[This message has been edited by Grand Admiral (edited October 24, 2006).]
See how I did that? I downplayed the idea by associating them with moustache-twiddling. That's something you'll usually see as a response to this kind of question, by people who are abso-100%-lutely certain there is no such thing as pure evil.
And then there'll be the philosophical discussion: what is evil, anyway? Is there really such a thing? If there is, what does it consist of? Surely Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer and Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and Microsoft are evil... what's the common thread? Is there one, or is "evil" just an illusion - a classification we give to people and entities that simply do icky things for reasons we can't fathom or generally don't like to think about?
Regardless of all this projected discussion, I'm going to stick by one of my previous pronouncements on the subject: The modern reader doesn't want to cheer when your villain meets his sticky end, he'd rather weep like a milksop because your villain was only a victim of his mother's ghastly haircuts.
Okay, not really. Just make your villain interesting and internally consistent enough, and you can pretty much do what you please. I think the current trend away from purely evil villains has to do with how the average writer fancies himself as too nuanced to believe in such a thing - always justified by saying that the reader couldn't believe it, but that's just a projection IMNSHO. Voldemort demonstrates otherwise. (As an aside: he's a spot-on clinical psychopath. With a wand.)
Now it is common for many of the Evil leaders in stories to be personally involved in the evil activities, leading a small band to harrass and enforce the collections of "taxes." Most stories is like the sharriff gone bad or the industry head in the small town. Of course, they are right there to be isolated and eventually killed by the hero. Of course, A general at the head of an army would fit this kind of leader.
The kind of Evil I personally like is where he appears to be so wonderful a person, a politician who appears to be for the poor and desolate. He has a wonderful smile friendly disposition, likely immaculately clean with every hair in place. In public, he is likeable.
In the background though, he is actually giving orders to his minions to cause the problems he appears to be trying to solve. His cruelty might show to close minions like punishing them for having a smudge on their pristine white suits.
Because he is using politics to do what others would do personally, he would be more difficult to pin down and defeat. Any of his enemies would appear to be horrible people.
Of course, I would have the good guy looking like a down-and-out punker who has no class.
Sorry for the rambling.
As for what evil is or isn't...right now in the world, there's a lot of talk about "moral relativism," the concept that what somebody does is "no better or worse" than what somebody else does or has done. That's why you see [insert your own group] claim that they do [this disgusting act] because of [somebody else's disgusting act somewhere in the past]. (Say, Islamic terrorists claim they're trying to destroy the United States because the Crusaders tried to throw them out of the Holy Land centuries before the United States was founded.)
You can get away with just about anything if you claim you're doing it because somebody once did something.
What's the point of the story now?
Ironically, villains who espouse moral relativism generally seem more villanous to me.
Sorry 'bout the soapbox ranting...I don't know what came over me. Or perhaps I do, and I am just being coy about it. In any case, one of my favorite villains of the past twelve years or so was Darken Rahl, from Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series. The anti-archetypal wardrobe (he always wore white) and physical appearance (supposedly, a 'beautiful' man) of that character alone tickled my literary fancy. Too bad [SPOILER WARNING]
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he's killed off in the first book, and...um...again in the second. Seriously, the guy gave me chills, yet I couldn't help but be drawn to the passages in which he was featured. Probably that 'rubber-necking' syndrome many people seem to subconsciously suffer from...humans are morbidly fascinated by the perverse, simply because most of us make the deliberate choice to avoid perversity (in the violent sense of the term) as a psychological impossibility. I dunno.
Inkwell
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"The difference between a writer and someone who says they want to write is merely the width of a postage stamp."
-Anonymous
[This message has been edited by Inkwell (edited October 25, 2006).]
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Ironically, villains who espouse moral relativism generally seem more villanous to me.
I don't think it's ironic at all. Once you espouse moral relativism, you can espouse literally any moral position at all, whether it's objectively evil or not. That makes it possible for a character (or a real-life person) to believe or do _anything_ and still feel justified.
I think that moral relativism causes evil in real life; it's therefore a tool to make someone realistically evil in fiction.
Finding a way to make my villains "sympathetic" as is the "common wisdom" for writers these days is VERY hard, because I know from the research I've read that this type of person doesn't have many redeeming qualities, except for the ones who were handsome (Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahlmer). Even Lord Voldemort was a handsome young man, but became twisted and horrible because of the things he did to himself to ensure his power and dominion over life itself.
Are good looks enough to make someone a sympathetic character? Not to people with even half a brain, IMO, but then again, Dahlmer had a *fan club* while he was on trial for *eating* people. Go figure.
To answer the original question about whatever happened to "evil" villains, Voldemort's pretty darned evil -- SCARY evil, with no redeeming features (except when he was young and handsome, but good looks aren't enough of a redeeming feature IMO). I think those writers who aren't writing "evil" villains may be buying into the "political correctness" crap where you can't say bad things about anyone even if they're true. I'll stick with the psychology of bad people - that's reality. The more reality you can put in fantasy characters, the more the readers will believe them, IMO.
Lynda
The villan, like everyone else, in the story has to have a reason for existing and for being part of the events. I don't think he has to be "sympathetic" in terms of you have to like him but that the character has to be 3 dimensional. The days of black facial hair and accessories signaling the "bad guy" are over. Voldemort, borrowing someone else's example, is evil and he shows us this by what he does: he kiss unicorns so he can live forever, kills his parents, etc. Just because he's handsome doesn't effect the fact that he's evil.
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but the argument insisting that there absolutely are no absolutes
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Well, I generally write to the notion that no one, even the ostensible villain, thinks they're evil in their own minds.
For instance, Ted Bundy might have known what he was doing was evil, but also feel he was doing a heroic job of keeping his numbers relatively low.
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"Only the Sith deal in absolutes!"
Well, the Sith were cooler anyway.
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Are good looks enough to make someone a sympathetic character? Not to people with even half a brain, IMO, but then again, Dahlmer had a *fan club* while he was on trial for *eating* people. Go figure.
I don't think they were his fans because he was good-looking. I think they were his fans because they thought murdering people was cool. Or because they wanted to piss their parents off. Whatever the reason, it was his actual evilness (or would you just say "his evil?") that made them join/start the fan club.
Why anybody would be a fan of that kind of evil is another interesting question. I can't figure it out, except it's probably similar to the way I usually think the bad guy is the cool one in books and movies. Evil IS certainly interesting, but I can't figure out why there would be an attraction to it. It's...well, EVIL. Why are the Sith cooler than the Jedi? I don't know. Most people are able to keep their interest in evil limited to fiction, though (I think). It's just a little disturbing to me when people take that same interest in evil and apply it to real life. Serial killers in movies: kind of interesting in a sick way. Serial killers in real life: it's pretty sick (if you ask me) to join their fan clubs.
