John Wants Answers - Again

So John had Angel on, a DVD from about halfway through Season Four, an episode in which Angel becomes Angelus. And of course I was sitting there watching, because I don't always have the discipline to walk past the tv when John's got something on that I really like and haven't seen in a long time, even if I am behind in my homework. 

When Angelus turned up on the screen, John paused the DVD and started quizzing me yet again about the definition of evil. "I'm not asking you about your religion," he insisted. "I just want my vampire character to be evil, and I don't believe there's any such thing."  John is writing a screenplay about an alien vampire - not, I hasten to assure you, an alien elven pirate werewolf vampire, but a parasitic alien whose abilities and actions are at the root of the vampire legends.

John doesn't think the character Angelus is all that evil because he doesn't actually kill people very often, at least not on screen. "So he nailed a puppy to a door," John said. "If he did it five times, would he be more evil than if he did it only once?"

As I usually do, I defined evil as malice, and acting on malice. I also cited what a nun told me forty years ago, that you don't hate a person, just what the person does. I should have said that the evil is the impulse to malice, and the acting on it, and the beliefs behind it, not necessarily the person harboring all that.

"So if you kill someone without malice, are you evil?" he asked.

"Probably not, depending on the situation," I said. I was thinking of soldiers, for example. I would argue that war is evil, and the death of anyone on either side is part of that evil, but the soldiers themselves are not evil. (And let's not get into the whole business about some wars being necessary. That's true, but depressing. I'd much prefer that we figure out how to get along with each other.)

"What if the person is suffering and wants to die, and you don't kill him, through indifference?" John went on. This was part of a whole riff on euthanasia.

You can imagine that by this time, leaving the room to do my accounting homework was looking pretty good to me.

And as he usually does, John brought up Hitler again.

"Who is more evil, Hitler, who probably didn't kill anybody directly, or a person who did kill people on Hitler's orders?"

I said that Hitler was more evil, because he caused more death and suffering.

"What about the devil? Setting aside that the devil isn't really one figure, but is based on many different legends and religious and mythologies, what makes him evil?"

"He influences people to do evil things, and increases the suffering in the world."

"What if one person kills five people, and one kills fifty people? Is one more evil than the other?"

"Maybe the one who killed fewer people just lacked the opportunity to kill more," I said.

Then John brought up that his vampire does what he does for the sake of his progeny, their survival and his own. From the vampire's point of view, it's barbaric of the humans to try to kill the vampire's babies. From the vampire's point of view, the vampire is the hero.

I agreed that this was a perfectly valid way to go. Antagonists often believe themselves to be the heroes of their stories. (But, as I should have said, that doesn't meant they're right in their assessment.)

Eventually, John gave up quizzing me, griped again about Angelus being more into playing with people's heads than going ahead and killing them (which is what I enjoy about the character), and let the show run.  Finally.

Five hours later, I'm thinking of what I could have said, and the folly of trying to quantify this stuff and define exact boundaries for so nebulous a term. Evil is the causing of suffering, the urge to hurt others, selfishness at the expense of everyone else, hatred and vengeance and demonizing and dehumanization and indifference when compassion is called for.  And that's probably nowhere near a complete list. Once you wrap your brain around all that, then there are further issues to consider, such as evil that results in good, and evil that results from good, and suffering caused by the forces of nature, and God's role in the existence of evil.  Questions about "the problem of evil" have troubled people for centuries.

How should I know the answers to all this mindbending stuff?  The Gospels, laws and so on are more interested in fighting evil than defining it. Just have compassion, and try not to hurt people. If you can help them instead, that's even better.  If you're working with a fictional character, make him or her a formidable obstacle to your protagonist, but also a believable character with understandable motives. What more do you really need to know? All this wranging about details is pretty much an unpleasant parlor game, like trying to prove to Chris D., back in high school, that I existed independently of his imagination and perception.

Aargh. John is a good and kind man, and I love him, but he drives me crazy sometimes.

Karen