Consciously Evil vs. Unconsciously Evil
Literary scholars have long marveled at a peculiar feature of Shakespeare’s characters, Richard III and Iago (the bad guy in Othello).
Both plainly state to the audience that they are motivated by malevolence and a desire to harm others. Richard proclaims:
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
Iago makes a similar statement in his confession that he wishes to destroy Othello.
The Moor is of a free and open nature,
That thinks men honest that but seem to be so,
And will as tenderly be led by the nose as asses are.
I have’t. It is engender’d. Hell and night
Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light.
Yesterday I wrote a post—The Spirit that Negates—in which I meditated on Goethe’s character of Mephistopheles, who states that “evil is my actual element.”
After I posted my essay, a critical reader contacted me to point out that, towards the end of my post, I conflated characters who are consciously evil with people who unwittingly participate in evil enterprises.
I wrote back to concede that he was right. What makes Richard III, Iago, and Mephistopheles fascinating villains is that they are fully aware of the evil they are doing.
The vast majority of people who participate in evil enterprises believe their actions are in the service of a greater social good, even if their actions include harming or killing people. They are able to do this because they have been indoctrinated to believe that their victims threaten or oppose the purported greater social good.
I thought about this today when someone forwarded me a news report about an a popular Australian YouTuber (with over 1 million followers) known as Pretty Pastel Please (real name Alex) who recently died from myocarditis at the age of 30. After the COVID-19 vaccines rolled out, she encouraged her followers to receive them and she expressed contempt for the vaccine hesitant in posts like the following:
I suspect that Alex genuinely believed in the goodness of her advocacy work for COVID-19 vaccines. It probably never occurred to her that maybe the “dumbasses” she reproached had good reason for being concerned about the safety and efficacy of the new product.
As we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic, the majority of people were strongly inclined to believe fervently in official propaganda, and never to question official orthodoxies. An especially terrifying moment for me was when Jimmy Kimmel told his audience that unvaccinated people should be denied medical care. As he put it:
Vaccinated person having a heart attack? Yes, come right in. We’ll take care of you. Unvaccinated guy who gobbled horse goo? Rest in peace, wheezy.
An extreme iteration of this kind of scapegoating is documented in the book Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, by Christopher Browning. As the author shows, the “ordinary men” of the title were NOT Richard IIIs and Iagos, but average middle-aged men who were indoctrinated by Nazi propaganda.
Long before I read the book, I intuitively sensed that in virtually any scenario in which a population is subjected to fear and propaganda, the majority of people will believe official orthodoxies and play along with all manner of irrational and even criminal behavior.
During the pandemic, it occurred to me that a key part of everyone’s education should be rigorous study of chapters in history when ordinary people participated in doing terrible things. The moral of each lesson should be: Don’t think for one second that you are, in your basic nature, any different from these people. On the contrary, the probability is high that you would—had you lived in that time and place—done exactly the same.
What I find impossible to understand is how so many ordinary people have, in recent years, embraced “gender affirming” hormonal treatments for minors as young as 13 and sex change surgery for minors as young as 15. To me, this is so patently and grotesquely outrageous that it is incomprehensible how any ordinary man or woman could accept it, never mind advocate it.
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solarsmurph
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This an example to show the characteristics of “sheeple’.
If you find yourself moving with the crowd, rethink and you will conceivably change directions.
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S.C.
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When US citizens were denied their rights for having opinions, it was no longer just moving with the crowd. The crowd became hostile to the extreme over dissent, and filled with self-righteous arrogance, leaving them unable to be reasoned with, not that we didn’t try. Anyway, covid did not change the world. The unhinged response by the masses did. I have friends who would tell me the news was all fake, then form all their opinions based on fake news. Reason was suddenly rare. I am determined to never give up my right to opine more than ever. The more they try to silence me, the louder I talk.
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Howdy
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“I conflated characters who are consciously evil with people who unwittingly participate in evil enterprises.”
In both cases, the people doing it still don’t understand the driving force. It is still beyond their reasoning, aware or not.
People do not create their own lives, simple as that.
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Seriously
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My history teachers mentioned Nothing about what millions of humans suffered in Europe during wwII. It focused on the heroics of the American men sent there. Nothing of the slaughter of millions, the ideology behind it….only that Mr H was evil…and little on that. Imagine my surprise when TV shows portrayed what had happened, some years later. And even then, only about the ridiculous hatred shown to the Jewish people, not the rest of the millions that suffered the exact same fate…that knowledge came later still.. I was pretty angry that this country that claimed to be the ‘best’, with our constitution, our laws, our supposed side always being on the ‘right’ way of treating its people, didn’t educate me about any if this – that occurred just 20 years or so, before I was born. I was Incredulous that all the people of Europe who Survived would ALLOW this to happen, that not one person with access wouldn’t just trip this asshole as he was going down the stairs, that they would in cases be complicit, go along. In a modern society, not sometime in the ignorant middle ages.