Anyone have any thoughts on why evil is attractive (in fiction to most of us and in real life to some)?
As a side note, if you haven't seen it, "Natural Born Killers" is an interesting (albeit VERY VIOLENT--be warned) movie on the topic.
[This message has been edited by wetwilly (edited October 25, 2006).]
I don't think that those we regard as truly evil inhabit the same moral universe we inhabit, that's all. In ancient literature, you often find certain animals characterized as being virtual embodiments of evil because they'll kill and eat human babies given the opportunity. As our understanding of the natural world and our philosophy evolved, I think that most people began to understand that those animals simply didn't understand that there was anything wrong with eating babies, anymore than most of us think it abhorrent to eat eggs. Of course, many of those animals understand that it is dangerous to try and steal human babies, just as you might understand (if you ever worked on a farm) that collecting eggs often involves getting pecked by angry chickens (which is more serious than you'd think if you haven't experienced it), just as gathering blackberries involves the rise of thorns and prickles. But we don't feel that it is wrong to take the blackberries just because we get occasional scratches doing so. To a child, who has a primative and rather ego-centric view of the world, it is the blackberry bush which is being bad because it scratches.
The problem is that most of us can't get over this same kind of naivete when it comes to villians who are outwardly human. We tend to assume that they think about morality the same way we do, that they are seeing things from our point of view and hurting us deliberately. Whereas it is far more usual for the person who injures us to be acting without any consideration of our feelings at all. It's even a common accusation, "you didn't think about what you were doing to me!" The interesting thing is that it is based firmly on the idea that other people should judge their own actions primarily in terms of how they will affect us, rather than them.
The thing that makes most villians "evil" is that they don't think about us, whoever "we" happen to be. It might very well be because they are thinking of someone else, like their own families or friends. Ted Bundy didn't think about the suffering of his victims, he thought only of the feelings of power and fulfilment that he got from killing and getting away with it. He knew that what he was doing was viewed as evil by society, but he rejected that definition of "evil". He didn't see any reason that he should let the desires of other people stand in the way of what he wanted.
The same thing was true of the Nazies when they were exterminating various people. They knew perfectly well that those people didn't want to be exterminated, that's why there was so much elaborate deception and all the camps were guarded by guys with machine guns and stuff. But they weren't doing it because of what the Jews and gypsies and handicapped wanted or didn't want. They were doing it because they wanted a pure society with no Jews, gypsies, or handicapped.
Did it become a struggle for many Nazies to suppress their natural feeling of empathy for the people they murdered? Of course. A lot of them went more than a little batty, quite a few ended up letting people slip through the cracks whenever they could. Most of them weren't heroes by any stretch of the imaginiation, they just had moments of weakness and failed in their duty to Hitler. Many of them died firmly believing that killing Jews was right and letting Jews escape was wrong.
This isn't an issue of moral relativism. Just because someone, somewhere, happens to believe something very firmly, that doesn't mean that the converse cannot be the objective truth. A lot of people used to believe the Earth was flat. Most people today essentially believe that space-time is "flat" simply because they can't understand how it is possible for it to be curved. That doesn't mean that the Earth was ever flat, or that it wasn't always pretty much spherical. It doesn't mean that gravity and electro-magnetism are illusions. It simply means that it is possible for a lot of people to be totally mistaken about the true nature of the world in which they live.
Being a villian isn't about lacking empathy, because most villians in the history of the world have had normal empathy, just mostly for themselves and their own family and friends. Being a villian is about having a different moral vision of the world, whether or not that vision is objectively wrong. Take a moment to consider that you, each of you and all of you collectively, are the villian of someone else's story. Not just someone but many other people. You are really the villian of those stories, you are doing things for reasons that do not matter to the heroes of those stories, and you are injuring the causes about which they care deeply, by your actions or perhaps by your mere existence.
In the end, the question of moral relativism is utterly irrelevant. Even if there is an objective right and wrong, it is possible for people to disagree about what is objectively right and wrong. Even if there isn't, that doesn't change the fact that someone who wants something that directly infringes on your own ideas of what is right is a villian from your perspective, and if you try to stop them you become a villian from theirs. The existence of moral absolutes cannot produce total agreement about morality. The abscense of moral absolutes cannot remove conflict arising from different ideas about morality.
Moral relativism happens to be false, and thus those who follow it end up constructing moralities that are inherently flawed and incompatable with correct morality. So it's a good trait for villians, but in the end it isn't a very important trait. It's just as effective to have your villians believe something else that is fundamentally silly, like that the Earth is flat or that the world is in danger from dihydrous monoxide. The important thing is that the villians have some goal that impinges on what the rest of us would consider good. Our view of them as villians is dependent on the fact that we don't share their view of the world, and neither us nor they are willing to change views.
Having said that, I think moral relativism is a useful type of false moral system for a character because so many real people are influenced by it. That's not to say that most people would _claim_ to be moral relativists. Most probably haven't thought it through. That doesn't change the influence, though: most people haven't thought through the self-contradictions of Logical Positivism (a philosophy of science popular in the early 20th century), but they're heavily influenced by its remnants in the modern mindset. Same with moral relativism in moral theory and "indifferentism" in religion (i.e., the notion that all religions have an equal intellectual standing, once accidentally but concisely put to me as the notion that "religion is a journey, and the only way you can go wrong is by telling someone that they're going wrong").
Regards,
Oliver
In simpler terms, a moral relativist, eschewing any transcendent basis for "good" and "evil" has only succeeded in reducing the concepts to meaning "things I happen to like" and "things I happen to dislike". This generally means that a moral relativists practical morality will seem a bit more overtly selfish, which is good for making a villian because it narrows the range of people who will agree with the morality of the moral relativist.
Now, most moral relativists (true moral relativists, that is) will simply adopt whatever moral stance is most convenient for them at any given point in time. If a person truly has no convictions, there is no bar to pretending agreement with whatever morality will exact the greatest penalty on dissent or provide the greatest rewards for acquiescence. Generally this means adopting the local moral majority position, though often it means being a quisling to an oppressed/threatened majority.
The key thing is that, when a moral relativist villian is confronted, that villian has a plausible argument as to why the clearly evil things he is doing are not evil from his perspective. The argument is based on a false premise, but it's a premise, granted as part of the act of arguing the issue at all. Since the disagreement about morality cannot be settled by argument, then it comes down to force (or at least the plausible threat of force). Which is the basis of most stories where you have a villian. It's fine to have the hero win by moral suasion every now and then, but if you do it all or even most of the time, the audience starts getting bored.
