How Ordinary People Become Instruments of Violence and How Civic Rituals Can Repair the Soul

How Ordinary People Become Instruments of Violence – And What You and Your Community Can Do to Stop It

Call them “demons” if it helps you sleep at night — but call them human if you want any chance of fixing what makes them act demonically.

Introduction – Legions Among Us, or Just Us Under Pressure?

When we see atrocities — war crimes, genocide, organized cruelty — we often reach for religious language:

• “They are demons.”
• “Evil has taken them.”
• “There are legions among us.”

The metaphor captures our horror. It names how alien such acts feel to normal human empathy.

But if we stop there, we gain nothing. To prevent and repair such violence, we need to understand how ordinary people can be turned into instruments of harm — and how we can turn them back.

A working metaphor: the human as a car

Think of a person like a car:

• The engine – the brain.
• The transmission – neural circuits and habits that transmit decisions into action.
• The wheels – behavior, what others see.
• The driver – consciousness, choice, attention.
• The map – the soul, your moral compass: what you believe is right, wrong, allowed, forbidden.

When the map is overwritten and the driver is pressured or drugged by ideology, fear, or command, the car — the human — can be driven into people instead of away from them.

What you’ll learn in this article

• Why seemingly balanced, ordinary people sometimes become instruments of mass violence.
• The psychological and social mechanics behind that conversion (Milgram, Zimbardo, Bandura).
• Why many returning soldiers carry deep moral wounds, not just “battle scars”.
• What civic rituals, institutional reforms, and community projects can do to prevent and repair this damage.

Opening disclaimer:

This is not a defense of any particular religion, nor a metaphysical claim about fallen angels. We use strong metaphors to name moral horror — then we test and repair the mechanisms that produce it using psychology, anthropology, and philosophy.

1. The Driver, the Map, and the Machine – A Working Metaphor

Hook

To the engine, the driver is invisible; to the wheel, the engine is invisible — yet each part must work in concert for motion to be sane.

Explanation

The brain executes. The mind chooses. The soul — in the broad, anthropological sense — provides the moral map.

Systems and roles (armies, bureaucracies, gangs, corporations) can:

• reprogram that map (“these people are the enemy”, “this is necessary”),
• overload the driver with stress, fear, and obedience training,
• and build a machine around the person so that cruelty feels mechanical, routine, “just my job”.

That is the central insight: cruelty often looks “mechanical” because institutions have made it so.

Practical tip

When you judge a violent act, ask:

• Did the map fail? (twisted beliefs, dehumanization)
• Did the driver fail? (personal cowardice, hatred, appetite)
• Did the machine fail? (systems that rewarded harm, punished empathy)
• Did the whole system fail?

Pinpointing the layer helps decide whether we must punish, heal, or redesign.

Evidence

The distinction between implementation (brain, behavior) and origin (moral map, culture) is central in moral psychology and philosophy of mind: we are neither pure machines nor pure spirits; we are embodied minds shaped by systems.

Quote

“The banality of evil.” — Hannah Arendt, describing how ordinary bureaucratic acts can produce monstrous outcomes when moral reflection is suspended.

2. Ordinary People Obeying Awful Orders – The Social Science

Hook

It’s hard to believe a neighbour could turn into a murderer. Harder still — but real.

Explanation

Classic social‑psychology shows how authority and context warp action.

• When an authority claims moral or legal sanction, ordinary people may cede responsibility and follow orders — even when harm results.
• Roles, uniforms, rituals, and stepwise escalation normalize acts that would usually trigger shame.
• Each step is small enough to justify; the total journey leads to horror.

Practical tip

In organizations (schools, police, military, corporations), build:

• clear refusal protocols,
• training on how to say “no” to unlawful or inhumane orders,
• legal and institutional protection for those who refuse.

Evidence / statistic

Stanley Milgram’s obedience studies found that roughly 65% of participants administered what they believed were highly painful electric shocks to another person when instructed by an authority figure — a stark demonstration of situational power over conscience (Milgram, 1963).

Quote

Philip Zimbardo’s work on the Stanford Prison Experiment — later summarized in The Lucifer Effect — shows how quickly roles and settings can transform “good people” into agents of cruelty.

3. How Empathy Is Switched Off – Moral Disengagement & Dehumanization

Hook

How does a neighbor come to call a fellow human “vermin” or “enemy”? Words do most of the dirty work.

Explanation

Albert Bandura’s theory of moral disengagement describes mental moves that permit harm:

• Euphemisms – “collateral damage” instead of “dead children”.
• Displacement of responsibility – “I was just following orders.”
• Diffusion of responsibility – “We all decided; it wasn’t just me.”
• Minimizing consequences – “It’s not that bad; they’ll recover.”
• Dehumanizing victims – “rats”, “vermin”, “cockroaches”, “illegals”.

Propaganda and social narratives give people the language that makes cruelty feel normal, even necessary.

Practical tip

Counter the language:

• Call out dehumanizing labels when you hear them — even in jokes.
• Build community storytelling practices that foreground victims’ humanity: names, families, histories.
• Teach the steps of moral disengagement in schools and civic education so people can see them as they arise.

Evidence

Psychological studies show that moral disengagement reliably predicts willingness to harm when combined with social sanction and ideology (Bandura, 1999). Dehumanizing language is not just “words”; it is permission.

Quote

“Language shapes what we can do to each other — and what we feel allowed to do.” (Distillation of insights from social linguistics and moral psychology.)

