On Evil

Does anyone remember X-Files? The Smoking Man was the series' main antagonist; the character was so well-acted but the actor who plays him was never nominated for an Emmy. Fast-forward a decade or so and we see Bryan Cranston winning three times in a row for playing a bad character. I suppose there's less of a stigma now to playing corrupt individuals - in fact, now they are more often celebrated.

Yet since long ago we've been fascinated by villains. They are always the suave, skillful types in our stories. Why? Because a villain who is not skillful does not remain a villain for long, and a villain who is not suave just isn't enjoyable to watch. Villains are capable, they must be capable; because this way, the inevitable triumph of good will be all the more wonderful to behold. Villains always lose, but they still have to make a spectacle of it.

Evil attracts evil, they say. For like attracts like and someone who is more of something will provide strong enough attraction for those with less of that something within them. And so we derive scapegoats from "first principles," all the while joyously ignoring the subtler evil that we unleash on the world. We succumb to the false attribution error, weaving stories where accidental slights become vast conspiracies and we are the chaste hero. Sadly, the real world does not provide us with consistent deconstruction so we can be cured of this stupidity...

Terry Pratchett, in his Discworld series, spoke through one of his characters about the nature of evil. It's something I'll never forget - he said that evil is about treating people like things. It's about seeing them as something other than individuals. Life's a lot more horrible that way.