Anyway, you don't have to believe that moral relativism is false to have a moral relativist as your villian. If two moral relativists have a conflict of personal interests, then that conflict assumes the character of a fight over good and evil for both of them. After all, each only means "what I happen to like/dislike" by "good/evil", and there are two distinct "I"s in play here. Of course the rest of us will regard both of them as villians, but an audience of moral relativists can line up behind one or the other of the contestents based on their personal sympathies.
That's the point of my argument, it doesn't make any difference whether you believe in moral relativism or not, it doesn't even make a difference whether moral relativism is objectively true. Moral relativism can abolish transcendent, universalist moralities as being invalid, it cannot eliminate the conflicts between personal interests that are the real cause of almost all antagonisms. A moral relativist ends up seeing most other people as villians, and that would remain true even if all those other people were also moral relativists.
I think we agree on this: From the perspective of a writer creating characters, all that matters is that the characters hold conflicting moral beliefs -- either conflicting with each other, or conflicting with the (likely) reader. Moral relativism is one convenient moral system to use to create a fairly realistic conflict of that sort.
There are other things I might find interesting to explore, discuss, and argue, but they'd quickly go off-topic and I probably couldn't devote the necessary time to them.
Thanks for the thoughtfulness you applied to your posts.
Regards,
Oliver
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Where did this politics stuff come from all-of-the-sudden-like?
No idea, but it was the only thing I could respond to with complete certainty.
One fun exercize is to create your most evil antagonist. Then write something from their point of view so that, while the reader might not agree with what they are doing, or accept what they are doing, at least they can understand why they are doing it and possibly understand that it has to be done that way.
the characters I have always loved was like Darth Vadar in STAR WARS or Kladis in FLASH GORDON. they were not pure evil. Kladis was more like someone who loved their job and was good at it, and never considered the results. He was a connosuer of torture.
Darth Vadar had poor management techniques, but he was good at the methods he used.
In both those movies, they were the only well rounded characters.
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Moral relativists do not understand right from wrong.
More specifically, they think that there's no objective basis by which right acts can be distinguished from wrong acts. You can use the words, but you're either speaking gibberish or you're just talking about your personal preferences.
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Most of the issues that crop up between the two (i.e. gun control, abortion, free market, etc.) are more modern issues that really revolve around how much control they want the government to have.
For me, bad guys fall into two rough camps. There are stupid people who are my enemies mainly because they haven't thought carefully about how to achieve their underlying goals. With such a "villian" it is plausible that I could pursuade them to become my ally. Then there are people who really want something fundamentally incompatable with my own fundamental desires (meaning those goals that I am not willing to compromise for any reason). I might trick such a person into a sort of friendship, but ultimately this must end in betrayal because that person is genuinely evil from my own point of view and I am genuinely evil from that person's point of view.
Now the villians who have mistaken beliefs about reality tend to belong to the first catagory, but many actually belong to the second. I find that a good few people who have a mistaken belief about reality hold such beliefs not because they lack access to evidence that proves those beliefs false but because those beliefs justify the actions they sincerely desire to pursue. However, it is not normally possible to distinguish between these two sorts of villians because most people believe things that are "plausible". Thus, your failure to pursuade such a person might be because of a lack of forensic skill or available evidence, not because that person is determined to resist pursuasion. It usually isn't possible to back your enemies into a position where they cannot continue to argue their own position (at least, it isn't normally possible for humans). And even if you can, it may simply be that your opponents have adapted to their poor argumentative skills by relying on methods other than argument as a means of determining truth (for instance: reliance on an authority figures).
Let's deescalate the tension by choosing an amusing real-life example. Most people refuse to believe that the idea of space aliens visiting Earth can be taken seriously. It doesn't matter how much evidence is presented to make the case, because they rely on authoritative statements by the Air-Force, NASA, and other government sources to tell them whether that evidence is "credible". This is despite the fact that all the "authoritative" sources involved have admitted lying about real events in the past when they believed those events to be evidence of extraterrestrial activity. Of course, most of the "authorities" are themselves relying on the unquestioned assumption that there isn't any credible evidence for extraterrestrial activity. Even if you are an authority, if you say that something is credible evidence of extraterrestrial activity, then you'll cease to be an authority on the basis of that alone.
As fiction writers, we don't care that very few people really believe in extraterrestrials. But suppose we did, for some reason or other. Suppose it were vitally important to convince everyone that ET's were a real issue. All the people who absolutely refuse to believe in extraterrestrials would be our enemies. It wouldn't matter that most of them are just believing whatever the authorities tell them. Our only resort would be to attempt a "practical" contest, pit our strength against our enemies. This might take the form of a violent overthrow of the government, or possibly use of extraterrestrial technology to out-compete our stodgy foes, gaining the upper hand through (relatively) peaceful means. At some point, we'll probably have to fight against a genuine adversary, someone who knows that extraterrestrials are real and is determined to suppress that information. But we'll have a hard time knowing that unless we're told. It's not clear to me why our real enemy would ever reveal that information.
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So why do the same people who favor control of guns tend not to favor control of abortion, and vice versa?
Don't worry, I won't write about the actual politics related to this question; but the question itself perfectly exemplifies the things we should ask in character development.
A glib answer might be "because they're stupid" or "because they have a knee-jerk belief in some authority". But glib answers don't make for interesting characters. If you can discover why an intelligent person can hold a position that seems contradictory to you, and _at least_ make it plausible on the surface, you've got the viewpoint of a character who could be a "villain" in your story, but not a villain in his own perspective. Suddenly she's plausible, tangible, _real_. Fiction can show us things that we might never learn in a lecture or a newspaper clipping, in part because we can see believable characters who believe things we would normally find unbelievable.
And who knows? You might just learn enough to change your mind, too.
Regards,
Oliver
By the point is not that nothing is actually evil, it is that acts appear differently depending on your relationship to the act. There is a semantic theory called Theta grid that works well with certain words (my notation is rusty but I hope it's clear):
die : [[object][death]]
kill : [[agent] [death] [object]]
murder: [[agent] [death] [object] [motive]]
assasinate:[[agent] [death] [object] [[motive] [cause]]]
It is very exciting with respect to that one series of words. But if you look at a language like Arabic, it kind of breaks down because they do that with every verb. So the grammatical pattern does not link to the meaning nearly so well.
I do believe in motivational relativism, where a person's intent behind an action can change after the fact. But it goes part and parcel with a cosmology that contains a supreme being, whose relation to our actions ends the relativism.
