Some Thoughts on Villainy
In my opinion, in real life it's very rare for someone to "be the villain." Most people don't walk around cackling and planning to destroy the world by reversing the Earth's magnetic field like comic book villains! And past a certain point, the Evil Meglomaniac Supervillain isn't very plausible in a book.

And yet there is evil in the world.



In real life, it seems to me that there are three reasons why people do evil things.

1. Self interest. I think that about 90% of the evil that happens in the real world is because of people acting in their personal, or their groups', self interest at the expense of other people. There's nothing crazy about murdering the king to take the throne, or about cheating people out of money. There's nothing crazy about declaring war on people who are weaker than you so that you can take their stuff. There's nothing crazy about destroying natural resources in a way that will precipiate a crisis after you're long dead. There's nothing crazy about looting valuable and irreplaceable objects, or killing people to take their land. All of those are very rational things to do, if all one values is one's own self interest.

After all, why worry about consequences that will happen long after you're dead? It's somebody else's problem. Why worry about consequences to people you don't know and don't care about?

For that matter, what about the mundane evil of screwing someone over to get them fired so you can have their job? Of going after someone else's spouse? Of driving away from an accident if nobody saw it? Of making a mistake in the workplace look like someone else's fault?

Often people rationalize this kind of evil. Well, I would do a better job than he would, so it was really ok for me to screw him over because I'm really more deserving. If she can't keep her husband, then he's fair game. It's not like the owner will care about the wreck -- after all the insurance will probably pay it all anyhow.

We're hesitant to name it evil. Of course, many of the greatest writers have.

"Is this a dagger I see before me, the handle toward my hand?" Shakespeare's Macbeth does not start out intending to commit murder, but he goes there. Once we start rationalizing, where do we end?

And whose place is it to call a spade a spade? Whose job is it to stop it?

The hero.

2. They Think What They're Doing Is Right. The second most prevalent evil comes from people mistakenly doing what they think is right, but is actually harmful. Because of their personal blinders or because of pride or another personality flaw, people do something they think is right that is actually wrong. They support a contender for the throne who turns out to be motivated only by self interest. They believe that electroshock treatments will help people who are depressed. They believe that someone is possessed and needs to be exorcised. They believe they're voting for the candidate who is best for the country.

Very often this is motivated by a sincere desire to help people based upon prejudices. For example, the idea that Native American children would be better off taken away from their parents and raised in Indian Schools where they would leave their "inferior" culture behind. The people who did this were trying to help. But breaking families apart, breaking people's hearts, was a very great evil.

This is perhaps the hardest kind of evil to deal with, because the people who are perpetrating it believe that they are the heroes. And they are, in a twisted way. But therein lies the tragedy -- to do great evil unwittingly.

3. Mental Illness or the Like. If you think about Real Life, many of the terrible things that commonly happen to people are because someone else is crazy or has a problem they're not addressing. The drunk driver, the abusive parent, the narcissistic girlfriend, the pathological lier, the bipolar boss -- they don't mean to do evil. But they do. They make other people miserable. They hurt other people. The person the drunk driver hit is just as dead as if they'd intended it. The child the abusive parent hits is just as hurt as if they didn't mean it.

This is the villainy we understand best -- it was almost an accident! Our tendency is to excuse and to remove responsibility, to say, "Well, he can't help it."

We like that excuse so much that we search wildly for more and more baroque theories of mental illness to explain why bad things happen. Take a look around at some of the armchair psychologists examining Hitler! He was bipolar. Sociopathic. Had too much testosterone. Had too little testosterone. Had mother issues. On and on and on. We'd like to be able to prove some bizarre theory so that we could put it all away in the Crazy Meglomaniac Supervillain box.

So that we don't have to admit that millions of sane, rational people just like us voted for him.

Because that's really scary.

We like our Villains with a big V. We like our comic book maniacal laughter. Because what deep down really scares us is wondering if we aren't the villain.