Cav > Books: crime‎ (69)

"Many written works have dealt with the question of why evil exists in theological terms; these works tend to emphasize the possible function of evil in the cosmos and the divine reason for permitting it to exist.
This book will try to give a causal answer. The mode of explanation will not be theological or moral but scientific—more precisely, I will use the approach of social science. I will not try to defend or justify the existence of evil but merely to explain how it happens to come into the world."

“It’s always the good men who do the most harm in the world,” Henry Adams said with reference to Robert E. Lee. The point is overstated—it would require quite a stretch to define Saddam Hussein or Idi Amin, let alone Hitler or Stalin, as good men. Yet there is an important kernel of truth in the statement. Good men with lofty principles and admirable intentions have occasionally done a great deal of harm. Many of the greatest crimes, atrocities, and calamities of history were deliberately perpetrated by people who honestly and sincerely wanted to do something good..."

"Some years ago, at a professional conference, I had the opportunity to speak to a prominent social psychologist whose work I had long admired, and he told me a story that has been for me a lasting image of the disappointment with theories about socialization and aggression. Like many progressive California academics, he and his wife had resolved to bring up their children surrounded only by healthy, socially desirable values, and this meant that their boys would receive no toy guns. The boys did not complain much about not having such playthings. They simply pretended that the toys they did have were guns. The turning point for the parents came when they found one of their boys chasing the other through the house, holding the remains of his peanut-butterand-jelly sandwich, from which he had taken carefully planned bites to sculpt it into the shape of a pistol. He was pointing the gunshaped remnant of sandwich at his brother and making loud shooting noises. At this point, his parents were more upset by the peanut butter and jelly that was dripping onto their expensive white carpet than about their dwindling faith in the chances of raising androgynous, pacifist sons by surrounding them with educational playthings, and so they gave in and bought the kids some toy guns.
Those parents were hardly alone in the disappointment they must have felt when they broke down and bought their sons a shooting toy. Human nature has not generally proved as pliable as the tabula rasa theorists have hoped. Hundreds of experimental utopian communes have broken down amid undone chores and minor bickering or, in some cases, have led to large-scale mass murder."

"Negotiation as you’ll learn it here is nothing more than communication with results. Getting what you want out of life is all about getting what you want from—and with— other people. Conflict between two parties is inevitable in all relationships. So it’s useful—crucial, even—to know how to engage in that conflict to get what you want without inflicting damage.
In this book, I draw on my more than two-decade career in the Federal Bureau of Investigation to distill the principles and practices I deployed in the field into an exciting new approach designed to help you disarm, redirect, and dismantle your counterpart in virtually any negotiation. And to do so in a relationship-affirming way.
Yes, you’ll learn how we negotiated the safe release of countless hostages. But you’ll also learn how to use a deep understanding of human psychology to negotiate a lower car price, a bigger raise, and a child’s bedtime. This book will teach you to reclaim control of the conversations that inform your life and career."