They kind of do what with every verb. Sorry, I'm being dense, but I would like to understand the die kill etc. and what you meant.
At the first level, "die" is intransitive (requiring only the "object", grammatically the subject in this case) and "kill" is transitive (implying both an "agent"/subject and an "object"/object). The Theta grid extends this fairly basic division by allowing any verb to be given a boolean value for a larger set of relational semantic components.
Thus "murder" is not merely transitive, but also has the property of assigning intention (motive) to the verb. "Assasinate" assigns intention and something we might call "motive", "intent" or reason (cause). That last sentance highlights one of the great imponderables of Linguistics generally...at what point does the study of language become impossible for those who actually use language?
Anyway, the point about Arabic is that it has a regular format for giving the basic noun many of these properties. To illustrate, imagine that we changed an intransitive verb into a transitive verb by adding "nock" to the end of the verb. Thus "lie down" would become "lienock (someone) down" rather than "lay (someone) down". And "die" would become "dienock" rather than "kill".
Now imagine that we had several other modifiers to add to indicate whether the laying was done on purpose, or in a particular manner (politely, with consent, violently, etc.), or for social, political, or personal reasons (this is the situation that actually pertains with several languages, Arabic is one of them).
If you have regular ways of modifying verbs in this manner, you can use the word meaning "assasinate" even if nobody has ever imagined the concept before, because the constructed word can easily be decoded as "intentionally cause to die for political reasons". You can say that in any language, whether or not the culture is aware of the finished concept.
Of course, a complex regular verb usually degenerates over time to have a shorter or simpler pronounciation in common usage, so complex regularity of verb modifiers doesn't destroy the usefulness of Theta grid analysis, it just makes it more difficult to carry out because you have to investigate the informal language rather than being able to simply analyze the formal language.
The point that you can still believe someone is evil despite understanding their motives because "evil" is a matter of perspective is pretty similar to the point I was making. My point is a little different because I don't buy the idea that "evil" is entirely a matter of perspective. After all, I do evil things all the time, and it isn't like the fact that I'm the one doing them keeps me from being able to see that they're evil. If we could use a less charged term like "disgusting", then I could illustrate without...well, I'll let you judge.
Last night I was watching a show and there was a scene where a bloodthirsty, crazed, totally evil character was licking his razor sharp knife that he always carries around with him. As it just so happens, at that very moment I happened to be licking tasty blood off of my razor-sharp knife that I always carry around with me.
Now, I'm aware that licking tasty blood off my pet knife is disgusting (not evil...I don't think). Nothing about my mental makeup prevents me from thinking it disgusting even while doing it. I was watching a show where a very similar behavior was presented as archtypically disturbing, and the significance wasn't lost on me. It didn't keep me from licking my knife when I got tasty blood on it.
For me, evil doesn't seem like a matter of perspective, but simply of what you happen to believe "good" and "evil" mean. That certainly can be affected by your perspective, but it isn't a matter of perspective in and of itself.
If everyone, except one person, in the world had been turned into a vampire, and the last natural human was a vampire-hunter, would he be just considered evil or would he really be so?
So for me its less a matter of perspective and more a matter of knowledge. I think it's generally impossible to take an action and definitively say "this is good" because you never know what unexpected stuff could occur. So IMO since you can't really know what's good and what's evil then the difinitive truth (if one exists) doesn't really matter, as your action is necessarily independant of the truth.
That said, it terms of literature I'd like to see a story where the villain wins in the end, though I doubt it'd sell well. Maybe something told simultaneously from both the hero and the villains viewpoints so you're torn between who to vote for. As for absolute villains, I find that pure characters are generally boring cliche's. A purely evil villain doesn't have enough internal conflict for me, and there's not really a whole lot of room for them to evolve throughout the story.
The question of guns and abortions, one might say that the elite do not want as many lower creatures so they come up with a way to reduce their population growth, and they definately don't want them to resist their treatment so they disarm them.. If you look through history and around the world, this is always true. Disarm the population and one can do anything one wants with them. Governments fear a population that can resist. The first thing a government does is disarm the population.
We would consider as evil, the treatement of an unarmed, dehumanized population by their elite masters. We consider them human so we feel for them.
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So for me its less a matter of perspective and more a matter of knowledge. I think it's generally impossible to take an action and definitively say "this is good" because you never know what unexpected stuff could occur.
You must have a tough time getting up in the morning.
Would you entertain the idea of acting to maximize utility given a subjective probability distribution over courses of action?
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If everyone, except one person, in the world had been turned into a vampire, and the last natural human was a vampire-hunter, would he be just considered evil or would he really be so?
On the other hand, an estimate of the actual size of the object, while it can be impacted by the position from which the estimate is attempted, is not a matter of perspective. If the estimate is wildly different from the actual size, then the estimate is incorrect.
Note that both these properties are actual properties, even though one is a matter of perspective. If I could move this a little towards the subject of good and evil, "friend" and "enemy" are both actual properties of other people that are matters of individual perspective. You might be mistaken about which persons are your real enemies and which are your real friends, but that doesn't change the fact that some people are really your friends and other people are really your enemies. Which people are "friends" and which "enemies" is inherently a matter of perspective, though (the only exception would be a person who is an enemy to everyone, which may not even be possible for a human).
Considering our vampire hunting friend, we can assume that he is a friend to himself, even if he is an enemy to everyone else. For the vampires, the situation is more difficult. If the supply of vampires exceeds the supply of humans by that degree, than almost all of them have to be enemies to each other as well as to the remaining human. Not only that, but each individual is faced with a "save it for later or eat it now" dilemma even if all the other competitors are vanquished. Of course a human can land in such a situation too, it just isn't survivable
The concept that the ends will necessarilly end up outweighing the means is inherently flawed. When you consider the long term implications of any act, the most important long term implication of that act will always be the fact of having performed it. Arguments about acts not being inherently right or wrong generally place artificial constraints on what may be considered an act, such as excluding mental and perceptual acts like "paying attention" "listening" "planning" and so forth. But when you exclude such actions from being considered, you destroy the entire basis of argument itself, since your argument depends on other people listening, contemplating, and accepting your argument. If you exclude those actions from being considered, then what is the point in making an argument at all?
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We would consider as evil, the treatement of an unarmed, dehumanized population by their elite masters. We consider them human so we feel for them.
Putting the inherent bias of this statement aside, consider that, "Children's stories humanize all sorts of things, including Volkswagons." This still makes evil a subjective perception (though not a matter of perspective, since the children do not have to be Volkswagons themselves to think this way).
