It’s important to know what evil is, so it can be detected and avoided, both in other people and in your own actions. So I’m going to debunk the idea that evil is the absence of good. For this I require some characters that are unquestionably evil. Let’s start with Tony Soprano.
Tony of course both kills people and willingly benefits from an organization that orders people killed. In addition much of his activities causes non-lethal harm, such as providing gambling services to known gambling addicts without the benefit of bankruptcy protection. It also costs money and quality of life for pretty much everyone in New Jersey. These are the absence of good, the little voice that says “This is wrong, you’re hurting people” is clearly not listened to. But this is just his professional life, how about his personal life?
Tony goes out of his way to cause pain even if it could cost him money, power or even potentially expose him to danger. He beats up a corrupt assemblyman who he is making good money off, simply because a woman chose him over Tony. He humiliates a high member of his “family” by talking about Bobby’s wife’s sexual history in front of him. He even makes a song about it. This is a massive taboo in the mafia, yet he does it, simply to annoy and dominate his sister. Now admittedly Janice deserves no better, but no significant goal was achieved, just causing someone he dislikes pain. These doesn’t just require an absence of good, it requires an active desire to hurt. A prioritization not of benefit to self, but damage to others.
Walter White is another great villain and he’s not driven by an absence of good. True if there was significant good in him he would stop when murders happened, or when children started to be killed, or a dozen other red flags appeared. But he also could have stopped when he was given a free out. The Shwartzs offered him a high paying job that could provide for his family as he claims he wants, and provide the health care that he needs. He rejects them because nothing is worse for Walt than damaging his pride. He at this point knows that engaging in the drug trade probably means more murders. He has an out, but the important thing is him feeling in control. Him dominating the situation, even for no practical benefit, is what’s important. It’s more important to control Jesse Pinkman than to control what happens to his family. Because deep down Walter White wants to be “the one who knocks”, i.e. the one who doesn’t fear, but is feared.
So if it’s not just the absence of good that makes evil, what makes evil? It is a desire for others to lose, not just for you to win. It’s like a game where achieving your goals is good, but preventing other players from achieving theirs is just as vital to winning. Imagine if you were competing for a prize for “Best Marriage” with another couple and you knew cheating with one of the other couple would hurt their marriage more than it hurts yours. To a sensible person this behaviour is psychotic. It’s clearly going to hurt you and those you “love” (if you loved them you wouldn’t do it). But to someone evil the harm to others is more important than the benefit to themselves.
Serial killers are the extreme of this, they value the harm to people so much that they risk death and life imprisonment They gain nothing from their evil but the knowledge that they can be evil and get away with it. That they can impose their will in the most extreme way. Not being good doesn’t cause this. A hitman could of course kill similar numbers of people simply because he lacks the morality to value other human life above his pocketbook. In theory such a man could not be “evil”. But such men always had other options to earn money. There is a good chance that a hitman is just a serial killer with an excuse.
This essay was inspired by a video about modern fictional villains. “Modern Villains are Pitiful and Impotent” by The Second Story in which she claimed evil is the absence of good. But I think you can write a villain that isn’t truly evil. There are system that create incentives to hurt others. Systems where amorality not immorality is the rule. Consider the choice to plunge a country into civil war, with tens of thousands of people killed, a similar number raped, and maybe a million man-years of economic production destroyed, just for personal survival. That’s the absence of good, not doubt about it. But is it evil? Because if it is then the Starks are just as big a villain as the Lannisters in “A song of Ice and Fire”. But they aren’t.
Consider a villain who is partway up the command structure of an empire like Rome. He has no power to make that system non-abusive. Nobody does. It’s exploitative by violence from it’s roots. He has no power to leave the system in a way that makes it better. At most someone slightly less competent at coercion would take his place, at worse someone less willing to compromise will, and in any case it would be personally dangerous. This could be a sympathetic villain in a sense, he’s not trying to make your life worse. He’s trying to survive in a system that eats it’s own. The day he killed your family wasn’t Tuesday for him, it was the day his boss almost found out about his screwup and he had to cover.
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