ABSTRACT
The most significant and astonishing phenomenon of history is the sophistication with which the performance of acts of evil and the violence through which such evils are perpetuated have been institutionalized and integrated into the normal routines of everyday living and working. As one reflects on the matter, however, the suspicion is aroused that our society has been rationalized in nomine diaboli, in the name of the devil. Such persons flatter themselves with the belief that evil is something committed by unaccountable foreigners, or else by alienated and deranged persons who have failed to be properly socialized. The chapter is concerned with the rituals of indoctrination whereby men lose their capacity to recognize evil, which in turn acts either as an incentive to violence or else tends to inhibit our capacity to resist it. It deals with the therapeutic rituals of attention through which consciousness is able to transcend its capacity for rationalizing evil.
