My wife once shared with me the story of an amusing phone call. A coworker, who was very sweet and agreeable, was on a phone call with a very disagreeable person who was reflecting that if a certain type of person ever came into his neighborhood, he would be tempted to shoot them. “Yes, totally,” was the girl’s response, instinctively. Her boss, who was listening in on the call, and who is a more disagreeable person (and wasn’t personally put on the spot in such an odd social situation), later pointed out to her that she had just casually agreed to shoot someone. And while that might be good customer service, it was problematic behavior.

Now, my wife reflected that this is a problem with agreeable people. They want to go along with you. They want to believe you. They want to sympathize with you. They want to move in sympathy with your motion. But if you align them with someone taking a bad tack, they might not even really think about what they’re going along with. Because they don’t really want to resist you or challenge you. They want to be in sympathy. They want to move together. However, my wife pointed out, it was only a phone call, and the girl was really nice and wouldn’t really agree with shooting someone in real life. And that is where I actually disagree.

The data actually shows that the majority of people, in a social situation that favors it, would be Nazis (or at the least Soviet informers). Most people in a society go along with things. There’s an enormous cost to bucking the trend of a whole society. The costs are so deeply embedded, the current is so ubiquitous across all domains of life, that for most people the inevitable, necessary option is to just go along with it. You need to go along with it. It is, according to the rest of the group, to whom you look for solidarity and guidance in determining the general good, the right thing to do.

Very few people set themselves the task all on their own of determining what is right or wrong. We outsource a lot of those tasks, delegate them to the feedback of the group, to test ideas and actions and positions for us so we can know what is and isn’t appropriate so we can maintain our position on the right side of society and history.

Very few Germans actively resisted the Nazi party. In Soviet Russia, half the population was informing on the other half, many of them because they were actively trying to be good citizens. Those are extreme examples, but the trend holds everywhere. Most people, especially in a situation where the whole structure of the social game is set up to reward them if they follow along and to marginalize them if they don’t, will try to remain within the group. And so they will at least assent to their part of the group’s action, even if they don’t actively participate in its most extreme activities.

Average housewives may not have run the gulag system, but plenty of average housewives provided information and testimony that sent people to the gulag. Even in Nazi Germany, the way they actually handled the Jews was very calculated. Each person just had charge of a certain part of the process. Hired outsiders from other countries were brought in to assist for some tasks. Ways were found to make it easier for people to participate. Plenty of good drink, strategic breaks, even the chance to back out of certain assignments.

Some people did the assignments with more determination, more willingness. Many more did it as part of their solidarity with their fellows, sharing their part of the common burden. And these were the people at the foremost extremes of evil action, the people whose job it was to round up, strip, kill, or deport the Jewish people to the camps. Most other Germans had to assent to and participate in far less. And it’s worth remembering that the Nazis were voted in; they didn’t seize power. And they were voted in partly as part of a pro-social effort to help the country, to right past injustices, and to protect it from the genuine dangers posed by external and internal threats.

Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia are good examples because they’re so recent and so extreme. In some ways Russia is actually more relevant, because it was such a vast ideological revolution and ended up encompassing so many countries and involved the people’s participation in the system from top to bottom. It was literally meant to be the state of the common people. As was Mao’s China. And the result in both cases was horror beyond belief, systemic dishonesty, corruption, betrayal, and oppression. This wasn’t just a small core of evil leaders like Hitler and his generals trying to conquer the world. This was the people’s revolution, liberation and prosperity and equality; utopia.

So it’s worth remembering the lessons of history. You should never underestimate what the average, agreeable person is actually capable of agreeing to. Given the right circumstances. Don’t underestimate these lovely people who seek and follow the common good. Even if they won’t engage in the most extreme actions themselves, there’s far less of a limit to what people will assent to and participate in, in their own way and capacity, than you might think. Those nice, upstanding citizens are often only as good as the system they’re bound to. And their power and solidarity can be wielded to terrible ends as well and being ones.

One of the lessons to be taken from The Gulag Archipelago is the author’s reflection, looking back, at all the ways he actually enabled the state that came to oppress him to come into being without ever having realized it or taking responsibility for it. Soviet Russia didn’t come from nowhere, it built itself brick by brick, in large part through the efforts, actions, and assent of the common people (the elite power holders, the aristocrats and even landed gentry, after all, were mostly either killed or arrested).

So we must have a clearer and more accurate picture of humanity, and especially of the danger of agreeable people, which we understand less and credit far less than we believe in the danger of disagreeable people (which is more obvious, especially to those who find resistance to the group upsetting). We need to become conscious of an awake to the subtle and potential dangers of being agreeable. We might have no clear idea what future state (literally or figuratively) we might be creating with our agreeableness.

The dangers of disagreeable people are, these days, very widely and easily understood, just as it’s easy for us to see how, for example, men or the political right can go wrong. But we are less acquainted with the pathology and dangers of women and the political left (which are no less real nor extreme, only different). Because they do exist and are no less real.