Still, this is getting closer to the issue of what makes something objectively good or evil. Even though the judgement is still subjective, the subjectivity is mainly tied to beliefs about reality which could be objectively verified. In other words, if you were able to present enough evidence that Volkswagons were sentient creatures capable of moral decision, then it would make sense to believe it as an objective fact. Conversely, if you were to present enough evidence that humans were deterministic mechanisms incapable of free will, then it would make sense to believe that as an objective fact. Of course, once you believed either (or both) of those as objective fact, you would be under the burden of acting accordingly.
You might be wrong, of course. That's why we should constantly evaluate and test the assumptions that form the basis of our moral decisions. Thus far, I have seen far more evidence that humans are (however distastful) moral agents possessing free will than I have seen to the contrary. I've also noticed that when a Volkswagon seems to be expressing something like volition, it is usually a result of an identifiable external agent (usually human). So while I like Volkswagons and might save one even if it meant betraying my (foolish human) comrade, I would understand full well that this was an evil action. Not that knowing it was evil would keep me from doing it. By the way, if we're out on some important mission that requires the destruction of a Volkswagon, please disregard that last statement
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You must have a tough time getting up in the morning.
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Would you entertain the idea of acting to maximize utility given a subjective probability distribution over courses of action?
Survivor, you have some very long posts. That said,
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The concept that the ends will necessarilly end up outweighing the means is inherently flawed.
The problem with defending the statement is that it's so loaded now, that when people invoke it as a motivation, it's usually meant to connote a few specific ends, not all of them.
Well, I think there is a difference between that and "the ends justify the means." Insofar as enduring something unpleasant is different from justifying something repellant.
P.S. I saw a "Disney Villains" picture book in the Juvenile section of the library the other day.
[This message has been edited by franc li (edited October 31, 2006).]
The most certain effects of any action will be the effects most directly linked in causality. In other words, if you balance the possible ends by their probability of actually coming about, you'll see that the action itself (along with actions leading up to it) are among the most important "ends" of that action. This may relate to what tc said about "probability distribution".
In other words, while you can't know all the possible effects of any action, you can know the most likely and immediate effects of that action, because those effects are often an implicit part of the action itself. Take the example of murder. There is one certain outcome of committing a murder...you'll become a murderer. Whether that's a good thing or not depends on what you mean by "murder", but it is the one absolutely certain outcome of the act of murder.
Thus, it has to be given serious consideration in contemplating whether murder is good. All the less likely possible outcomes have to be judged for their likelyhood as well as for their importance.
You might say that everything in life is a gamble anyway...but does that make is smart to jump off a building because you might discover that you can fly? Learning to fly is a big benefit, but it appears to have a very low probability of occurring and the penalty for failure is extreme. You might bet your life on a 50/50 of learning to fly, but would you really bet it on the trillion to one or worse odds that are more consistent with the evidence we have?
Unless you're willing to say that the odds don't make a difference, then Apathyism is meaningless. You don't know the highly unlikely results of any act...but in ordinary decision making you discount those probable outcomes anyway because they are unlikely (i.e. you don't know what will happen). Why is your moral decision making allowed to balanced certain outcomes against highly improbable outcomes? The only reason is because it frees you from having to judge the morality of your own actions.
If you really believe in Apathyism, then go ahead and jump off a tall building. You don't know that you'll die, and you can imagine a great benefit happening as a result.
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So IMO since you can't really know what's good and what's evil then the difinitive truth (if one exists) doesn't really matter, as your action is necessarily independant of the truth.
Read a lot of 20th century philosophy of science and you find the same problems in scientific knowledge as well. You're essentially providing the skeptic's position for moral truths, but those same issues arise for any knowledge (for examples and detailed discussions, read philosophers David Hume and Karl Popper). The problem with the skeptic's position is that it confuses two different issues: that you can't have perfect and infallible knowledge of truth (which appears to be true), and that your knowledge does not in any way correlate to the truth (which appears to be false).
In other words: we may never be right about everything, but that doesn't mean we're never right about anything. Thus our actions aren't independent of the truth.
People have no problem seeing this in science, but have a harder time seeing it in morality; but it's nonetheless true.
With respect to "utility", if you're really interested you should start with John Stewart Mill's Utilitarianism. It's available on my Web site in PDF and HTML formats. This work was an attempt to define a secular moral system. I think it works as a description IF there are already moral standards in place. It's circular, it fails to take into account the utility of spirituality, and it fails to define what "utility" can actually mean. But for all that, it's an interesting document by a thoughtful man.
Regards,
Oliver
[This message has been edited by oliverhouse (edited October 31, 2006).]
That is too bad because the concept has given us some of the most compelling fiction on the last century. I believe that a prime example is Sartre's No Exit. In that story the devil is a valet who serves the humans in Hell. He never does anything that appears evil at all. It is the human characters who torment each other for all eternity with hurtful words and actions. This torment is relative to each character, i.e. what hurts Garcin would not bother Estelle. Check it out. It's good fiction.
Moral relativists hold that morality is subjective, determined by man and not by God or nature. Thus you can never build a "moralometer" machine that objectively measures good and evil.
People the world over object to moral relativism because it defies almost all religions. Moral relativism does not deny the existence of God, but it does claim that God, if He exists, has no say in what is good and what is evil. This responsibility rests on the shoulders of man.
Obviously this concept is appalling to most of the people in the world. As with murder, racism, genocide, cannibalism, and other things that readers find appalling, moral relativism makes excellent fodder for gripping fiction.
Also, I don't object to moral relativism because it flies in the face of most religions. I object to it because it's obviously false; or, more precisely, that if it's not false, then everything that I care deeply about is meaningless. It's the same reason I object to the common readings of the statement "true = false".
That is also, generally speaking, my objection to materialistic determinism. It's not that they _couldn't_ be true, it's that if they are I have no reason to _care_.
Having said all, that, I think moral relativism is good fodder for characterization. I think it would be really interesting to create a character who believed in moral relativism and lived according to its consequences: he really believed that, regardless of his particular repugnance, eating a baby is objectively no worse than eating a salad; that torturing someone to death is objectively no worse than gratuitiously giving food to hungry people.
Regards,
Oliver
From my perspective, I can easily make the claim that everything oliverhouse cares deeply about is meaningless. It would be impossible to prove that statement false, but it would be easy to prove that statement appalling.
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I think it would be really interesting to create a character who believed in moral relativism and lived according to its consequences: he really believed that, regardless of his particular repugnance, eating a baby is objectively no worse than eating a salad; that torturing someone to death is objectively no worse than gratuitiously giving food to hungry people.
