Jordan Peterson, Oskar Schindler, and the Line Between Good and Evil

Jordan Peterson recently observed few people who read history ever see themselves as a potential perpetrator. That's a problem.

During a recent interview, Jordan Peterson shared some words that I believe are incredibly important.

"When people read the history of Nazi Germany, they always think they’d be Schindler. They always think they're the person who would have saved Anne Frank in the Netherlands.

They never read history as a perpetrator. 'I wouldn't have done that.'

Did you watch people during the pandemic? Thirty percent of my neighbors were thrilled that they had the opportunity to inform on the people around them.

They would have worn those goddamn masks for the rest of their life if the payoff would have been they could feel morally superior and inform."

Before I discuss Peterson’s point, I’d like to point out that of course not everyone who wore a mask during the pandemic did so to feel “morally superior.” Nearly all of us donned the mask at some point during the Covid scare, some of us because we had to and others because they believed it might offer them protection against the virus (many also contended they did so to protect others).

I had friends who were early mask adopters in the pandemic. They were wearing them before they were mandated, when Dr. Fauci and the US Surgeon General were discouraging Americans from wearing them. They weren’t wearing them to feel “morally superior.”

All that said, I don’t want to get sidetracked from Peterson’s larger point: that many people are incapable of realizing they could be the villains in such horror stories.

I believe Peterson is on to something.

From Stanley Milgram’s famous experiment (see below) in 1961 to the Philip Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment a decade later, I think it’s apparent that the average person is more capable of committing evil than many people believe. I’m not saying these people are evil. I’m saying they are capable of evil in certain situations. There’s a big difference.

A friend of mine recently observed on Twitter that people are generally good. Only a small percentage are evil.

I said he was partly right: People are generally good. But all of us also carry evil within us, which is to say that we’re also capable of evil. I believe Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn had it right.

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.”

Anyone who is honest with themselves, I think, recognizes this. We want to do good, and often do. We want to love others and the higher things. We want a better world, for ourselves and others.

But not all of us (meaning our entire self), at least not all of the time. Sometimes we are selfish. Sometimes we are bitter and envious and jealous. And sometimes we are simply weak.

I think of Saint Peter. We learn in the Book of Luke (and in Matthew) that on the night Jesus was arrested, Peter denied knowing Him three times.

At the Last Supper, Jesus had predicted that this would happen. And Peter refused to believe it. Via the Book of Mark:

Then Jesus said to them, “All of you will fall away,^[a] because it is written:

I will strike the shepherd,
and the sheep will be scattered.^[b]

²⁸ But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you to Galilee.”

²⁹ Peter told him, “Even if everyone falls away, I will not.”

³⁰ “Truly I tell you,” Jesus said to him, “today, this very night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.”

³¹ But he kept insisting, “If I have to die with you, I will never deny you.”

It was Peter’s version of “I wouldn’t have done that. I would never do that.” He simply couldn’t believe that he would deny the Son of God three times.

Peter was no coward. He’d later be crucified (upside down) for his Savior. But he was human, and on the night of the arrest of Jesus of Nazareth, he was frightened.

The lesson is similar to what Peterson is getting at. We shouldn’t presume we’d have the courage to do the heroic thing when facing the mob. Nor should we presume we’d never be the one to pick up the stone or condemn an innocent person.

Most of have never faced such a test. And I think those who believe they are too virtuous to commit evil are often the ones most capable of it.

Oskar Schindler was a hero because he risked everything—his life, his property, his business, and his family—to protect Jews who worked for him from Nazi extermination camps.

During the pandemic, many people were too terrified to even tweet or post on Facebook despite the government’s flagrant (and useless) civil rights abuses.

This doesn’t make them evil. But it should inspire a certain humility the next time they read history, and hopefully the recognition that the line between good and evil runs through every human heart.