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How terrible, then, to hear news from Iran of guards shooting metal pellets into young protesters’ faces, deliberately targeting their eyes. Hospitals have been overwhelmed. Many protesters have needed eyes removed. Terrible, too, to learn of two protesters who have lost eyes after being shot in the face with “less-lethal” munitions fired by ICE officers in the US.
Deliberately blinding someone is evil. Most of us believe we would never do such a thing. But we may be wrong about that.
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The psychologist Paul Bloom has argued convincingly that some perpetrators of evil, far from dehumanising their victims, know how to be particularly cruel because they are expert at imagining what it would be like to be those victims. Far from dehumanising them, they recognise them, through empathy, as fellow humans too. That’s why they know so well how to do the worst possible things to them.