What is Evil?

One of the struggles I have as a writer is providing "bad guys." I'm not saying I'm all peaches and cream myself and many of my protagonists have bite, have shadows, sharp tongues, quick tempers and violent tendencies. But they are not, at least in my mind, evil.

But I need a line, at least in my own mind, between my "good guys" and my "bad guys." Sometimes, but not always, the bad guys are truly "evil" but other times, in my opinion, they are not evil so much as misguided, or selfish or intolerant - which can look a lot like evil and can generally do for most books.

Is there a difference? So, if we're talking villains, how do we determine "evil?" That thought is rather helped along by the fact that "evil" actions, i.e. morally reprehensible, can occur without "evil" results, i.e. causing harm and vice versa. Best intentions, even intended good, can still lead to evil results.

So, how do you draw the line between evil and not evil?

Well, first, I don't think one can draw a definitive line. I mean, I think most people have a line or series of lines in their own heads. I know I do and you'll see them in my books (assuming they every get published). But I'm not sure that anyone can draw a definitive line. Oh, I think there are things that most would agree were over the line, but that area between evil and not evil isn't, in my opinion, black and white.

Ironically, in my opinion, a great deal of evil is done by those that have a line they feel applies to everyone. And, in order to enforce it, they often cross it. Like my picture up there, Tomás de Torquemada, famously described by the Spanish chronicle Sebastián de Olmedo as "The hammer of heretics, the light of Spain, the saviour of his country, the honour of his order".

You may not be surprised to find the latter often on the opposite side of my protagonists.

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Saturday Quote-a-thon: Ethics and Morals

It seemed appropriate for this week. You might find a few surprising ones in this mix. I am making a conscious effort to make this NOT about religion. Another time, though, I'll include many that address that hot hot topic.

The 20th century, which was to have yielded the sweet fruits of scientific progress, was instead a century of massive brutality, wholesale carnage, and random destruction such as the world had never seen. We learned, or should have learned, that the advancement of science does not necessarily correspond with an advancement of virtue. When technology increases man's power, it extends the impact and scope of his capability to do evil as well as good. The separation of science from ethics and morality has been and can be disastrous.
-- Linda Bowles

To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers in politics as well as morals.
- William Penn

Moralizing and morals are two entirely different things and are always found in entirely different people.
-- Don Herold

Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it.
--Baltasar Gracián

The best place to look for evil is in the mirror.
--Solomon Short

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.
-- Plato

The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness.
- Albert Camus

Goodness alone is never enough. A hard cold wisdom is required, too, for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom invariably accomplishes evil.
- Robert Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
- Henry David Thoreau

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.
-Mahatma Gandhi

I believe that Gandhi's views were the most enlightened of all the political men of our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence for fighting for our cause, but by non-participation of anything you believe is evil.
-Albert Einstein

I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.
--Ayn Rand

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
- C.S. Lewis

I mistake the American people if they favor the odious doctrine that there is no such thing as international morality; that there is one law for a strong nation and another for a weak one, and that even by indirection a strong power may with impunity despoil a weak one of its territory.
-Grover Cleveland

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Thieving Thursday: Ethics

Relax Max had some ethics exercises based on real events on his post earlier this week.

Food for thought. And I like thinking.

I don't have real situations to quote, but I have thought about the kind of questions that he posed for my writing. I have to do that for my novels, and sometimes my characters, even the protagonists, make choices a reader might struggle with. I think it's healthy to do that with readers.

For instance, I have people in my Jenri novel (the Jenri) who kill many people. I am not a violent person myself and I'm inherently against killing people out of hand, nor do they. They kill only those that are actively attacking/endangering themselves or their loved ones. It's that second part, endangering, that makes it smokey for me and, likely, a few readers. Also, they attack quickly and kill the same way - in a world (sword and sorcery) where violence is a daily fare, leaving someone injured rather than dead is good way to get killed. Is it ethical? I'm not sure the world is black and white - I can't give you an answer. Can you safely save yourself with a clear conscience even if another loses his/her life? I don't have the answer.

That's kind of the point. Readers can decide for themselves how they feel about my characters, whether their actions are justified or whether they cross the line the readers have for themselves.

I have another character who stumbles across some slavers posing as gypsies and he kills them, freeing the slaves. A reader objected that it was disgusting, but it was who that character was. What's more (and this is true of all my protagonists), I was sympathetic with his position and his decision. I may not personally follow that path myself, but I can see it under the right circumstances. I also understand that not all readers would. But I want to be able to show his side well enough that some would.

I might add, as I've mentioned before, that it is a personal thing for me in all my work that rapists end up dead, often in ugly ways. Personally, I'm good with that, but many may not be.

Or, a more pointed example (one that bothered my husband so much I almost took it out and ended up changing it): under what circumstances could one understand a mother killing her own children? Impossible, right? What if she's an unwilling slave in a brutal man's harem and her children face the same fate (my novel)? What if she were in a concentration camp and the children face a slow death if she does nothing? What if your family faced starvation if you all lived?

What if the choice was saving your own child or other people's children? What would you choose?

It's easy to have clear cut answers in a world where the average family throws away enough food every year to feed several other families, when your children are safe asleep in their beds.

I'll be honest. I don't know what I'd do and I hope I never find out. But I think it's healthy to ask ourselves such questions if only to realize how lucky we are, to help us understand some of the horrible things that have happened in the past, to open our minds to situations we wouldn't empathize with otherwise.

One side note. Relax Max was dealing with shipwreck scenarios. One of the many things that bothered me about what happened on the Titanic (other than the number of third class women and children who perished) - and I've never heard anyone talk about this - is why they didn't take off some damn doors. Ever seen the actual footage from the Titanic: doors as far as the eye can see, hall after hall. Ten men with screwdrivers could have liberated dozens of doors. You could make a raft with a couple but even a single door could mean the difference between living and dying in that ice-cold water. I'm completely floored that no one on the ship, not one person, thought of this. It was the first thing that struck me watching Titanic.

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