u201cPrevention\u201d and \u201ccure\u201d depend on education and culture, not medicine. The right analogy there is not the effects of air pollution (or poverty, or injustice), but its causes: \u201cpathogenogens\u201d?<\/p>\n<p>Unless someone finds a drug or surgery&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is evil a &#8220;pathology&#8220;? No \u201cprofessional\u201d opinion, as I&#8217;m not a professional in this (or any) area. My belief happens to be that (apart from the inevitable, but small, quota of genetic psychopaths) what we call \u201cevil\u201d is a consequence of learning and culture rather than genes or \u201cpathogens.&#8221; Is learned cruelty a \u201cdisease\u201d? Perhaps &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2019\/01\/02\/medicating-the-problem-of-evil\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Medicating the Problem of Evil&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3074,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=965"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":966,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965\/revisions\/966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}