This book is pretty far outside my normal wheelhouse of reading material, but I'm glad I read it. Peck was a psychiatrist who decided to study the nature of evil and create a useful framework to define it – one that built on earlier work done by Holocaust scholars trying to figure out how such a thing could happen.
Peck's analysis deals with far more mundane manifestations, and illustrates through case studies he encountered in his career: Not serial killers or the like, that most people would imagine when they hear the word "evil," but otherwise normal-ish people whose unremitting lack of accountability and casual lying prove consistently destructive to those around them.
It explains a lot, and I think would do so for most people's experiences. Peck conceives of even the most extreme manifestations of evil as arising from these more banal circumstances – from personalities that are willfully impenetrable to self-examination and, to maintain that state, engage in scapegoating of others.
Since they're not capable of truly blaming themselves for anything – even small things – honestly enough to change in the slightest way, they must constantly create fictional contexts (i.e., lies) to rationalize why it's all someone else's fault, without exception. Elevated to the level of political power, this can manifest under extreme conditions in wars and genocides, but Peck describes how that is just the most conspicuous tip of the iceberg.
Again, this explains a lot. It explains a lot of history, a lot of current events, and a lot of the things that almost everyone has probably experienced in the course of their lives.
One of my criticisms of the book is that Peck blends a lot of his theological beliefs and terminology in with the otherwise straightforward analysis he presents, which can be disconcerting or even compromising to credibility at times. However, the value of the basic information presented is undeniable, regardless of how he sometimes presents it in a mystical framework, so I would argue that readers should not allow antipathy to that sort of belief to get in the way of reading this.
A lot of people who delight in thinking about history and human nature will already have arrived at similar conclusions about "evil" (or whatever you want to call it) independently – the narcissism of it, the fact that lies are its raw materials, that it seems to have a conscious malice toward the truth rather than mere indifference, etc. That evil people seem to be fundamentally constructed of lies, and become panicky and nakedly malevolent when their lies begin to fall apart.
While insightful for any historical period, I would say it is unusually relevant right now. Take or leave the religious stuff, but the substance is incredibly valuable.
by [deleted]