We’d like to believe we’d stand up to cruelty. That we’d speak out when something feels wrong.
But history and psychology tell us something harder: The line between good and evil doesn’t run between people – some good, some bad. That line between good and evil, love and hate runs through each one of us.
We can’t know how we’ll act when the pressure is on. But there is something we can do now – we can practice, we can prepare, because becoming the person we hope we’d be in a crisis doesn’t start in the crisis. It starts with the choices we make today.
We have to personally choose the side of love again and again to be the hero we aspire to be when it matters most.
History has given us sobering reminders of just how fragile our moral compass can be under pressure. One of the clearest came in the aftermath of World War II. At the Nuremberg Trials, where those accused of committing atrocities were tried, something chilling became clear: many of the people who orchestrated or enabled horrific barbarisms weren’t monsters. They were civil servants, doctors, or soldiers – ordinary people who said, ‘I was just following orders.’
That phrase became infamous, because it was so disturbingly common.
We like to believe we’d never be one of them. But the truth is, most of those people thought the same. That’s why the question isn’t ‘Would I?’ The question becomes: How do I resist the pressure of compliance? How do I stay awake to love, when obedience to something I know is wrong feels easier?
The key is, as always, awareness, especially of how easily we begin to separate ourselves from others. When we categorize someone as ‘not like us,’ we find it easier to dismiss their concerns … and to dismiss their humanity. When you hear a group of people described as vermin, rats, or lice, that language creates a sense of difference between you and them. They’re not being described as animals we have affinity for, like bunnies or butterflies. They’re being described as the scourge of the animal kingdom, as something not human. Something we good people would want to get rid of. Exterminate.
In the 1960s and 1970s, two studies shocked people out of their complacency that only bad people do bad things. Even though the Holocaust was only two decades in the past, most thought, “I would have done something. I wouldn’t have given in. I would have stood my ground.” But this research showed that ordinary, everyday people being asked to do things to hurt fellow humans would do it.
In the famous Milgram study(1), volunteers were told they were helping with a learning experiment. They were instructed to administer electric shocks to someone on the other side of a wall. The shocks weren’t real, but the participants didn’t know that. They started out with small voltages, and most participants readily complied to give the shocks. But as the voltages appeared to increase and the people pretending to receive the electric shocks cried out in pain, even to the point of pounding on the wall screaming for this to stop, most kept administering the shocks. Why? Because a man with perceived authority, with a lab coat and a clipboard, said, ‘Please continue.’ Participants were distressed and anxious, but they kept going.
In another famous study(2), the Stanford Prison experience, college students were randomly assigned to be either ‘prisoners’ or ‘guards.’ The guards, with no real training, quickly began abusing their power. The prisoners became submissive or emotionally broken. The experiment was stopped after only 6 days because of the pathological behavior both groups were displaying.
What we learned from these studies is that anyone can be cruel given the right conditions.(3)
These were average people, not monsters. Hannah Arendt called this ‘the banality of evil.’
The banality of evil.
And that may be the hardest truth of all.
Evil doesn’t always look like rage or hatred. Sometimes it looks like someone filing paperwork. Sometimes it sounds like I was just doing my job. Sometimes it feels like having no other option.
That realization can be hard to sit with. It should be. Because once we see that the potential for harm lives inside each of us, we’re left with a choice. Not to run from it. Not to deny it. But to notice those parts that want to diminish others and tend to those parts within us and, at the same time, to strengthen the parts of us that choose to care.
Because the capacity for caring lives in us too. If we can be shaped by fear, we can also be shaped by love. If obedience can be learned, so can compassion.
A powerful compassion that grows with use.
The Dalai Lama calls this cultivating our common humanity. Let me share a simple practice to help this. Saying “Just Like Me” (4) is incredibly profound.
Look at someone you don’t know and say to yourself,
This person is sometimes scared or worried, just like me.
This person gets hungry and thirsty and wants to feel well, just like me.
This person wants safety and security, just like me.
This person wants to belong and be accepted, just like me.
This person is doing the best they can today, just like me.
This person has loved and grieved and wept, just like me.
Try it. In traffic as you’re sitting at a red light, in a waiting room at a doctor’s office, or as you’re standing in line at the grocery store. It’s especially powerful when you feel annoyed by something that person has done. Maybe try it while scrolling online, before you rush to judge someone’s comment.
You’ll feel the shift immediately. This stranger is no longer “other,” but a reflection of you. A mirror of your own humanity. Just like me, this person has hopes and wounds, people they love, and moments they regret.
I’m not saying this because my heart is pure and I’ve eliminated my anger and resentment. I have to remind myself of this again and again. I’m telling you this technique because I know I am flawed, because I know my impulsiveness has sometimes caused pain, because I can clearly see there is a line within me. A line that delineates moving towards love on one side and moving towards fear, hate, and separation on the other. I work to choose love even when my ego, own wounds, and fear would rather I take the easier path and turn away from love. I work to build and grow my compassion.
If we are capable of obedience that causes harm, we are also capable of courage that protects. If we can be swayed by fear, we can also be anchored by love.
The more you grow your compassion, the more it opens your heart. The more it disrupts that reflex to divide the world into ‘us’ and ‘them.’
Because in truth – there is no them. There’s only us. Flawed. Fragile. Capable of great harm. And capable of great love.
We won’t always get it right. But we can begin again. Moment by moment. Thought by thought. “Just like me,” others are struggling. And when we feel the pull to turn away …
We can choose love.
Joni Miller, Ph.D. is a writer, researcher, spiritual coach, and speaker who uses her knowledge, education, and love of all things spiritual to help others find their unique spiritual path. www.SpiritualGeography.net
Photo by Muqtada Mohsen: https://www.pexels.com/photo/back-view-of-a-silhouetted-crowd-at-sunset-18285743/
(1) https://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html Milgram did a number of variations on this study, mostly finding compliance to authority. Do you know what had the most impact for the participants to stop? When they saw someone else not complying. There is strength in numbers to stop the madness.
(2)https://www.simplypsychology.org/zimbardo.html
(3)These studies also helped create a more robust system for evaluating harm in psychological experiments with human participants. These experiments would not be allowed today.
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