A perspective on evil

There are people like Eichmann in every workplace, in every bureaucracy and in every government. Glyn Brokensha describes them as powerpaths: these are the people who "have no real goals, and what goals they do have are for themselves, not the institution they work for." What is more their conception of what is good is based on what will further their own ends irrespective of the impact their action has on the lives of others. Eichmann saw delivering an efficient extermination program as the means for personal advancement in reality no different to the office power-path.

But are these people the exception? I think not. As I am writing this people are being murdered in underdeveloped countries so their organs can be harvested and sold to rich people to enable them to prolong their miserable lives. They have learnt not to ask too many questions about the background of their “donors”.

Or the couple desperate for a child to adopt even if that child has been sold to agency by a desperate parent.

Exceptions? I think not; customers were interviewed in London asking of they were concerned that the cheap clothes that they had just bought had been manufactured using child labour. Or even closer to home those men who purchase sexual favours from women who may properly be described as sex slaves.

In developing a system of global justice we need to be prepared to acknowledge that there will always be those who will seek to bend whatever system is put in place to their own perverted ends and hence we need to do two things - build in safeguards and be prepared to review and revamp the system at least every 50 years.