What Do You Stand For?

We'll see how my workout sets with my iffy stomach, but, in the meantime, I have earned the right to blog, which is good because I have something to say. And I'm going to do a sort of Thieving Thursday today because today is when I said it.

The Mother, who has a wonderful blog, well worth reading any day, does a special bit on Fridays regarding the history of motherhood, and all the scary tales therein. Today, in honor of Halloween, she talked about the transformation of the Dark Ages' most assiduous medical practitioners (midwives) to witches in the eyes of the powers that were. Now, I could talk about this as some length myself, but I think she's done a better job, certainly more research.

But, it got me to thinking. Western culture prides itself on values we presumably learned from an individual (Christ) some two millenia ago who reputedly embodied all that was kind, patient, forgiving, tolerant, educated, generous and peaceful (not unlike Buddha who came before), and yet... Governments and religious institutions have, over and over, villified kindness, education, compassion, tolerance, science and consensual copulation, and glorified torture, war, greed, ignorance, hatred, fear, and yes, even sexual predation.

That isn't to say most people were evil, just that the powers that be found ways to manipulate the populace into equating all that was evil with good and all that was good with evil - often by citing Christ who was, ironically, often much more like the people being persecuted than those who persecuted in his name. Don't believe me? Take the witch example. Imagine if Christ as he had been described had lived in Germany during the height of the anti-witch hysteria. He was kind. He was a healer. He did obvious magic. He challenged the prevailing wisdom. He was pacifist and tolerant to those who thought differently. I don't see how he wouldn't ended up burned at the stake, and those doing so in the name of all that was holy wouldn't have bothered to wash their hands first.

Ancient history you say? Really, for the past century or so, haven't we done many of the same things? I'm not singling out a religion or a nation, but, as a culture, how often have we revered greed and blind ambition, exalted violence, condoned dishonesty, sneered at tolerance and compassion? We frequently come up with rationales and explanations for calling bad things good. We call it defense, for instance, even if it hasn't been deployed except on foreign soil for literally decades. We accept clear dishonesty and blatant pandering to bribery and call it politics. We restrict people from being recognized for lifetime companions though that's what they are and call it family values. We watch people, through unmitigated greed and deceptive practices, bring a nation to the brink of financial ruin, then reward themselves with billions while taxpayers lose jobs and families lose homes and defend it as capitalism.

I think you get my drift.

My point is that we need to stop worrying about the buzzwords and the stories, what people tell us about what they want us to do and believe. Instead, we must ask ourselves what we really stand for. When we think about an issue or a stance, we need to ask ourselves are we on the side that's really good or are we telling ourselves that? Who are we really hurting? Who are we really helping?

I think, possibly because I'm a dreamer, that, if people really did that, really asked themselves what they stand for and compared it to what they want to stand for, they'd be much much harder to manipulate.

Maybe I'm wrong and people are naturally evil and self-deceiving. I don't think so. I believe that, if they were truly evil, they wouldn't have to deceive themselves.

I know what I want to stand for. Do you?

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Understanding the Evil: an Example

I love my comment threads. People think and share those thoughts with me. Always makes me warm and fuzzy.

Someone commented that we always know evil when we see it and someone else commented that he wanted the good guys to be good and the bad guys to be evil.

I answered those but I thought they were both comments worth pursuing and I had an example to use as an, well, example. If you've ever read thriller fiction, some of the best I've read is by Thomas Harris, specifically a remarkable gem called The Red Dragon. (Yes, he wrote Silence of the Lambs, but I found if without what made The Red Dragon so good). The protogonist was troubled and brilliant, really a man with depth, troubled with his talents and yet appalled by them (an empathy that allowed him to reconstruct the thinking of serial killers).

However, what really fascinated me was the villain. Which isn't to say the villain wasn't horrible, didn't do heinous and evil things, wasn't a sociapath who felt no guilt about sacrificing others to his own twisted goal. He was and Thomas Harris did not pull back from all the ugliness (and that applied to Hannibal as well). But we were given a front row seat into the making of the monster, of the bits and pieces that pulled together to turn a boy with a minor handicap into a creature than would coldly sacrifice an entire family after family.

What made it seem masterful to me was that, without taking me to a place where I could excuse or condone the Dragon's behavior, I could empathize with him, understand how his feet were put on such a path, even pull for him to overcome his drives without really wanting a "happy" ending. Overcoming his baser drives wouldn't undo what he had done, but it would mean he had pulled away from the evils, the insanity, the cruelty that had shaped him.

Why was that important? Why understand the bad guy?

I'm not entirely sure but I think there are several reasons. Because even good people do little evils and we can't combat that if we don't make an effort to understand it. Because that's true of the big evils, too. Because the story was far more compelling by understanding the Dragon. Because the story was more realistic because, despite being a monster he did, he was also an identifiable human being.

And, looking at the twisted logic he used to try to overcome his drives, we can see how challenging it can be to see the evil for what it is, especially when our perspective isn't the way it should be.

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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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