The evil that men do

Theodore Dalrymple is convinced of the existence of evil, and says that there's a lot of it about. He's reviewing a book about Rwanda: A Time for Machetes by Jean Hatzfeld. Dalrymple cites in support of his contention not only what happened in Rwanda, but also evidence from his own close experience - evidence of 'sheer malignity, the joy in doing wrong'. But the Rwandan material referred to by him is, naturally, the core of his review:

There is no real remorse [among the perpetrators] for what they did, only regret that it landed them in their current predicament. They feel more sorry for themselves than for their victims, or the survivors. They are not even altogether unhappy in prison, and look forward to resuming their lives where they left off (before the genocide) as if nothing too much had really happened - or should I say been done by them?...

... One of the most haunting things in this book, if it is possible to pick anything out in particular, is that many of the victims did not so much as cry out when caught by the murderous genocidaires: they died in complete silence, as if speech and the human voice were now completely worthless, redundant, beside the point... I suppose that when you witness absolute human evil committed by the people with whom you once lived, and who, at least metaphysically, are just like you, you see no point in the struggle for existence. Non-existence, perhaps, seems preferable to existence.
.....
This book penetrates deeper into the heart of evil than any other I have ever read. The author makes no claims for his work: he is still mystified by it himself. But if you want to know what depths man can sink to... read this book.

It is not uncommon to hear those who are more 'optimistic' about human nature putting the whole weight of explanation for this kind of human conduct on the external conditions - social, political, ideological - that produce or encourage it. But while it is essential to give these conditions their appropriate explanatory weight (for we need to know when people are more likely and when they are less likely to behave in cruel and murderous ways), that doesn't meet, much less dispose of, the thesis that there are impulses towards evil within the human make-up. Without that inner potentiality, the conditions could not produce the forms of cruel behaviour which the human record contains in abundance. We might just have been a species incapable of such behaviour - in the way that a cat is incapable of living on a vegetarian diet. But we are not.