Perversion, its history

Why so much cruelty

A human specificity

man is a half-tamed animal which for generations has ruled others by deceit, cruelty and violence. Charlie Chaplin

When we observe the animal functioning in an antropocentric way, certain questions appear. When we take "evil" (according to our conception) as a universal reference to judge the living as a whole, questions arise.

Why, between what we could interpret as "evil" in natural primates (abuse of the weak, theft of food, aggression, hoarding, etc.) and the evil of which humans are capable (up to genocide), the number of acts seems to be decreasing but not the capacity for cruelty?

Why does the chimpanzee, subjected to a quantity of conflicts and daily abuse far greater than humans, ignore the torture, Machiavellianism or mass murder practiced by humans?

Answer to the first question:

If, on average, an individual experiences less violence and abuse daily than a natural primate, it is on the one hand; because it is protected by a shield of protective laws preventing a large number of acts and on the other hand, because it is included from an early age in an educational system devaluing evil and abuse of others to value, on the contrary, good and fraternity.

Answer to the second question:

If the torturing capacity of man is much higher than in animals in general, it is above all a consequence of animal-human transformation.

This metamorphosis has 3 effects: The transition from the instinct of good to learned morality includes the loss of instinctive prohibitions in favor of the taught prohibitions.

For example, during a fight between men, it is no longer an instinctive order which stops violence from the fittest at the first manifestations of submission of its victim, but a moral education of the type "it is immoral to strike a man at Earth".

This new conceptualization has allowed an astounding evolution of prohibitions but has its downside. Indeed, if the moral teaching provided by human society is failing, all excesses are allowed. The development of our intelligence can be transformed into a powerful instrument of perversion if it is not coupled with training in empathy or if, as we saw in the chapter love as a scale, this faculty n is not accompanied by good emotional development. Especially since now, human technicality makes our violent outbursts even more dangerous.

Evil as pathology

A suffering with two heads. Hard to transform a monkey into a man!

Until now all great philosophy has been the confession of its author, a kind of involuntary memories. Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher. Beyond good and evil

The metamorphosis of a primate psyche into a human psyche is long, progressive and uncomfortable work. It is a question of gradually accustoming abusive attitudes strongly permeated in the brain of our species. It is a question of breaking with instinctive behaviors well anchored in the character. The aim is to fill our spirit with conscience, self-control and the ability to conform to the law of men, human ethics and morals, and universal values.

This long transformation subjects the human psyche to innumerable and painful conflicts. Our tendency to domination, to the hoarding of privileges, to predation, accepts badly to be constrained by the conscience or the fear of the gendarme. Our inability to put ourselves in the place of others (empathy) and the power of our abusive impulses, very often exceed our will and our ethical ideal.

This mixture pushes us to commit acts which we can only regret unconsciously or consciously (and it is the same drive which leads the petty delinquent of the suburbs, the intellectual or the journalist to steal an object or an idea, to his congener)

The contradiction between desire to be and reality

All this makes us very often contradictory beings, humans suffering from pathologies linked to the discrepancy between what we would like to be (our moral ideal) and what we are really capable of being.

This struggle between our primate impulses and our human taboos, generates frustrations and psychological conflicts. When to these internal tensions, are added emotional failures, a cold intelligence, and a technicality, this can lead to cruelty, mass murder or genocide.

This capacity for "evil", characteristic of the human species, arises at the birth of prohibitions (therefore at the birth of humanity) and will end when our taught morality has completely supplanted natural morality.

In other words, when human laws have become for man his true nature (as instinct is the true animal nature).

genealogy of cruelty

Man, like the animal, is basically good. The cruelty which he sometimes shows, as we saw above, declines from the conflict generated by his animal-human metamorphosis. Humanity must take up the challenge of the injustice of nature.

It must break the natural chain from the strongest to the weakest. It must put an end to the fatality of the predator condemned by its instinct to interrupt the freedom of its prey.

The absence of cruelty in nature can be interpreted as a kind of economy of means. It can also be seen as a kind of instinctive morality. This is the way we see it here.

In humans, this instinctive morality is replaced by a conscious and taught inhibition. This is what we call law, morals, ethics, education. Humanity must therefore pass from an instinctive morality to a learned morality.

In this pivotal period, the inhibiting instinct gradually disappears, while the will to act well is not yet strong enough to properly contain the impulses.

