How James Woods Helped Me Collect My Thoughts on Morality.

[Jordan Olsommer]

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Because he realized that except possibly for the truly insane, everybody basically thinks they are a generally good person. Even career criminals, mobsters and scoundrels justify to themselves that there is a good reason for what they do.

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He's right - Steven Pinker said in one of his books that no matter what we do, we confabulate and reinterpret events and actions so that one statement is true at all times: "I am a good person, and I am in control."

Anybody who doesn't believe this may feel free to prove it experimentally by going up to some biker at a bar and saying "Hey buddy, you're an a**hole and you don't know what you're doing."

As far as institutionally-widespread evils like Nazism or slavery go, the responsibility for said evils diminishes with each new person to jump on board (given that the pressure for acquiescing to the 'norm' increases as well). So for example with slavery, some idiot on vacation in Africa gets the bright idea of bringing a black guy home with him in chains as a souvenir, and makes him a slave on his plantation. Now his company, Douchebag Cotton Co., can lower prices because they've got themselves some "free labor". From here it's quite clear how even something as horrible as slavery can be established as an institution - after Douchebag Cotton does it, then previously-respectable Acme Cotton joins in to compete, all the way on down the line until Mom and Pop Cotton feels they have to buy slaves or else they won't be able to feed their children (plus you get the ancillary idiocies like preachers searching for passages in the bible that they can make sound like a divine mandate to own slaves). So in this case, as in most cases in life, evil (to what extent that it exists) and the responsibility for it lie primarily with the Douchebags.