These peoole aren’t an entirely different type of humanity that is somehow miraculously better and right and without flaw or danger or pathology. It’s just a different pathology. One that’s less obviously confronting you with its dangers, but dangerous nonetheless. It may be less like a wasp confronting you with a nasty sting than it is like a hive of bees surrounding you and slowly vibrating you and cooking you to death (and yes, that is a thing bees do).

It’s worth remembering that the Nazi party was the Social Democratic Party of Germany. That’s sounds nice, doesn’t it? Very left wing and progressive. And Stalin’s party was the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. It was formed as way to unite activists in the struggle for political freedom and equality.

The point isn’t to argue that our current political left is like either the Nazis or Communists in sheep’s clothing. The point is that you can’t take for granted that they aren’t. You can’t take for granted that anyone isn’t. Even your own party. That’s the problem. Trusting a person or party or ideology just by default, being agreeable, going along, assuming there’s absolutely no potential for danger, no pathological version of or element to what you believe in, is itself catastrophically dangerous.

The danger is there, no matter whether you are left or right, whether you are agreeable or disagreeable. Your inability to perceive the potential for danger in certain groups, including your own, is part of the danger itself.

The idea that that sweet girl in customer service could not, under the right circumstances, assent to and be complicit in a horrific state of affairs is completely wrong. And more recent psychological experiments have also confirmed that to be the case. Most people will go along with almost anything, and even act in their own capacity to support it, given the right environment that rewards it.

You don’t have to be Stalin to support the Gulag system, you can just be that good neighbor who reports when someone is cheating and unjustly hiding something and stealing from the system and the good of everyone. You can just be that good citizen who reports that thing that person said in private or online that goes against what the party has decided is the good of all.

So there is a real need to recognize and understand the dangers posed by agreeability. You may be doing someothing you actively think is good, largely because the way you structure your evaluation of what is good is highly conditioned and determined by how your position affects and is viewed by others around you. You don’t want to cause distress; you want to seek the common good, as it is being broadly expressed and sought. And the fact that people might be wrong, and that you might need to stand up to them and disagree with them and resist them and not give people what they want and even hurt them by saying and doing things they don’t like and don’t agree with, and that will cause you to be seen as mean and disagreeable, as an antiosocial element, won’t be an easy thought to entertain.

Disagreeable people, on the other hand, worry less about such things. And that’s both an advantage and a disadvantage. It makes them more dangerous in a certain way. They are more able to step back and look at things from either a purely ideological or purely selfish point of view. Because they care less about what others think or want and feel less of a need to be in sympathy, they might just focus on what they think and want and not give a damn what anyone else says. And that can be good, or it can be bad, depending on the quality of their mind and character.

Most people are safer with more awareness of and care for the thoughts and feelings of others. It helps to distribute the burden of judgement and responsibility, so you’re getting an average consensus, and not betting so much on the success or failure of one person’s judgement or feelings.

Disagreeable people pose a more obvious danger, not only on their own, but because they might be able to move large parts of the more agreeable culture along with them. Of course that also makes a good disagreeable person dangerous to injustice and dishonesty and evil.

Alexander Solzenitzen wasn’t too disagreeable a person, but he was disagreeable enough to privately complain about the party in a private letter and get arrested and sentenced to the gulag. And he was disagreeable enough to decide to work hard to resist and deny and denounce the party, and his own part in enabling it, once he had seen the truth. And he helped bring down the whole international soviet system with his unwillingness to assent.

And he tells terrible stories of pitiable people, sent to the gulag, who could never see it as anything but a terrible mistake, who could not and would not accept the corrupt results of the system, even when they themselves were the victims. They still argued that they had done right and had been good citizens and had gone along with and served the party, that they had been agreeable and were part of the positive project for the people and the common good, and all of it was a terrible misunderstanding. These loyalists could never accept or understand what had happened because they remained naive and couldn’t never bring themselves to disagree with or question or distrust themselves and the system they had participated in.

We need more caution about agreeable people. We can’t just blindly trust them, nor should they blindly trust themselves. Nice people are still people, and people are wonderful and they are also dangerous. Being agreeable may make you more likely to be attuned to the consensus and movement of the group, and that’s largely a good and necessary thing for society to operate. It’s the glue that holds it together. We just need to keep in mind that the group is far from infallible and may participate in and assent to all kinds of things without really questioning them that much, in the assumed interests of the common good.

We also need to rehabilitate the value of disagreeable people. Not just our own disagreeable people, the ones inside our ball of consent, but voices speaking out to question the consensus. They exist for a reason, even if they upset us sometimes. They need agreeable people to keep them in line, as agreeable people need disagreeable people to keep them in line. The two are meant to restrain and refine one another.