Enter 2020 and I now, sadly, understand completely. If you speak, you are canceled, it’s that simple. I learned that I could say nothing that would reach the ears of my friends. The Emperor wasn’t ‘wearing any clothes’ yet I was the only one who could see that. Reasoned, factual arguments went nowhere, begging, went no where…the numbers of and the ages of people dying published in the newspapers, after the shot, ( stopped abruptly in March 2021), went no where, pointing out the FACT that people over the age of 65 were NEVER COUNTED, prior to 2019, as having died of the flu, because the number was So High that it would scue the results of how bad a flu was, went no where. All knowledge of these things, prior to 2019 , disappeared…you could ‘suddenly ‘ kill a virus with cleaners – when we were taught, advised previously that nothing could ‘kill’ a virus.
I thought they were doing a test, a global test, of humanity in case a ‘real’ pathogen hit humanity. I wish I were still naive to the evil that has replaced my conscience awareness…except that I can’t, never could be that person…ever since I found out they were lying about the existence of Santa Claus.
The gender bending narrative is just as evil. What happened to the science that shows a human brain is still developing, still creating a person, still flawed in it’s judgements, decision processing until 25 years of age? Canceled, as is everything that doesn’t agree with the narrative.
Humans, once mass activated, are hard to turn around. And it’s easier than ever to do it…the machine wants a hive mentality and they have the tech to do it.. we will be the cause of our own extinction. It looks to be coming soon…
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Seriously,
Can you read? There’s a lot of books, both about history and about relatively current events. Don’t blame others for your ignorance.
Have a good day
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Seriously,
Here’s a title, “The Martyrs of Science”, by David Brewster, you might read and learn what good scholarship is.
Have a good day
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Howdy
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Jerry, is there anything you know that didn’t come from somebody else in the form of a book?
Reading, and putting into practice, other people’s possibly bad habits is not a recipe for success, nor even contentedness. One’s own mind is often the best resource.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Howdy,
The “someone else” is an author whose achievements I have researched and studied. So I have made an informed decision of whom I quote.
Have a good day
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Howdy
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Not the question I asked Jerry, but don’t sweat it, I was just using your comment as an example of individual thinking being more usefull than following other’s thoughts.
Jerry Krause
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Hi Howdy,
“One’s own mind is often the best resource.”; only stated by an egotist.
Have a good day
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Howdy
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Name calling is the purview of the desperate.
“only stated by an egotist”
No answer I see, and you turned a legitimate line of inquiry into the personal again. The reason why? You don’t amass the responses because you don’t think for yourself. You have aptly demonstrated my entire point.
If you come across a situation you never faced before, that some book never showed you, what will you do, curl up and die? Ponder that I would.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Howdy,
In the first post you quoted from the article. Then you wrote “In both cases, the people doing it still don’t understand the driving force” Then you seem to conclude (set aport) “People do not create their own lives, simple as that.”
Is this ‘conclusion what the two people don’t understand? If it is I most admit neither do. Newton admitted he dod not know the cause of gravity and Richard Feynman considered that the cause of inertia was unknown. Can you explain the cause of either? I admit I can not; Can you too admit that you do not know their causes?
Have a good day i
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Howdy
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Since you never studied the occult, esoterics, or indeed the wider arena of the ‘hidden’, I doubt you would understand what I mean. Much is there to see for the one looking with honest intent.
As far as people creating their own lives, I can simply say, as a believer in the creator God you must surely know at least that God directs all:
Jeremiah 10:23
“I know, O LORD, that a man’s life is not his own; it is not for man to direct his steps”
Proverbs 20:24
A man’s steps are directed by the LORD. How then can anyone understand his own way?
That will suffice I think. If you find it not valid, that’s OK, but believers are bound by the words of the Bible. It is irrefutable to them..
What people need to understand as best they can, is the mechanism by which this ‘driving force’ occurs. It requires a probing mind, reflection, and letting go. Science won’t help.
I don’t do Newton, nor any of the other people you often mention, therefore I cannot advise on their subjects. I stick to what interests me and can speak about. Anything else, since it doesn’t serve me, or the people I help, I couldn’t care less. You allready know this, as do many others.
Truth, just like admitting guilt, or fallibility, is easy…
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Seriously
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Idiot….I’m speaking of grade school, what I was taught IN school. Completely illiterate here, yes, that’s me….
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Jerry Krause
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Hi seriously,
Are you curious? Definition: adj. 3. Careful or anxious to learn; also, habitually inquisitive (Webster’s). Do you know who the Martyrs of Science are. Did you really call me an idiot and then write: “Completely illiterate here”. At least we seem to agree about what you admitted to be.
Have a good day
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Seriously
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Sarcasm and it’s proper place in the universe…and yes, I did.
I suppose it’s incredibly thoughtless of me, not to have read or known the existence of any of the books out there on the subject described ….when I was 12…
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Gary Brown
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Sep 9, 2024 WEF ADMITS That “COVID-19 Was The Test of Social Responsibility” (aka The ASCH CONFORMITY TEST!!!)
In an article titled “My Carbon: An approach for inclusive and sustainable cities” the World Economic Forum (WEF) let the cat out of the bag by openly admitting that Covid-19(84) was a “test of social responsibility”.
https://youtu.be/bYU-VuxKYpU?si=bKOSscSRDBaKhCPA
The Bill Gates control grid of influence.
http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c2a95c5c40ec2674a5c6b9393dc636a07ce91c4848ca409f383d2a23f72ed9a8.jpg
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