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Mid-morning in the LJ of Good and Evil
Sep. 3rd, 2004 09:39 amI was reminded the other day of the writing of a Frenchman, Georges Bernardos, who spoke of the crushing banality of evil. On the face of it, this is a pretty odd comment, and I suppose that most people reading it will have a similar initial reaction to mine: ”Evil? Crushingly banal? What nonsense! When was the last time a good person had just cause to cry ‘I’ll get you and your little dog too’, eh? Answer me that, Mr Frenchy clever-clogs”. That’s the immediate reaction in a nutshell, isn’t it? It’s only when you think about it that the true reality of what Bernardos is actually saying becomes clear.
It’s oddly true that the vast majority of human evil is staggeringly banal, but that’s due to the nature of evil in itself. Good, by definition, is proactive – good involves going out and doing goodly works, and righting wrongs. Evil is the opposite: evil is, in the main, not proactive, or even reactive – it’s apathetic. It is an unwillingness to defer personal gratification or stand out from the crowd. Evil, in its small, humdrum, everyday reality, is petty and crushingly banal – it’s eating another Coffee Crème whilst watching the starving in Darfur on TV. It’s shagging your best friend’s girlfriend when she offers. It’s walking past someone getting mugged. When the devil sits on your shoulder and whispers in your ear, the range of options he has are shockingly limited. Sex. Power. Gratification. Now. Always the one word: Now.
Proactive evil is rare, which is why it gets all the press. If there was more proactive evil we would hear less of it as we would be used to it, but true tales of horror still have the power to shock, due to their rarity and their immediacy. The great historical examples of evil have only been created by a very few proactive people, and succeeded only for however long because of the morass of petty, banal evil which by it’s very definition did not rise up to prevent it.
So why the immediate reaction to the initial quote? Why is evil seen as being more interesting and exciting than it is? At least part of that is due to fictional evil, which is anything but banal - and fictional good, which is not proactive but reactive in response.
When I was growing up we had a box of very old comics; 1940’s ones which had belonged to my father when he was my age – The Hotspur, the Champion, that sort of thing. One of these comics had tales of ‘Red Circle School’, which is my earliest conscious recollection of proactive fictional evil. The stories centred mainly around the villainous Greg Deakin and his plans to have the school closed down, and the valiant efforts of the other boys to stop him. Every single week, Greg would come up with another imaginative, well thought out, well executed plan which was only foiled (reactively) by the other boys. The appeal of Greg Deakin was obvious: he was smart, imaginative, proactive, and confident, whilst the other characters were ciphers against him. In the same way, other fictional villains fit much the same mold – Blofeld, Dick Dastardly, Draco Malfoy, you name them. Ever foiled, their confidence is undiminished, and their vitality and desire to press on against insurmountable odds and repeated defeat never falters.
Vitality, confidence, intelligence, and imagination (plus that all important air of power) are all highly attractive qualities, and couple these qualities with a charismatic lead (Alan Rickman, ladies?) and the attractiveness of fictionalized evil is demonstrated, whereas the reality of the same is tawdry and often rather pathetic.
Of course, this leads to the inevitable thought in my head that if Matthew, Mark, Luke and John had owned a cowardly Great Dane, then Satan really would have been in trouble.
And he'd've gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for those meddling Apostles.
It’s oddly true that the vast majority of human evil is staggeringly banal, but that’s due to the nature of evil in itself. Good, by definition, is proactive – good involves going out and doing goodly works, and righting wrongs. Evil is the opposite: evil is, in the main, not proactive, or even reactive – it’s apathetic. It is an unwillingness to defer personal gratification or stand out from the crowd. Evil, in its small, humdrum, everyday reality, is petty and crushingly banal – it’s eating another Coffee Crème whilst watching the starving in Darfur on TV. It’s shagging your best friend’s girlfriend when she offers. It’s walking past someone getting mugged. When the devil sits on your shoulder and whispers in your ear, the range of options he has are shockingly limited. Sex. Power. Gratification. Now. Always the one word: Now.
Proactive evil is rare, which is why it gets all the press. If there was more proactive evil we would hear less of it as we would be used to it, but true tales of horror still have the power to shock, due to their rarity and their immediacy. The great historical examples of evil have only been created by a very few proactive people, and succeeded only for however long because of the morass of petty, banal evil which by it’s very definition did not rise up to prevent it.
So why the immediate reaction to the initial quote? Why is evil seen as being more interesting and exciting than it is? At least part of that is due to fictional evil, which is anything but banal - and fictional good, which is not proactive but reactive in response.
When I was growing up we had a box of very old comics; 1940’s ones which had belonged to my father when he was my age – The Hotspur, the Champion, that sort of thing. One of these comics had tales of ‘Red Circle School’, which is my earliest conscious recollection of proactive fictional evil. The stories centred mainly around the villainous Greg Deakin and his plans to have the school closed down, and the valiant efforts of the other boys to stop him. Every single week, Greg would come up with another imaginative, well thought out, well executed plan which was only foiled (reactively) by the other boys. The appeal of Greg Deakin was obvious: he was smart, imaginative, proactive, and confident, whilst the other characters were ciphers against him. In the same way, other fictional villains fit much the same mold – Blofeld, Dick Dastardly, Draco Malfoy, you name them. Ever foiled, their confidence is undiminished, and their vitality and desire to press on against insurmountable odds and repeated defeat never falters.
Vitality, confidence, intelligence, and imagination (plus that all important air of power) are all highly attractive qualities, and couple these qualities with a charismatic lead (Alan Rickman, ladies?) and the attractiveness of fictionalized evil is demonstrated, whereas the reality of the same is tawdry and often rather pathetic.
Of course, this leads to the inevitable thought in my head that if Matthew, Mark, Luke and John had owned a cowardly Great Dane, then Satan really would have been in trouble.
And he'd've gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for those meddling Apostles.