We can’t assume that there is no value in being disagreeable. One curious example from Nazi Germany was an elite commander who actively tried to stop the rounding up of the Jews. Not because we has so in sympathy with them. He was the commander of an occupied city and was trying to run it successfully, to prove to the people how German approaches were superior and could bring order and prosperity. And he pointed out, correctly, that the Jews were skilled and essential craftsman that the town needed, that they were indispensable, and getting rid of them would cripple the economy of the whole region. It’s a curious fact that when things got worse for Germany and there were less resources available, the leaders did not slow the extermination of the Jews, but poured even more into it. If they had set this goal of revenge against the Jews aside, it would have helped them win the war.

This particular commander wasn’t in it for that. He was in it for the political ideology, the genuine belief that they would make things better under their new system. He wasn’t in it for personal revenge or an ideological or emotional vendetta. But plenty of others above him were. And so you had a strange situation where a Nazi commander was literally running around his city overrun by the units in charge of deporting the Jews, confronting and even threatening to shoot those soldiers if they didn’t leave, and doing his best to secure what Jews he could in safe locations.

Afterward, this commander wrote and complained at length to his superiors and defended his position as being the proper one actually in the best interests of the Nazi party and Germany. The elimination of the Jews, he pointed out, was wasteful and foolish and self-defeating and barbaric and would wreck the efforts of the Nazi party. And he wasn’t wrong about any of that. But he himself, a Nazi commander, was one of only a very few who actively pointed this out and tried to do anything to stop what was happening. Not because he was against the Germans or for the Jews, or because he was so nice or so mean, but because he didn’t agree with what his party said was really in the Germans’ best interest and was willing to fight for it.

Most people, even those in charge of carrying out the Holocaust, just went along with what society demanded of them quite agreeably. It’s also worth pointing out that it was another loyal Nazi leader who boldly stood out and resisted the horrific actions of the Japanese in China during one of the worst slaughters of the civilian populace in Nanjing. Again, not because he was on the side of Chinese or disloyal to his party, but because he didn’t agree that such actions served the good of his own endeavor. Stories like these are confusing because they don’t easily fit our narratives and moral understandings that are calibrated so much by group identity and solidarity.

These Nazi commanders were still loyal Nazis, they saw themselves as part of that group. But they were willing to point out and even actively resist their own side when they disagreed that the group’s actions were really the right thing to do and believed they would bring harm. Most people learn the idea of what is right and wrong by social cues, by how the group responds to an action or posture. They assimilate that feedback and use it to navigate society and determine action and present themselves as good and acceptable and pro-social. They learn what they can do and what they can’t do, what will get a bad reaction that shames them or pushes them away or marginalizes them, what will earn them praise and prestige and approval and open up opportunities.

Most people instinctively learn this way and react this way constantly (and we all do to some degree, unless you’re a genuine sociopath). And the people and society around us are constantly sending feedback. They’re constantly sharing their expectations, their values, their concerns, their fears. And in quite benign ways. It’s a social narrative woven all through our media, our entertainment, our art, our advertising, our politics, and our day to day conversation.

Maintaining a large group in cohesion is very difficult. Ants are the only creatures that maintain comparably large and complex societies, and they do it by enforced genetic identity and despotic control. All the members of the colony are nearly identical, and the queens rule supreme. Of course this gives each type of ant colony a very limited ecological niche, since they’re so uniform and specialized. They have a reduced adaptive potential as a result of going all in on scalability (the ability to go big, achieved through consitency and centralization).

Humans form immense social structures with far more variability and flexibility and decentralization than ants. And one of the ways we deal with that challenge on a social level (from friendships up through whole states) is through an immensely complex system of interpersonal communication. We’re constantly sending signals and adapting and responding. There’s constant feedback and recalibration occurring, to make the group cohesion possible. It’s an immense social free market, constantly determining the value of social goods and giving feedback on the cost and reward of various behaviors. We’re hypersocial, and so we must be hyper-communicative and socially sensitive.

But you can’t run such a system purely on adaptation to the group. A system based solely on that is directionless and amorphous and unable to actively and quickly refine or adapt or innovate. Some portion of the people have to be at least slightly more willing to go somewhat against the consensus, to test it, to either see what might actually work better, or be willing to theorize about what might actually be better for the group, even if it’s not the average strategy the group is actively rewarding. I’m not advocating for rebelliousness or contrarianism or revolutionary defiance or anarchism. Those are the pathological, unbalanced versions of this type, as a completely dronelike and fearful and sychophantic and compliant attitude is the pathological version of the agreeable type. There is a good type of disagreeability, as there is a bad type of agreeability.

Collaboration alone is not sufficient for a just or successful society. Confrontation alone is also not sufficient or it just or successful society. Each of them might be necessary or useful or good or healthy in the short-term or in a certain circumstance. But you cannot take for granted that either will be successful or just or helpful universally. They both have their circumstances where they will impede rather than help you, and they both have pathological versions of themselves where they have become too universal and unquestioned and unbalanced to avoid becoming anti-human.