Society of Evil

I am reading about a well-known psychologist in the 1980’s, M. Scott Peck.

He wrote a 1978 book that opens with the conclusion “Life is difficult”.

I’ve noticed how this fact of life contrasts with today’s progressive victim mentality where liberals expect an easy life to be provided by government.

In his book People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil, he concludes that people who are evil attack others rather than face their own failures. It is based on narcissistic patients who are resistant to psychiatric help. They have no empathy for others.

Evil is described by Peck as “militant ignorance”. According to Peck, an evil person:
– is consistently self-deceiving, with the intent of avoiding guilt and maintaining a self-image of perfection
– deceives others as a consequence of their own self-deception
– projects his or her evils and sins onto very specific targets (scapegoats) while being apparently normal with everyone else
– commonly hates with the pretense of love, for the purposes of self-deception as much as deception of others
– abuses political (emotional) power
– maintains a high level of respectability, and lies incessantly to do so
– is consistent in his or her sins. Evil persons are characterized not so much by the magnitude of their sins, but by their consistency (of destructiveness)
– is unable to think from the viewpoint of their victim (scapegoating)
– has a covert intolerance to criticism and other forms of narcissistic injury

Most evil people realize the evil deep within themselves, but are unable to tolerate the pain of introspection, or admit to themselves that they are evil. Thus, they constantly run away from their evil by putting themselves in a position of moral superiority and putting the focus of evil on others.

What could possibly go wrong in a society of victims who vote for a narcissist that will not face their own failures?

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