Just over a year ago, I announced a milestone for me. Reading several books that came to my attention within a period of just a few years prior had convinced me that, when considering health and sustainability, certain topics related to the question of whether that often referred to as “evil” – harmful malicious or willfully negligent activity, for example – has a biological basis are crucial. And I had released a series of comprehensive pages, representing over a year of work, on these subjects, the most important and encompassing being the page on ponerology – the field dedicated to studying “evil” from a scientific perspective.

As I worked on the series, even more relevant material – articles, books, stories, news, television shows, movies, research studies, websites and other resources touching on these topics – continued coming to my attention, precipitating a realization that my interest in them mirrored a growing interest throughout society, supporting many of the arguments I made in the writing and encouraging me to continue the work. While working, however, I did not have time or energy to really focus on or incorporate these new developments.

After releasing the series, these ponerology-related developments continued to arise regularly and it occurred to me to begin cataloguing this emerging material to help support my work and promote it for those wanting to keep up to date. But I put off doing so until a recent coincidence reinforced to me the level of mainstream growth of interest in ponerologic topics and finally spurred me to action.

Now I’m announcing a new website I’ve recently launched dedicated to promoting news and information stemming from disciplines as diverse as neuroscience, criminology, psychology, arts, media and beyond related to ponerology, the “science of evil,” to help raise awareness and educate the public about these issues. Find out about the first set of posts on that site, its mission, early feedback it has received, how you can visit the site and get involved and what it means for the future of this site.

Today I was given a copy of an article from the February 5, 2011 Wall Street Journal by Matt Ridley entitled “A Key Lesson of Adulthood: The Need to Unlearn”. The title certainly struck me as important for two reasons.

1. The need to unlearn has been a central theme in my life. I spent much of my twenties unlearning a tremendous amount of what was fed to me as truth growing up. And through my writing, coaching, activism and promotion of the work of various change agents such as Daniel Quinn (whose book The Story of B focuses on just such an unlearning process), I have long championed the importance of being willing to question dogmatic beliefs.
2. We live in an incredibly destructive, unsustainable culture that is driven by the actions of hypocritical adults who act on the world stage in greedy, violent ways that, at home, would get their own children sent to their rooms – if not worse. So I am always fascinated to read commentary by this culture’s adults on what “adulthood” in such a society is considered to really be about.

And so I dove in. Read the rest of this entry »