The Evil That Men Don't
July 16th 2008 01:00
I can't remember the exact details, but there was a court case in England when I was a teenager, where two kids stood accused of killing a four year old boy they'd lured away from a shopping centre. In sentencing them -- and this is the bit that stood out in my memory -- the judge called them both "evil".
I was bothered by this, but I wasn't sure why. Obviously, I had no particular attachment to either of the killers, and was naturally disgusted by what they'd done. So why did the judge's... well, judgment bother me so much? I wasn't really sure at the time, but it became clear to me years later.
Fast forward a decade or so, and a local network was playing ads for a new TV movie with Robert Carlyle as Adolf Hitler, and it had me instantly perturbed. It was called Hitler: The Rise Of Evil, and the title really got up my nose.
But why was this? I spent days thinking about it. Was it for the same reasons that the judge's words had bothered me years earlier? Having so long to think about it, I'd decided that the reason I'd reacted so negatively towards what the judge had said was that because the kids were roughly the same age as me, I must have empathised with them. And, as I felt completely incapable of ever doing what they'd done, perhaps a part of me had decided that they hadn't actually done it and the judge was being wrong.
That was the conclusion I'd reached long before the Hitler telemovie began production. But if my theory was correct, why was I feeling the same way about the reference being used with Hitler? It's not like I have any empathy with him whatsoever. If we apply my earlier theory about the English boys, it doesn't really hold up. I mean, it's not like I think somebody looked at a piece of evidence the wrong way and accidentally accused Hitler of a genocide and world war he hadn't actually committed. No, if anyone in history (or even just recent history) had earned the title of "evil", it was Adolf.
So, why did it bother me?
It took a couple more years of thinking before I figured it out. I think I might have been re-reading Lord of the Rings at the time when it occurred to me: people are not evil.
Evil is a word for fantasy stories. It is useful for describing a malevolence that is, by its very nature, a threat to all that is good. I suppose on that level, it's actually a bit of a lazy device, but as so many of my favourite things use this device, I'm not going to delve into that too much. Something being "evil" is not really possible, unless you're writing such a work where fantasy takes place.
What I realised, retrospectively, is that the moment you describe something or someone in the real world as being evil, you immediately give yourself an excuse to not understand it. It's dismissive. It's easy. Why did that person do so many awful things? Ah, they're evil. They have the evil gene. That must be it.
If you call the two kids who killed the younger kid evil, you'll never understand why they did it. If you call Hitler evil, you'll never understand how something the Holocaust could happen. Currently, terrorists are being referred to as evil, and the pattern continues. It makes sense to refer to their acts as evil, in a simile sort of way, but it does nobody any favours by calling the person themselves evil, and that's the crux: they are people. People did those things. People who share DNA with you and I. Why is it so important that we understand why these things happened? Because failing to understand why something happened is the best way to ensure it happens again.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, says Spanish philosopher George Santayana, and he's bloody right. It's not enough to just remember history as a bullet point list of things-that-happened. You have to remember why they happened, and for that, you have to bother to find out in the first place.
I was bothered by this, but I wasn't sure why. Obviously, I had no particular attachment to either of the killers, and was naturally disgusted by what they'd done. So why did the judge's... well, judgment bother me so much? I wasn't really sure at the time, but it became clear to me years later.
Fast forward a decade or so, and a local network was playing ads for a new TV movie with Robert Carlyle as Adolf Hitler, and it had me instantly perturbed. It was called Hitler: The Rise Of Evil, and the title really got up my nose.
But why was this? I spent days thinking about it. Was it for the same reasons that the judge's words had bothered me years earlier? Having so long to think about it, I'd decided that the reason I'd reacted so negatively towards what the judge had said was that because the kids were roughly the same age as me, I must have empathised with them. And, as I felt completely incapable of ever doing what they'd done, perhaps a part of me had decided that they hadn't actually done it and the judge was being wrong.
That was the conclusion I'd reached long before the Hitler telemovie began production. But if my theory was correct, why was I feeling the same way about the reference being used with Hitler? It's not like I have any empathy with him whatsoever. If we apply my earlier theory about the English boys, it doesn't really hold up. I mean, it's not like I think somebody looked at a piece of evidence the wrong way and accidentally accused Hitler of a genocide and world war he hadn't actually committed. No, if anyone in history (or even just recent history) had earned the title of "evil", it was Adolf.
So, why did it bother me?
It took a couple more years of thinking before I figured it out. I think I might have been re-reading Lord of the Rings at the time when it occurred to me: people are not evil.
Evil is a word for fantasy stories. It is useful for describing a malevolence that is, by its very nature, a threat to all that is good. I suppose on that level, it's actually a bit of a lazy device, but as so many of my favourite things use this device, I'm not going to delve into that too much. Something being "evil" is not really possible, unless you're writing such a work where fantasy takes place.
What I realised, retrospectively, is that the moment you describe something or someone in the real world as being evil, you immediately give yourself an excuse to not understand it. It's dismissive. It's easy. Why did that person do so many awful things? Ah, they're evil. They have the evil gene. That must be it.
If you call the two kids who killed the younger kid evil, you'll never understand why they did it. If you call Hitler evil, you'll never understand how something the Holocaust could happen. Currently, terrorists are being referred to as evil, and the pattern continues. It makes sense to refer to their acts as evil, in a simile sort of way, but it does nobody any favours by calling the person themselves evil, and that's the crux: they are people. People did those things. People who share DNA with you and I. Why is it so important that we understand why these things happened? Because failing to understand why something happened is the best way to ensure it happens again.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, says Spanish philosopher George Santayana, and he's bloody right. It's not enough to just remember history as a bullet point list of things-that-happened. You have to remember why they happened, and for that, you have to bother to find out in the first place.
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Comment by The individual occasionally known as Blandy
( you can become a Quaker now too, by the way!)
Comment by RubySoho
Music Zone
Thought Zone
I tried to tackle this subject but don't think I nailed it nearly as clearly and succinctly as you.
I have always hated the word 'evil' and its relatives such as 'monster', because they make it seem as though the behaviour was somehow outside the scope of ordinary human behaviour when really it is all too human.
Because failing to understand why something happened is the best way to ensure it happens again.
Brilliant. Thank you.