Reflections on Evil Men and Self-Quarantine

By Ash Ma ’21

March 24, 2020, the second day of the second week of self-quarantine. Jan organized all the English department student workers to gather via Zoom and checked in with each; I hadn’t talked to a real human being in so long, so this meeting meant a lot for me. 

I was the only one who still was lingering around campus. The weather was slightly gloomy, with damp clouds barely reflecting sunlight. The air was colored dim brown, just like the low vibe circling in this country. However, I was happy to see my colleagues resuming and adapting to their new daily routines. 

As for myself, I started to read Professor James Daws’ book Evil Men this week. I was impressed by the depth of human psychology that he allowed us to dive into, especially using cases of war perpetrators. Surprisingly, some of the concepts resonated with what I had learned in my Behavior Economics class. For example, humans are inclined to pay more attention to negative information than positive, which can be explained by the risk-averse theory. This is rooted in the evolution process of humans, given that we pay more attention to information that potentially contains threats in order to preserve our genes. This sudden awareness of correspondence came to me as the bridge that connected the humanities and social science fields. Ultimately, both of them serve the purpose to better our understandings of the human species. Unfortunately, however, we often lack the humbleness to embrace the other side.

Professor Dawes also extensively talks about trauma and pain in the book. One shocking perspective is our willingness to listen to others’ stories about trauma: humans are, in fact, obsessed with pain, but we also do not wish to have that pain physically ingrained in our blood. As a result, by hearing others’ suffering, we have a coherent experience of those extreme feelings, which transforms into a deep satisfaction. There is no happiness that can match the intense level of emotion that we receive from trauma; we thus feed on trauma as a way to acknowledge our existence on this earth.

It might seem distressing reading an emotionally heavy book during this pandemic time, but as Evil Men points out, I feel a sorrowful pleasure when an intense and sharp book totally captivates my attention. Locked up in my room during self-quarantine, books allow me to virtually undergo all the ups and downs in human emotions. In this way, books are doors that hide secrets behind them and the current isolating situation is a wonderful time for us to open these doors and explore the hidden unknown.