To write him/her as a true moral relativist, your character would need to make a conscious decision about whether eating babies is good or evil behavior. The decision would need to be completely subjective: the character must believe that it is impossible to use objective tools like observation, experimentation, logic, or mathematics to prove that the decision was right or wrong. Your character would need to believe that the judgment was completely in the hands of mankind with no input from anything outside mankind, whether natural or supernatural.
We see this frequently in tragedies when a character must make an agonizing choice. Typically, a character does not even realize that he/she is guided by moral relativism. Consider Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. His tormented main characters eschew God, the law, their families, objective logic, and social convention. In the end they make their tragic choices using pure moral relativism. At the moments when they choose suicide, Romeo and Juliet each believe that they are doing the right thing relative to their situation. It's brilliant writing.
[This message has been edited by Doc Brown (edited November 01, 2006).]
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the statement "everything you care deeply about is meaningless" is certainly not the same as "false."
I agree; however, scientists use this kind of argument all the time to discount theories that they admit are theoretically true. Perhaps the most common example on the Internet relates to evolution.
A creationist will sometimes say, "God created the world in six days and planted fossils as a test of our faith."
A non-creationist will often respond, "If He completely altered the physical structure of the world simply to test our faith, then I have no idea what He has altered and what He has not in the geological sciences. While I can't deny that your theory is possible, it makes any further inference about history based on geology meaningless." And then he goes on to assume the falsity of the creationist's theory, because it's the only way his science can have any coherence.
My position against moral relativism (and materialistic determinism) is similar to that. I recognize that there may be no objective basis by which we can distinguish right from wrong, but if that's the case then nothing that I think on the topic has any coherence: talk about morality is simple gibberish.
I take some issue with your description of the moral relativist. He would not need to make a _conscious_ decision about what's good and what's evil; he'd only need to believe that when he says "such-and-such an act is evil" he was stating something about _himself_ and his preferences rather than anything about the world as such. He would see his preferences as arbitrary and personal rather than natural and objective. The person who is revolted by baby-eating and yet sees no basis on which he should be revolted is a very conflicted person indeed, and that's why I think it would be interesting to write about him.
All this probably runs counter to your interpretation of R&J:
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His tormented main characters eschew God, the law, their families, objective logic, and social convention. In the end they make their tragic choices using pure moral relativism. At the moments when they choose suicide, Romeo and Juliet each believe that they are doing the right thing relative to their situation.
I'm not sure that "relative to their situation" means anything more than "in their situation." If they think they are doing the right thing relative to their situation, then they are making choices based on what they believe to be right and wrong in that situation. Well, yes, the morality of a particular decision is context-sensitive, even if you are not a relativist.
You tell us all of the things they eschew, but they are led by the rightness of their love for each other -- they adopt this as a guiding principle of their moral theory. It is, in my opinion, a mistake that completely distorts their moral theory and makes it an objectively bad one; but it does not mean that they are moral relativists or that they were guided by relativism. We're now in territory much closer to what Survivor was talking about in an earlier post -- and the fact that the Bard could write wonderful literature based on a non-relativistic but radically distorted and deeply held moral system shows that Survivor was right in that post.
This was fun -- seriously, and yes, I'm a blast at parties -- but I'm done derailing the message board. Please feel free to take the last word.
Regards,
Oliver
[This message has been edited by oliverhouse (edited November 01, 2006).]
quote:I expect that a moral relativist would say that it is possible to have a coherent discussion of morality without needing an objective basis. After all, all of the elements that make Apollo 13 a better movie than The Return of the King are purely a matter of subjective taste, yet you and I could have a coherent discussion on that topic without degenerating into gibberish. Could we not also have a subjective discussion on the topic of eating babies vs eating salad?
I recognize that there may be no objective basis by which we can distinguish right from wrong, but if that's the case then nothing that I think on the topic has any coherence: talk about morality is simple gibberish.
Aside: I am a life-long confirmed Catholic, not a moral relativist. But I have had lively conversations with a moral relativist and we were perfectly capable of discussing his subjective morality without breaking into gibberish.
[This message has been edited by Doc Brown (edited November 01, 2006).]
No Exit is a truly interesting work. Supposedly deeply existentialist and relativist, it nevertheless shows three persons who clearly have abandoned traditional morality in Hell, and convincingly shows that hell as an inevitable result of their pursuit of idiosyncratic (i.e. relativist) morality. I've never been able to understand in what sense it was an argument for moral relativism, since the moralities adopted by the various characters (except Satan as the valet) are clearly "false" in the sense of being constructed so that the actions sanctioned by each person's morality brings about results that are totally undesirable to the practicioner.
Nor do I get the point about moral relativism being unfairly persecuted because it "defies" most religions. If you think that God has no say in what is good and evil, then either you are only saying that it is possible to disagree with God on morality (and very few religions dispute that this is indeed possible) or you mean that God has no power unless you agree with Him...which is basically the same as saying that He's not really God and not even on the level with any man or woman you might have to deal with in real life (in other words, He doesn't really exist). If moral relativism does indeed "defy" religion, then it is morally false because it asserts something that is untrue, since God does exist. If it doesn't defy religion, then it is a meaningless game with semantics.
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Oliverhouse, the statement "everything you care deeply about is meaningless" is certainly not the same as "false."
I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean, but I'll take a shot at it. If I parse this according to standard syntax and logical constraints, it translates essentionally as "Oliverhouse, it is certain that everything you care deeply about is meaningless." No matter how I try, I can't figure out what else this could mean.
For the record, I believe that killing babies is probably a good bit more evil than eating them. But eating babies is disgusting. I don't like to eat veal, not because I believe it to be morally wrong, but because I find it repugnant despite my lack of any moral objection. To show an even clearer example, I would find it very distasteful to eat a fertilized egg, even with the embryonic chick still too small to be seen as anything other than a reddish spot. In order to do what I would consider the morally correct thing (removing the yucky bit and eating the egg like a man), I'd have to suppress my revulsion over eating a baby chick. This doesn't make me conflicted, except when I'm confronted with the choice between wasting edible food (which I see as morally suspect) and eating a baby.
Now, if eating that baby would horrify and appall others, then it would count as an act of aggression against them, just as though I were to jump in their face and scream obscenities whilst spitting and urinating on them. That would obviously be worse than wasting food, except in certain extraordinary circumstances. Eating a human baby is probably quite a bit more offensive than that, enough so that I have real difficulty imagining any situation in which it would be morally right. It's also quite disgusting, so I question whether I'd do it even if I were convinced it were the right thing to do.