It then plays out in the mind, a kind of battle between what my morals ask me to do and what my impulses require (like Tourette's syndrome).

From this conflict sometimes results the act of cruelty. It is a paradoxical situation of the transformation of an animal into a human.

Thinking of unthinkable evil, cruelty

There is always a reason that compels man to do evil. Luben Karavelov. But of course, the forms most difficult to analyze in humanity, it is these atrocities which seem to belong only to man and go beyond all possible analysis; genocide, cruelty.

However, this absolute evil also we must think it. It also has a meaning and it is also one of the results of this laborious transformation of human animals.

According to the universal mechanism, it is made up of the frustrations generated by the difficult compression of our primate instincts. Built on the disappearance of the instinct for good (replaced in principle by morality, pity, conscience, will, righteousness etc.). This absolute evil is the result of our educational faults, generators of our inability to perceive the soul in each other, also built by our ability to be intelligent and clan and free of any empathy for the other group, and also by progress and technology. Finally made up of nihilism (this is the case with Nazism as well as Communism) which allows, by emptying all spiritual meaning to the human being, to treat it as a mere materiality.

The fundamental importance of reflection

Not thinking about this "unthinkable evil" that is cruelty or genocide, depriving yourself of trying to understand it and of keeping it in memory, obliges humanity to always see it resurface.

Cruelty is inherent in man because he is subject to the duality between what he wants to be and what he is. Between the just man he wants and the reality of his impulses.

The parade is educational (fear of the gendarme, worldwide in the event of genocide, moral education, awareness of others, understanding of meaning, etc.). Humanity must be able to provide an individual with global education allowing him to control his impulses so that he does not sink into cruelty. It must combat our genocidal tendency by fighting against the justifications (justifications always the same: I did nothing but obey, I was only a cog).

Sacred the refusal of the unjust order.

Humanity must now take a new step. We believe that the dominant must understand the importance of letting go of some of their prerogatives.

We must now include in the education of every human being the possibility of refusing a cruel order. We must protect everyone who applies it. If this fundamental value had been institutionalized in the human mind, we would have avoided the butcheries of 14/18 and 39/45. If this fundamental value were institutionalized, dictators could no longer have their people martyred by their people.

Humanity must offer to every man, within his education, the psychic means to refuse a cruel or genocidal order. It must offer everyone the right to refuse to obey a power when it goes beyond human rights and respect for the person (even if it is democratic). It must support and protect as a priority those who refuse to enter the sordid spiral.

Duty to remember

Article 122 - 4 of the penal code which stipulates that in matters of crimes against humanity command is always presumed illegal, should be one of the major lessons of every human.

On the other hand, the duty of memory, the transmission from generation to generation of the memory of the atrocities committed, the valuing of the just are basic necessities for humanity.

C'est a ce prix seulement que nous pouvons dire comme le suggère leibniz que le mal est nécessaire à l'économie générale du monde en rajoutant qu'il doit toujours être également le scandale à éradiquer.

marché perversion

Pour moi, je suis à peu près persuadé que, parmi les philosophes, il n'y en a pas un qui pense qu'un homme pèche volontairement et fasse volontairement des actions honteuses et mauvaises ; ils savent tous au contraire que tous ceux qui font des actions honteuses et mauvaises les font involontairement,

Platon Les sophistes.

En vérité le moi rusé, le moi sans amour, qui cherche son avantage dans l'avantage du plus grand nombre, ce n'est pas à l'origine du troupeau mais son déclin.

Ce furent toujours des fervents et des créateurs qui créèrent le bien-et le mal. Le feu de l'amour et le feu de la colère l'allume au nom de toutes les vertus.

Zarathustra vit beaucoup de pays et beaucoup de peuples et n'a pas trouvé de plus grande puissance sur la terre que l'oeuvre des fervents;

bien et mal voilà le nom de cette puissance.
En vérité la puissance de ces louanges et de ces blâmes est pareille à un monstre.

Dites-moi mes frères qui me terrasseras ce monstre ?

Dites, qui jettera une chaîne sur les 1000 nuques de cette bête ?

Il y a eu jusqu'à présent 1000 buts parce qu'il y a 1000 peuples.Il ne manque que la chaîne des 1000 nuques, le but unique.

l'humanité n'a pas encore de but.

Mais dites moi donc mes frères si l'humanité manque de but n'est-elle pas elle-même en défaut ? Nietsche