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Why do people commit acts of evil? This groundbreaking work explains why some of us slip from minor misdeeds to crime and violence.
In order to truly understand evil, we have to look it straight in the eye. Only then can we tame the cruelty of the human mind and control its killer instincts, argues leading Finnish psychologist and neurobiology expert, Professor Lauri Nummenmaa.
Human history is full of murder, abuse, enslavement, rape, and crime. In hunter-gatherer times, straying onto another tribe’s land was a death-sentence. In the present day, in spite of environmental and societal changes, acts of evil continue to be perpetrated as the human mind is unable to to understand the true nature of evil.
Proximity and other people in our lives are of immense importance. Yet conflicts inevitably arise when individuals’ goals conflict with those of others’. That’s why some of us fight, bully, and pursue their own interests at all costs, sometimes leading to school bullying, racism, domestic violence, rape, and war. And yet, no one admits to being evil themselves, nor do they want anyone else to be evil.
Authoritative, engaging and relevant, Nummenmaa’s book opens up the dark side of the human mind to examine the biological, psychological, and moral nature of evil and how the new, technological advancements in neural imaging enable us to look more deeply into the mind.
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