But then, I don't have a problem with doing things that I admit are morally wrong (or failing to do things that I acknowledge to be morally right). Aside from the aspect of convenience, I don't even feel any restraint about admitting that I do things that are wrong. However, I have come to understand that this is a significant motivator for many humans (perhaps all humans, certainly many who have made serious efforts to overcome this impulse claim it to be universal among humans). Many people desire to believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that they themselves are not ever evil. And more than a few construct elaborate delusional architectures to support this belief. Moral relativism is fairly ingenious, in that it cannot be attacked using the standard argument against evil ("How would you like it if someone did that to you?" "Well, morality is basically relative so that question has no meaning"). Unfortunately, it is false in fact because those who follow their own idiosyncratic ideas of "right" and "wrong" usually end up bringing evil to themselves through the actions they define as "good". The actual existence of so many moralities that fail the most basic tests of self-consistency demonstrates that some moralities are objectively worse than others.
In practial terms "moral relativism" boils down to saying "my chosen morality is necessarily right for me." But this statement is objectively false on examination of the evidence. Most humans, given the chance to make up their own moralities, chose moralities that are horribly wrong for themselves. Even if it were only some humans who did this, it would still render the statement "the morality I choose for myself is the best for me" subject to experimental confirmation in each and every case.
As I said before, being a villian doesn't depend on being objectively evil. It only depends on being an enemy to the identified sympathies of the audience. If the audience is evil (and I think we all know it is), then a perfectly good character could make a very good villian.
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Moral relativists hold that morality is subjective, determined by man and not by God or nature.
[This message has been edited by franc li (edited November 01, 2006).]
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Oliverhouse, the statement "everything you care deeply about is meaningless" is certainly not the same as "false."I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean, but I'll take a shot at it.
He's saying that I took two statements, S1="If P, then everything I care about is meaningless" and S2="If P, then false," and claimed that they were equivalent ("S1=S2" is true). I didn't intend to equate S1 and S2, which is why I had to ramble about evolution and geology.
First, Oliverhouse, "People have no problem seeing this in science." I have a hard time seing this in science and I'm a physics major. You should read about quantum mechanics some time. There are a good half a dozen different philosophical interpretations of it out there and even multiple mathematical interpretations, and all of them work equally well so we still can't tell which one is RIGHT.
If our knowledge can bring us close to the truth, and even if we have find a theory that IS the truth, it is, in in almost every instance, impossible for us to prove that this theory is the truth, because maybe we're all in a matrix and it's just some wacky code.
The point isn't that nothing matters, the point is that the truth doesn't matter. We can decide things either way, but without knowing the truth we our decisions don't depend on the truth. Also the truth doesn't affect our lives because then we could know it. I'm tempted to claim that their is no truth, but there are other viable interpretations and we can't pick from them so the whole thing becomes circular and I'll just stick with "it doesn't matter."
Of course, quantum mechanics doesn't often delve into probability theory proper - heck, you guys deal with probability amplitudes.
Also, just because there are multiple competing explanations doesn't mean that there's no answer. All of them are right enough to make predictions (the predictions we currently care about), so they must describe truth at some level.
[This message has been edited by trousercuit (edited November 02, 2006).]
By the way, most of quantum physics only describes necessary limitations on the observer, very little of it describes anything important about reality.
I suppose that means that "Apathyism" then simply means accepting that our current ideas about morality (and everything else) can be mistaken even if we haven't yet discovered an obvious contradiction. Indeed, since the definition of an "obvious" contradiction is entirely dependent on the observer, our status as observers necessarily limits our ability to be certain that we aren't missing a contradiction that would be obvious to a higher intelligence. Reduced to those terms, "Apathyism" is nothing more than what every sentient being must experience by lacking omniscience.
Oliverhouse, I'm glad for that clarification of what was meant. Of course, that should have been phrased, "Oliverhouse, 'meaningless' is certainly not the same as 'false.'"
Besides, given one important definition of "meaningless" (implicitly contains contradictory interpretations), the intended statement is simply not true. Very often "meaningless" does imply "false". Therefore it is not certain that "meaningless" is not the same as "false"
What we really do not understand is good. A purely good, no evil intent kind of person would be a stranger anywhere. We can only come up with two dimensional stereotypes.
But the best definition of evil (cut and dry definition anyway) goes something like this:
Evil is selfishness at the expense of others or expense of your own good health.
Think of any act of evil from eugenics to adultery and you will see selfishness irregardless of the pain it causes others.
To use the Nazi analogy again- the founders of eugenics felt that the white races (of which they were white) wished to destroy the others races so that they would not have to share the world's resources with anyone else. Basically kill the undesirables so we can keep our stuff and take theirs too. Of course they shrouded it in the "superman" theory, but basically it is about wealth.
Kids do that to ailing parents in countries like Holland, to retain greater amounts of the family resources. It's called euthanasia.
Pimps do that to uncooperative prostitutes, beat them and kill them t take what the girls have.
Suicide- ease your own suffering no matter what your death might do due to your family and friends.
Adultery is to have your hour of fun, no matter that it will destroy the kid's homes, two marriages, careers, and friendships.
So on ad naseum- evil in it's purest form can be seen in the out of control child. The one who throws tantrums, breaks things, spits, bites, lies, curses; not due to emotional problems but rather good old fashioned selfish meaness- it's mine I want it now! But evil in most people is changeable. Although I must admit I beleive there are a few "bad seeds." People who irregardless of environment perform terrible destructive acts for no good except their own gain.
JB Skaggs
"No, he's saying that truth doesn't exist as an abstract ideal completely independent of reality"
Or that if the truth does exist as an abstract ideal then it doesn't matter.
"By the way, most of quantum physics only describes necessary limitations on the observer, very little of it describes anything important about reality/"
Which is exactly why there are so many interpretations of reality that still work with quantum physics. I'm talking about ideas of what goes on between measurements, what causes wavefunction collapse, etc. There are many interpretations that all work with our experimental data.
"I suppose that means that "Apathyism" then simply means accepting that our current ideas about morality (and everything else) can be mistaken even if we haven't yet discovered an obvious contradiction."
Somewhat. I kind of started from the realization you described, but it's more of an idea that morality and other such philosophical issues are ultimately meaningless. Thus accepting that we could be wrong doesn't really matter because the truth doesn't really matter.
"Evil is selfishness at the expense of others or expense of your own good health."
I like this definition and I do see it a lot in fiction (think the Dark Side of the Force, being ruled by emotion and desire.) This definition is really good for fiction but I think that like most definitions there are some exceptions. Self defense is definitely pursuing your desire to live at the expense of someone else, but we don't consider it evil. There are probably some other extreme examples like wars and such. Still, pretty good definition in most cases.
