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Evil is not committed by people who feel uncertain about their righteousness, who question their own motives, who worry about betraying themselves.

The evil in this world is committed by the spiritual fat cats, by the Pharisees of our own day, the self-righteous who think they are without sin, because they are unwilling to suffer the discomfort of significant self-examination.

Most politicians proclaim themselves to be exemplars of virtue, but many of them compulsively lie, engage in corruption, censor and demonize those who disagree with them, and enact policies that destroy society.

Are such politicians aware of their hypocrisy? Do they truly believe in the morally righteous

self-image they try to portray? In this video, drawing from the insights of the American

psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, we explore the psychology of malignant narcissism in order to better understand the evil that has infected modern politics.

M. Scott Peck defines evil as that force, residing either inside or outside of human beings,

that seeks to kill life or liveliness, or as

he continues. Evil is live, spelled backward. Evil is in opposition to life. Specifically, it has to do with

unnecessary killing, killing that is not required for biological survival. Evil is also that which kills spirit.

There are various essential attributes of life, particularly human life, such as sentience,

mobility, awareness, growth, autonomy, will. It is possible to kill or attempt to kill one of these

attributes without actually destroying the body.

All of us are capable of committing evil acts, for as Alexander Solginzen noted,

the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.

Nonetheless, two types of people are particularly prone to evil actions, psychopaths and malignant

narcissists. The psychopath's potential for evil is well known, but it is the malignant narcissists

who may be responsible for more of the world's evil as they outnumber the psychopaths, and as Peck writes in his book,

The People of the Lie,

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