LUCIFER EFFECT

WHILE WAITING TO BOARD the plane for my Lufthansa flight to Poland to attend the 4^th International Assembly of Catholic Missiologists in the world [August 27-September 6, 2007], I have started to read a book highly recommended by a friend. The book’s title is “Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil” [Random House, New York, 2007) authored by Philip Zimbardo known for his Stanford Prison Experiment and for his expertise as a social psychologist in the trial of American soldiers involved in the tortures of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The book begins with a question that every human being needs to ask: “Am I capable of evil?” Many scholars have dealt with the problem of evil down through the centuries. Philosophers, theologians, psychologists, educators and even the military have never ceased studying the phenomenon and the experience of evil. Zimbardo points out that to understand the human dynamics of evil or the psychology of evil we have to see it from three perspectives, namely: dispositional, situational, systemic. The dispositional perspective looks at evil from within the person. It is basically an essentialist point of view that sees human’s propensity for evil as something internal, that is, as part of one’s nature. Thus an evil act is caused not by an external factor but by the internal predisposition of humans to choose to do evil. The classic description of evil persons as “bad apples” applies to the dispositional perspective. The situational perspective looks for the explanation of evil from external factors, that is, from the environment and from other factors outside the human subject. When a good person commits an evil act, it is not because the person is evil from within but it is because the person has been influenced by his environment or situation. A situational perspective does not look for “bad apples” but it tries to find the “bad barrel.” A bad barrel can turn good apples into worst apples. The systemic perspective goes even further by pointing out that systems create evil situations and thus evil persons. It is enough for a system to identify the enemy and through the use of creative imagination instill hate for the enemy that is perceived as a threat or danger. The power structure perpetuates through action and often times through complicity the evil situation. Zimbardo uses as examples of systemic evil the Jewish Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide in which more than half a million Tutsi’s were massacred by Hutus, the atrocities committed against the prisoners at Abu Ghaib prison in Iraq by some American soldiers, and the massacre of Chinese men and women at Nanking, China by Japanese soldiers. These examples show how power complicity could actually turn neighbors into enemies and kill one another as a consequence.

The banality of evil could only be redeemed by the banality of heroes. Some people instead of being transformed from good to evil can actually become heroes by not allowing the evil system or situation to take hold of their goodness. In this sense, one becomes a “rebel” by opposing evil powers and factors. I happen to sit beside a young Filipino overseas worker during the whole duration of the flight from Manila to Frankfurt. In his sharing, he laments how poverty in the Philippines has made him leave the country even if it means seeing his family only once a year. One of the striking lines that he shared is that sacrifice for one’s family makes him look at heaven even when he knows he is experiencing a great deal of hell in life. I think he has the quality of a hero not in the exceptional sense of the word but in the sense of turning evil situations into normal occasions to work harder, indeed to be the best in the worst situations of life. Zimbardo’s definition of evil as “knowing better, but doing worst” captures vividly the experience of the young Filipino overseas contract worker who knows the worst situation of poverty but tried to do something better out of the worst situation.