2527musings on good, evil, and irony
Sep. 21st, 2004 02:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evileSep. 21, 2004
It is to laugh!
This morning's first caffeine-fueled 'deep thought' involves a
gelling of some ideas about 'evil.'
I am reading a book called i, Lucifer which, as with many pop
culture depictions of Satan, depicts him as a lovable scalawag, a
sort of Dudley-Moore "Arthur" with a few bits of brimstone stuck to
his shoes. To me, making the entity of absolute evil and pure hate a
sympathetic character is terrifying. Almost as bad as making evil
banal (as our current White House resident does).
I read an online discussion yesterday regarding a biography of Hitler
which portrayed him as human, rather than Satan. Apparently it shows
his kindness to animals and his artistic side.
People argued both sides of this; some saying that the man was evil
and nobody should be sympathetic, some saying that humans have a
tendency towards painting everything in pure black & pure white,
whereas the reality is often grey.
The fact that Hitler was nice to dogs does not make the horror of
what he did to millions of humans forgivable, but it shows that it's
a path any human can walk down, given the right set of circumstances
& inborn abilities.
Nobody wants to look into their hearts and see that they are capable
of as much or more evil as any Gacy or Hitler. But we all have our
dark side, we all have things we hate enough to destroy irrationally.
And at the same time, most people can't actually conceive of anything
that is pure evil and pure hate. Satan, in his pre-pop-culture days,
was a terrifying figure, and a good reason to go to church and tithe
and obey the priests no matter what they said.
There is damnation in reducing evil to something we can understand
and excuse. Humans are in an interesting place, in that we are
capable of so many extremes. We are the race that produced both
Hitler and Mother Theresa, after all.
After all of this deep thought, I remember once talking with X,
saying I wanted a Chinese symbol for "evil" tattooed on me
somewhere (mostly because my DJ name & my real life nickname at the
time was 'evile') and she was horrified by the concept, saying that
if I had such a thing permanently put on my body, I would not be
allowed to be her child's goddessmother anymore.
And then, years later, the friendship ended over things far more
serious than skin and ink.
I love irony. It's so ironic.
It is to laugh!
This morning's first caffeine-fueled 'deep thought' involves a
gelling of some ideas about 'evil.'
I am reading a book called i, Lucifer which, as with many pop
culture depictions of Satan, depicts him as a lovable scalawag, a
sort of Dudley-Moore "Arthur" with a few bits of brimstone stuck to
his shoes. To me, making the entity of absolute evil and pure hate a
sympathetic character is terrifying. Almost as bad as making evil
banal (as our current White House resident does).
I read an online discussion yesterday regarding a biography of Hitler
which portrayed him as human, rather than Satan. Apparently it shows
his kindness to animals and his artistic side.
People argued both sides of this; some saying that the man was evil
and nobody should be sympathetic, some saying that humans have a
tendency towards painting everything in pure black & pure white,
whereas the reality is often grey.
The fact that Hitler was nice to dogs does not make the horror of
what he did to millions of humans forgivable, but it shows that it's
a path any human can walk down, given the right set of circumstances
& inborn abilities.
Nobody wants to look into their hearts and see that they are capable
of as much or more evil as any Gacy or Hitler. But we all have our
dark side, we all have things we hate enough to destroy irrationally.
And at the same time, most people can't actually conceive of anything
that is pure evil and pure hate. Satan, in his pre-pop-culture days,
was a terrifying figure, and a good reason to go to church and tithe
and obey the priests no matter what they said.
There is damnation in reducing evil to something we can understand
and excuse. Humans are in an interesting place, in that we are
capable of so many extremes. We are the race that produced both
Hitler and Mother Theresa, after all.
After all of this deep thought, I remember once talking with X,
saying I wanted a Chinese symbol for "evil" tattooed on me
somewhere (mostly because my DJ name & my real life nickname at the
time was 'evile') and she was horrified by the concept, saying that
if I had such a thing permanently put on my body, I would not be
allowed to be her child's goddessmother anymore.
And then, years later, the friendship ended over things far more
serious than skin and ink.
I love irony. It's so ironic.