4. Soldiers, Trauma, and Moral Injury – Why Returning Veterans Suffer

Hook

Returning soldiers are often not “hardened winners” — they are hurting people whose moral maps were shattered.

Explanation

Combat training — and combat itself — can:

• desensitize people to killing and injury,
• normalize lethal acts in certain contexts,
• reward aggression and suppress empathy as a survival strategy.

When soldiers later return to civilian life and have to face the moral meaning of:

• what they have done,
• what they failed to stop,
• what they saw others do,

they may develop PTSD and moral injury: profound guilt, betrayal, and a shattered sense of self.

This is not mystical corruption. It is a psychological and moral rupture.

Practical tip

Re‑entry programs must center on moral repair, not just symptom reduction:

• narrative therapy that helps soldiers tell, frame, and re‑own their stories,
• facilitated confession and reconciliation rituals where appropriate,
• community reintegration that recognizes both harm and sacrifice, restoring moral identity.

Evidence / statistic

Research on combat troops documents significant rates of PTSD and moral injury. Litz et al. (2009) describe moral injury as distinct from PTSD and often requiring targeted moral and narrative therapies.

Quote

“There are wounds that psychiatry calls trauma, and there are wounds that conscience names.” (Distillation of moral injury scholarship.)

5. The “Legions” Metaphor – Powerful, but Beware Literalism

Hook

“Legions of demons among us” can shock people awake — but taken literally it can also close minds.

Explanation

Your metaphor names an ethical reality: some people act in ways that feel wholly alien to human empathy.

Yet treating perpetrators as utterly non‑human can:

• block understanding of the process that created them,
• justify simple expulsion or extermination instead of deeper prevention,
• blind us to how easily we ourselves can be bent by similar forces.

The pragmatic approach: keep the moral heat of the metaphor, while using social science to identify causes and remedies.

Practical tip

Use “legions” as a moral call‑to‑action in rhetoric:

• to wake people up to the seriousness of organized cruelty,
• to honor the scale of suffering.

In policy and rehabilitation:

• use evidence, trauma‑informed practice, and compassion,
• focus on changing systems and helping people recover a moral map.

Evidence

Historical and psychological studies show atrocities often arise from systemic pressures and normative shifts, not just from isolated “monsters” (Arendt’s work on totalitarianism; genocide studies; mass violence research).

6. Civic Repair – Rituals, Institutions and the “Yield & Story” Experiment

Hook

If traffic teaches us how to respect strangers in motion, civic rituals can teach us to respect strangers in the realm of politics.

Explanation

Repair is both:

• Institutional: laws, checks, transparency, training, refusal protocols.
• Cultural: storytelling, ritual, shared practices that build empathy and accountability.

Small, repeatable civic acts — signaling intention, yielding, telling moral stories — can rebuild the social reflexes that prevent moral disengagement.

Think of three pilot projects (for Sint Maarten or any community):

• Yield & Story Night – elders and youth share a brief moral story; afterwards, the community performs a simple recognition ritual (a gesture, a word) that says: “We see your story; it matters.”
• Signal Schools – teach children signaling language, literal (traffic rules, body language) and metaphorical (how to state intentions and boundaries), linking intent to responsibility.
• Civic Roundabout – rotate leadership on neighborhood decisions, and insist that before any major action, leaders publicly “signal” their intent and accept shared scrutiny.

Practical tip

Start small:

• Host a monthly Yield & Story evening in a church hall, community center, or even a living room.
• Ask one “witness” (teacher, nurse, social worker, elder) to share a 5‑minute story of harm, courage, or repair.
• Let the group respond with one short phrase: “We hear you. We carry this with you.”

Over time, these micro-rituals train people to see each other as moral beings, rather than just as roles or labels.

Evidence

Community ritual and narrative programs are associated with improved social trust and resilience after disasters. Narrative therapy and restorative‑justice circles help repair moral identity and reduce re‑offending (community resilience and therapeutic literature).

Quote

“Belonging is built one honest story at a time.”

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Conclusion – From Horror to Repair

Ordinary humans can be transformed into instruments of violence by powerful situational, social, and institutional forces. Calling them “legions” captures our moral horror. Understanding Milgram, Zimbardo, Bandura, and moral‑injury research gives us a way out.

The task is not only to name the demons, but to dismantle the machines that make them:

• Redesign institutions to limit blind obedience and reward ethical refusal.
• Teach children and adults how language can dehumanize — and how to resist it.
• Support veterans and others living with moral injury through narrative and community‑based repair.
• Build civic rituals that train us to yield, signal, and recognize each other’s humanity.

If drivers can respect strangers on a road at 60 km/h, a society can learn mutual yield, signals, and responsibility in moral life.

Practice yielding. Signal clearly. Tell the stories that stitch our souls back together.

The work is hard — but it begins with a humble civic bow:

I yield my advantage so you live; together we keep the road.

💡 FACT: Milgram’s obedience studies (1963) and later replications show ordinary people can administer what they believe are severe harms under perceived authority — situational pressure can overpower personal moral rules. Moral injury research (Litz et al., 2009) shows that committing or witnessing acts that violate one’s moral code produces deep, lasting wounds beyond traditional PTSD.

Written by: Dr. C.A.E. Illis, Philosopher

References

• Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral Study of Obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology.
• Zimbardo, P. (2007). The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil.
• Bandura, A. (1999). Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities. Personality and Social Psychology Review.
• Litz, B. T., et al. (2009). Moral injury and moral repair in war veterans. Clinical Psychology Review.