Evil Triangle

The Fraud Triangle (created by criminologist Donald R. Cressey) is commonly taught regarding why fraud occurs: when the three elements of pressure ("I need money"), opportunity ("I manage the company's money"), and rationalization ("I deserve it, because I work so hard") occur together, fraud occurs.

Actually, this simple concept can be expanded to apply to any kind of evil, not just fraud.

The Evil Triangle thus explains why evil acts occur. When all three of the elements of "want," "can," and "justify" occur, the restraints preventing one from doing evil acts are undone, and the perpetrator goes and steals, rapes, murders, and so forth.

• "Want" is desire.
• "Can" is ability and opportunity.
• "Justify" is making excuses.

"Want" is the simplest of the three, and is an emotional need (for love, sex, money, etc.).

"Can" is a physical ability to do the deed. Often this is from power: A school bully "can," because he is bigger and stronger than the other kids; a corporate executive "can," because he has hierarchical power over other employees. Other times it is due to skill or access: a fraudster "can," because of his access to and skill using financial systems; a cat burglar "can," because of his skill at thieving and scaling walls.

"Justify" is the most interesting of the three, and is a mental exercise to create excuses as to why the evil act is in fact not wrong, and reflects the need for individuals to think of themselves as just and not evil. (Even the Nazis thought of themselves as just and doing good deeds, as reflected in their private diaries.) (It can also be a legal exercise, which allows governments to similarly legitimize and codify evil as "good" if desired.) Ideologies, laws, and religions are often used as convenient tools in this process of justifying atrocities. Modern leniency toward religions enables many to use religion for this purpose most easily: "It is a part of my religion, thus it is okay!" (Justification is necessary for obvious crimes that everybody can see, but for individual crimes often it suffices to simply hide the crime.)

Applying the Evil Triangle

1. Understanding Evil

The Evil Triangle helps us to understand evil. For example, from history - why did Nazis attempt to eradicate the Jews in the Holocaust? Because they wanted to (antisemitism), they could (government power, power of numbers), and they justified it (nationalism, racist ideologies). Why did European nations invade and colonize the New World? Because they wanted to (desire for gold, spices, land), they could (greater military power, infectious diseases on their side), and they justified it (Christianization of the pagans). Sometimes the last aspect - justification - is even not needed, e.g. during idiot mob violence or absolute power, where people stop caring about even resembling good. However, most ideologies are usually developed in order to assuage this desire for justification.

2. Preventing Evil

The Evil Triangle is also important, because it gives us a clear path to preventing evil acts: one needs to only remove at least one of the three elements; or even better, for greater effect, we can try to remove all three.

• Want: This is most complicated to remove; as despite causing many ills, desire is fundamental and strong. The difficulty of desire is that simply increasing it ever more does not necessarily lead to happiness. Many ancient sages tackled the conundrum of desire in the past, so a good place to start is to teach philosophy, e.g. Stoicism or Epicureanism from the Greeks, Buddhism from India, or Daoism from China; a modern choice may be Positive Psychology. The world media should do its part as well, by responsibly choosing programs that focus on happiness, and avoid fostering envy ("Lives of the Rich").
• Can: The ability to do wrong should be removed. Many mitigations are straightforward, e.g. flattening power structures, restricting access to systems, etc. (Corporations already do the latter, but are still resisting the former - letting go of power is not easy for people to do.) Loopholes where one is "above the law" should of course be removed, too. For example, the best way to prevent hiring discrimination is to just make all applicants anonymous.
• Justify: The use of laws, religions, and ideologies as excuses for atrocities should be prevented. Laws should be interpreted via the "spirit of the law," and not the "letter of the law," which creates loopholes to allow heinous acts. Constitutionalism should not excuse evil acts, either - a constitution is not a holy writ, although many treat it as one - it could be (gasp!) wrong. Religion and culture should not be a "free card" for anybody; basic univeral ethics like not stealing, raping, or killing should be a litmus test of religion or culture. If a religion espouses stealing, raping, or killing - it should be treated as a dangerous cult. (Religions and cultures often espouse things like human sacrifice, headhunting, etc. - it does not make them right.) Ideologies are only caricatures of philosophies, and should be treated as such. Intoxication should never lessen the sentence of any perpetrator - as this empowers would-be perpetrators to commit those acts, knowing that they will face lessened punishments.

3. Predicting Evil

Another important use for the Evil Triangle is to predict evil acts. If you have a politician who loves illicit sex, and he is given total power over a group of female prisoners, and he also happens to follow an ideology that preaches abuse of women as holy revenge - what do you think he will do?

All three applications are linked - by understanding, we can predict, and by predicting, we can prevent (by changing the conditions that would have allowed evil to happen).