avevale_intelligencer | Good and evil

soren_nyrond made a comment to my last post which started me thinking, something he is always good at doing.

He postulated a Doctor Who story in which there are two non-human sides involved (okay, he said “non-humna,” but I don’t see why those humnas should be left out: besides, I think the same question would apply if both sides were human, or indeed humna) and they were “both evil.” WWDWD? So I started thinking about evil, and about the numerous ways fans have tried, sometimes with some success, to justify the ways of Sauron or Voldemort or the Daleks or you name it to men, and also to expose without mercy, if possible, the slightest fraction of a toenail of clay on those who are presented to us as heroes. We don’t, as a subculture, seem to be entirely easy with the concept of absolute evil or absolute good. Evil deeds, yes, but evil people?

Stracynski managed sequential evil with the Centauri and the Narns in B5, showing exactly parallel accounts of an attack by each side on a peaceful outpost of the other, but I don’t think either race was supposed to be “evil” as a race: they each had their own justification for their actions, and I think most people and most races do. The extremists who blow stuff up are not on the whole doing it for the sheer pleasure of killing and maiming innocents: they have a very clear sense of grievance and an end in view which they see as good for their people. (There will doubtless be some individuals who just enjoy the power, or the bloodshed, but we’re talking about “sides” here.) The troops who are currently getting killed in a foreign country may in fact be serving the interests of evil individuals, but they see themselves as fighting to free their own country from the threat of global terrorism: no-one could call them evil, as a whole.

Then there are the virtues such as courage, loyalty, perseverance, honour and so on. If a race displays those characteristics while waging a bloodthirsty war of extermination against an enemy, can we call them evil?

What do people think? Is it possible to imagine a conflict between two sides, both of which we could only call “evil”? Would it make a good story?

Truly, all humna life is here...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I think one of the closest "evil races" I've heard of was the Mongols. They massacred entire towns apparently for the joy of it, they didn't actually take anything useful (except a few of the younger women), and they seemed to delight in spreading exactly the attitude you state, making themselves hated for generations. They didn't even seem to care much for their own, having a "if you can't keep up we'll kill you so you don't slow us down" policy, and behaving much like army ants (if the river is too deep, keep piling more people into it and ride over the top).

And then there's the dehumanisation factor. If people can be convinced that "the enemy" (who might be "everyone not 'us'") are not really human, then killing them is no worse than killing animals or insects (how many people really think twice about swatting a wasp?). In that situation, they people may have been infected with an evil idea ("He isn't really human, he's an animal") but they aren't necessarily evil for acting on that. As in your Alien and Predator examples, they don't recognise humans as anything apart from food and a convenient way to reproduce.

(No, I don't think that there is an absolute virtue or an absolute vice, or at least not one that we will ever be able to say is definitely one. What looks like courage may be a failure to grasp the danger, loyalty may be an imposed guilt, etc., we just can't know without being telepathic. Is a mother cat 'loyal' to her kittens when she defends them? Is she being 'courageous' when she faces down a large dog to defend them? Do those things even have any meaning? I know that a lot of 'heroes' have said that they didn't think of it at the time, they just did what needed to be done, were they 'courageous'? No, I'm not expecting answers, I don't believe that there can be any absolute answers to that, it's the point...)

Good and evil

no subject