Evil Happens

 

Evil happens.

Evil is real.

There are some evil people in the world today who are very intentionally doing evil things to other people.  

The four InterGroup interaction books discuss and explain that reality. When people have their Us/Them instincts activated in the most negative ways, we tend to want to damage other people. We tend to suspend conscience and feel no guilt or ethical concern or any level of moral remorse or emotional regret in doing evil things to people we perceive to be “Them."

We see that behavior in multiple settings across the world today. Very intentionally evil inter group and inter personal behaviors are damaging people in multiple settings. Evil things are being done by people who are intentionally and deliberately evil as they are doing those evil things. 

Suicidal firebombs are being exploded. People are being tortured and enslaved. Villages are being destroyed and their inhabitants are ending up in mass graves.

Closer to home, we have people doing discriminatory and damaging things to other people with the clear intent of damaging those people.

We need to put in place safeguards to protect us from those evil people. We need to understand why those people are doing evil things, and we need to very intentionally act in ways that keep those evil, instinctive, inter group behaviors from damaging us in the settings that are our personal reality and most important to us.

As one component of that process, we need to work hard in a number of settings to convert those people who see us now in that setting as a “Them” to stop perceiving us to be a “Them." That is a very basic and very powerful strategy. It can make a major difference in areas where negative us/them instincts are creating damage.

In many settings, a very effective way of preventing future damage is simply to convert those people who now believe we are some category of “Them” to a broader and more inclusive perception of “Us” that includes us as “Us.”

When we persuade people who see us as “Them” to actually be some legitimate category of “Us” with us, then our world changes in important ways relative to those people. Behaviors and beliefs both change for the better.

The people who see us as “Us” basically extend the positive and ethical, purely instinctive and much more positive thought processes, beliefs, emotions, and behaviors that are created and used by our instincts for “Us” to include us.

The InterGroup books explain that process and that approach. There are several important and effective approaches that can help us achieve that goal. The Art of InterGroup Peace, Primal Pathways, and Peace In Our Time each describe the six key triggers that we can use in inter group settings to have the people in those settings align with each other as a functional us.

The six instinct supported triggers that can bring people in a setting together to be aligned as an “Us” include danger, a common enemy, certain instinctive team activities, a collective identity, a perceived common and collective gain, and a sense of shared allegiance. The allegiance can be to a leader to a belief, or to a shared vision or mission.

Those triggers are explained in detail in the InterGroup Interaction books. They are included in those books because they work.

In each conflicted setting, if we can get people to be influenced by one or more of those alignment triggers — to have a shared sense of a real and significant common enemy, for example — then we can get people to create and feel alignment with each other for that setting. 

Once we create alignment in any setting, we need to continue to use the relevant alignment triggers as a direct motivator and we need to very intentionally take steps to protect and preserve the Peace and to support and continue the positive interactions that are created by that alignment for that setting.

To protect the situational alignment that we create, in any setting, we need to very intentionally build and protect both InterGroup trust and interpersonal credibility. Both trust and credibility are key.

We need to very carefully, very intentionally and very visibly act in non-deceptive, non-threatening, non-divisive, and non-inflammatory ways in our interactions with each other in each aligned setting to allow the alignment in the setting to take root and to become a relevant functional situational reality that survives into the future for that setting.

We very much want to create a working sense of “Us” in each relevant setting. People almost never do anything evil to their “Us." People do evil things far too easily to any relevant “Them”— but most people who do not have personal behavioral issues feel guilt doing evil at any level to their “Us."

If we want to avoid evil in any settings, we need to avoid people being perceived to be “Them” by other people in those settings.

Unfortunately, it can be far too easy to be perceived to be “Them."  We can trigger a sense of them based on ethnic, racial, cultural, ideological, political, or tribal differentiations. We can also trigger a sense of “Them” based on professional or economic differences. The list of potential categories of “Them” is a very long list.

That long list of potential categories of “Them” creates the danger. But what creates the opportunity is the fact that once we do what we need to do to create a legitimate sense of “Us” in any setting, then that functional sense of “Us” can over ride, over power and offset each of those senses of “Them.” 

So our strategy to avoid local evil behavior in a number of settings needs to be to avoid the slippery slope to our most negative us/them behavior and beliefs by deliberately and intentionally creating and protecting a legitimate sense of “Us” in each relevant setting.

We need to look into our own perceptions as part of that process. If we are in any setting and perceive someone else to be “Them," then we need to be very aware of that perception on our part and we need to reach out to get to know the other person as a person in ways that allow us to step past our own constraints to see the other person as a human “Us."

When we recognize the impact of our own instincts on our own thought processes and perceptions, that recognition and knowledge frees us to reach out to other people from other groups in ways that would not have happened without that awareness.

Ideally, sharing some of these insights with the person you are reaching out to get to know can help the other person also reach past those instincts and reach past “normal” behaviors as well. Both this website and the free inter group books that are available from this website are intended to help support and empower that learning process for people who want to achieve local harmony and Peace.

We can take important steps to keep the negative inter group behaviors from structuring our lives in settings where they will otherwise damage us all.  

The key is to know at an intellectual and cognitive level that our most dangerous inter group instincts exist. We need to deliberately bring enlightened people of good will together in each of our settings to offset those negative instinctive behaviors in the collective pursuit of Peace.

The Art of InterGroup Peace, Primal Pathways, Peace In Our Time, and Cusp of Chaos all give us tools to use to make that strategy a success. 

Evil happens. We need to keep it from happening in the settings where we live and we need to keep if from happening to us.