David Kupelian"s new book, "How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America," is an important sequel to his 2005 best-seller, "The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised as Freedom."
Kupelian"s books are compelling because he deals seriously with issues modern secular thinkers tend to dismiss most importantly the issue of original sin and the reality that as human beings we are all born with a flawed nature that is capable of being seduced into committing the worst transgressions imaginable.
A modern secular society in which atheists such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins can make millions writing books proclaiming Friedrich Nietzsche"s message that God is dead or more to the point, that God never existed in the first place is a world in which issues of original sin or the inherently flawed nature of human beings are no longer taken seriously.
In "The Marketing of Evil," Kupelian illustrates dramatically how a disconnect from the fundamental Judeo-Christian perception that each and every human being is born corruptible and with the capacity to be readily drawn into evil leads effortlessly to a Vance Packard world in which "The Hidden Persuaders" of moral relativism dominate us all. As a consequence, today politically correct pundits teach that abortion is every woman"s birthright and that every form of sexual perversion is acceptable as long as everything is consensual.
In "How Evil Works," Kupelian extends his analysis to explore today"s most urgent problems, from the socialist revolution unfolding in Washington, D.C., to the upsurge in Islamic radicalism, to the growth of militant atheism and the increasing demonization of Christianity.
Evil, as Kupelian shows, has been marketed to the point that the modern conscience has been numbed. Meanwhile, stroking and enlarging human pride is considered acceptable and perfectly justifiable in a world where the Old Testament God of justice and punishment is rejected in favor of a religion where everyone goes to heaven, regardless of how they lived their life.
In analyzing why so many American schoolchildren, mostly boys, are forced to take behavioral drugs because they are judged to exhibit symptoms of attention-deficit disorder, Kupelian reveals the profound denseness and lack of fundamental understanding in today"s public-school system.
Likewise, in showing why psychiatrists prescribe antidepressant drugs for tens of millions of adults, almost one in every 10 of us despite the FDA-mandated warning label that these drugs increase a person"s risk of suicidal thinking and behavior Kupelian explains: "Everything bad, from temper tantrums, drunkenness and road rage to "psychological lying, cheating, stealing, physical aggression and drug abuse," is now a disease. Everything is physiological or genetic and treated with drugs. Nothing is your fault. You"re an innocent victim."
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In a society where every difficult form of human behavior is treated as nothing more than a psychological or physiological event, Kupelian demonstrates the logical absurdity of today"s mechanistic view that all problems are someone else"s fault, treatable with drugs. Ultimately, if nothing is anybody"s fault, even serial killers and rapists are just victims.
Kupelian is at his best when asking probing questions that arise from today"s dominant headlines, such as why so many celebrities who appear to "have it all" talent, fame, good looks, wealth, adoration so often end up self-destructing.
He concludes that fame itself can easily become a type of narcotic and that our tendency toward narcissism, buoyed up by the applause and adulation of others, causes a person to lose sight of his own faults and therefore his very sanity. As Kupelian summarizes it, being worshiped "destroys us and drives us mad."
One especially important current phenomenon Kupelian explores is why terrorism produces what is known as the "Stockholm syndrome," in which victims of terrorism, such as hostages, tend to identify and emotionally bond with their captors, while fearing and disparaging those trying to save them. The operative mechanism of the Stockholm syndrome, Kupelian explains, is an intense fear that causes hate to morph into "love," causing a conversion experience to occur in which the hostages undergo a "mind meld" that causes them to see the world through the terrorists" eyes.
Kupelian extends this analysis to show how the Western world, in its reaction to radical Islam, exhibits a low-grade case of the Stockholm syndrome: "Many people are so intimidated by radical Islam, so fearful of becoming victims themselves, that their fear is unconsciously transformed into a strange sympathy and support for the terrorists, or at least for their worldview."
So, he writes, when "Muslims rioted for weeks in and around Paris in 2005, burning over 1,000 cars and rampaging through three hundred towns shooting at police and firemen," the media around the world barely mentioned that the rioters were Muslims, out of concern for offending the rioters.
Likewise, in examining why dictators such as Adolf Hitler had such success manipulating the masses by way of the "big lie," Kupelian explains the importance of creating a crisis to force people into emotionally making decisions and accepting solutions that would normally be rejected out of hand.
"Politically, the strategy is to create a crisis or exploit a real one, by throwing people into a mode where they can be redirected toward a predetermined "solution" whether it"s imposing "carbon penalties" on businesses in response to fears of global warming, or a trillion-dollar taxpayer-funded corporate bailout in response to a dire "financial crisis," or draconian gun-control laws in response to a rash of shootings."
"How Evil Works" is a very important book for these troubling times. Until we clearly understand the evil games being played on us, we"ll never learn how to stop playing and start truly living.
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