I don't believe that evil can be reduced to selfishness. For one thing, any grossly evil act could be committed by a person who doesn't benefit directly. It isn't usual, but if you say it's okay to wipe out all the Jews as long as you're not benefitting personally is a bit troubling when we come up against the historical fact that many of those who were active in the final solution underwent severe distress, mental, physical, and emotional. I know I mentioned this before, but it is important to remember that many of the Nazies did it at enourmous personal cost because they had been convinced that it was the right thing to do.
In other words, they wouldn't have done it if their morality had been different. Yes, many people became Nazies for personal benefit. Probably most of those who went all the way had to give up more than a bit of their sanity, though. Is it really so hard to believe that they would have liked to remain sane? What does "selfishness" even mean when what you're sacrificing is your own essential good? "Selfish" Germans did individualistic things like joining partisan groups and fighting against the larger society. Most of them had no great love for Jews, they just didn't like what the Nazies were doing to Germany.
[quote]I'm talking about "truths" that we absolutely can never know. That means there must not be any noticeable correlation or we'd notice it and then we'd follow it to the truth.[quote]
I have no idea what this has to do with anything. Indeed, as I read it, that is the intent of the statement. qpk is apparently stating that his comments have no possible application to any conversation we could possibly have. Which raises the question of why he is making them.
For my own part, "evil" is simply consequences that we find undesirable. Any action which leads mainly to consequences which we find undesirable is therefore an "evil" action. We can say that an action led mainly to evil when the negative consequences were unavoidable or highly probable based on that action, while the benefits were merely possible or even "theoretical". We also weigh long term consequences against short term consequences, doing this will be fun for a few moments but will lead to a permanent reduction in quality of life, or something like that. Just because a short term consequence is more immediate, we can't necessarily say it is more probable.
My "good" is selfish, it is based on what I find desirable. True, if an individual's good completely neglects the desires of all other actors, then that individual will probably end up unhappy because everyone else will be working against that "good". So it is highly likely that some element of altruism must be found in the formulation of attainable goals. As I've already stated, if the "good" consequences of an action aren't really possible, that action doesn't qualify as really good.
But my own theory places me under no obligation to do things that I find repugnant simply because "everyone else" will "benefit". Remember, the sacrifice of the individual to the "collective welfare" is the fundamental basis of every practical (meaning actual) form of totalitarianism.
Relativist: You should believe in relativism!
Me: If you truly belived that then you don't.
(And to Mr. Quantum, If there is no truth then what are you looking for in those quantum physics books? Seriously, if there is no answer then why are you asking the question? Science is about discovering truth, if someone else later disproves your work that doesn't change the goal.)
And as to the original meaning of the thread. Every villain should be a tragedy.
[This message has been edited by Pyre Dynasty (edited November 21, 2006).]
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- evil in it's purest form can be seen in the out of control child. The one who throws tantrums, breaks things, spits, bites, lies, curses; not due to emotional problems but rather good old fashioned selfish meaness- it's mine I want it now!
I have to disagree. A child young enough to have tantrums doesn't have the ability to see beyond his/her immediate satisfaction. There is no decision making and thus, IMHO, no true evil.
An adult or older child who choses to act in a socially inappropriate manner has made a decision. For me that's the crux of the issue. The conduct and thus the person "becomes" evil based on the filter the person viewing the action puts over it.
Killing other people is generally considered wrong by most people. What makes killing "evil" depends on our background. I suspect most people wouldn't consider a soldier on a battlefield evil but would think an assassin would be "evil." But what if the assassin is sent to kill someone, who if he lives, will destroy thousands of lives? Is that assassin still evil? Do motives matter? Does the fact that the "bad" actor thinks he is justified change the nature of the conduct? I tend to think so.
Virginia, Maryland and DC were the target of the Mohammed/Malvo sniper shootings. Mohammed, the adult, is closer to the "evil" stereotype. He used Malvo's youth and innocence to manipulate him into heinious acts. Is Malvo less evil than Mohammed because he was manipulated? The Virginia jury (with the help of an amazing lawyer) thought so because Malvo was sentanced to life in prison while Mohammed was sentanced to death. The two attorneys involved were some of the best we have in Virginia so it wasn't that Malvo's attorney was "better" or the goverment's case in Mohammed was "stronger." In fact, the Mohammed case was weaker because they couldn't prove who pulled the trigger. However, the jury could sympathize with Malvo and it couldn't with Mohammed because there was no "excuse" he could give. It was a life and death difference in the perception of evil based on the same facts.
Circling back to the beginning of the thread, I think it is likely that because we no longer accept the concept that a "black hat" makes a bad guy, there is less two dimensional evil portrayed in books and, to a lesser extent, movies. Once you start seeing the bad guy as a "guy" it becomes harder to think of him as "just evil."
NAZIs did not invent eugenics.
Even Plato espoused state-run human breeding programs.
If we consider selectivity in mating (i.e. waiting for marriage) as an aspect of eugenics, then one can see the point rather easily. Women who only mate with the highest quality males are exercising a eugenics program, albeit on a small scale.
Then we have Plato's method, described in The Republic. I find several aspects of his program to be utterly appalling, but one has to remember that it is a philosphical discussion rather than a serious proposal. However, it is still a far cry from the genocidal implementation that the Nazies practiced.
I think that the fundamental problem with any eugenics program beyond allowing and encouraging women to be selective about their mating partners is hubris. By what possible right does any human think to dictate the shape of the entire race? Each individual must necessarilly bear some responsibility for direct descendents, and that seems like more than enough of a burden to me. Any human who claims more responsibility than this is clearly unfit to exercise it.
In other words, it's a good example of selfless evil.
What do you mean by this? Doesn't this make *you*, objectively, a villian?
Moral Relativism is simply, really: "Don't tell me that my feelings are wrong!" It is useful for villians in stories who care to justify their actions, but I disagree that every villian must see themselves as good by *some* measure, or else otherwise deny the validity of measuring. Some people are happy labeling themselves as neutral ("looking out for #1"), finding being good too much effort or as a goal subordinante to some other goals, or even undesireable for some reason.
And while certainly even most of these people who don't necessarily care much about persuing goodness would shun out and out cruelity, Villians who weren't above cruelty and didn't care to justify it wouldn't be unbelievable, imo.\
Also, situational ethics and moral relativism are differnt. Situational ethics is: "These are the principals, in this heirarchy, and so in this context, there is one correct action, but in a differnt context another action is correct, based on the heirarchy of objective values."
Whereas moral relativism is: "In this same situation, I would do x, but if you did y or z or any non-x, I wouldn't presume to say you were wrong!"
[This message has been edited by nikisknight (edited November 24, 2006).]