I just read a book called Careless People, which does a good job of explaining numerous unethical actions by Facebook's senior leadership, as told by someone who worked there. On the last page, the author said something that really struck me: "They [Facebook senior leadership] just didn't lose any sleep over it." While this was a great book, I wish the author had considered why, beyond the few sentences scattered throughout the book about their greed, newfound power, and isolation from the rest of the world.
Essentially, the book made me ask: Why do so many people not care about their unethical behavior? I want to know what these types of people's internal logic is, because it is hard for me to think that most people who are what we would consider evil know they are the bad guy, and wholeheartedly embrace the label.
Examples of books that could help answer this question: fiction books that expound on the villain's perspective, psychology books that examine why people act unethically, philosophy books about human behavior, etc.
Thanks!
by PhoneSuch5467
3 Comments
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
I have not actually read this, so perhaps it’s a stretch for me to recommend it, but I wonder if you might find some insight from Hannah Arendt’s *Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil*. She was a philosopher and the book his her account of the trial of a Nazi who helped organize the Holocaust who seems completely unrepentant, but otherwise completely mundane and ordinary. No monster or sociopath, just someone going about his job and life who enabled such heinous acts.
I’m going to recommend The First Law series by Joe Ambercrombie. The first book is The Blade Itself. A main character is a torturer who frequently asks, “why do I do this?”
Here is a quote from his book Red Country:
“Evil turned out not to be a grand thing. Not sneering Emperors with their world-conquering designs. Not cackling demons plotting in the darkness beyond the world. It was small men with their small acts and their small reasons. It was selfishness and carelessness and waste. It was bad luck, incompetence, and stupidity. It was violence divorced from conscience or consequence. It was high ideals, even, and low methods.”