This is going to come out all wrong, but I’ve been thinking about evil. My Moleskine has about a solid hour’s worth of notes on the subject, jotted there while waiting to meet up with Sarah for dinner in Adam Morgan.
Maybe it’s just all the movies I’ve seen and books I’ve read recently, but it seems like there’s a lot of good-vs-evil stories dominating media at the moment. (Reaction to the current global political climate maybe?) Anyway, I realized that all these works have something in common: there is a relationship between the forces of good and the forces of evil, and not just a fight-to-the-death kind of relationship.
These relationships vary, but here are a few:
- Evil emerges from good.
- Evil disguises itself as good.
- Evil and good have the same source.
- Good is mistaken for evil.
- Evil evolves from good.
Consider Star Wars. The evil empire emerged from the galactic senate — supposedly the good guys. This evil was motivated by one peron’s desire for power. At the same time, there’s a light side and dark side of the Force. Both sides have the same source — the Force — but are different instances of the same parent, so to speak.
In Lord of the Rings we see the forces of evil evolved out of the forces of good. The orcs and evil wizards are corruptions of elves and good wizards.
On television, early seasons of Alias spun an interesting relationship between good and evil, where an evil organization (SD-6) disguised itself as a supposedly good organization (the CIA). In comics, we see the X-Men, a force of good, often mistaken for evil as a result of the prejudice of humanity against people who are different.
These stories have at least two other elements: a catalyst that causes the emergence of evil (think “…who desire power above all else…”) and symptoms of that evil (mostly good people dying). There may be multiple catalysts in a story, but I believe that there’s only a handful to choose from. And these are fairly typical literary themes: fear, jealousy, power without accountability. In Star Wars the emperor’s desire for power led him to manufacture a war that subsequently created fear, which allowed him to subsume democracy.
All this led me to think about whether something that is considered “good” could be a catalyst for evil. In Revenge of the Sith, we see several catalysts for Anakin’s turn to the dark side. (Further evidence, clearly, for Lucas’ poor filmmaking. If you can’t convince your audience of a character’s arc without multiple motivations, there’s something wrong.) Of all these, the most interesting is his love for Padme. Because of this love, Anakin seeks the means for protecting her. Without thinking, one might assume that only good comes from love, but it’s easy to think of counter-examples in literature: Romeo and Juliet anyone?
But as far as “good” catalysts leading to evil, I’m tapped out at love. What else seemingly good thing could lead to the emergence of evil?
Something else I’ve noticed about evil in Western literature: it’s most often represented as a lack of temperance. (If I remember my Artistotle correctly, this notion goes back a long, long time.) Evil guys always want more. Evil guys are always irresponsible. Evil is always an untempered form of something good. Recall Uncle Ben’s advice to Peter Parker: “With great power comes responsibility.” Sure you can leap tall buildings and run faster than a speeding bullet, but you must restrict your use of power with some morality. In Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, evil comes from hubris, in which the ego goes unchecked. It’s good to use your skills as a doctor to help people; it’s bad to be a doctor who thinks you can create life.
Good wins because it can maintain a balance. Evil loses because it finds that the catalyst works against them, that the catalyst is a weakness as much as it is an enabler. This seems especially Western to me, in the Puritan sense of “too much of anything is a bad thing.” Of course, being from the Western world myself, I can’t think of any other way to frame the idea.
