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If you portray evil as being done only by people who have pure-evil motivations, that gives your audience the impression that they can't do evil. After all, _t

If you portray evil as being done only by people who have pure-evil motivations, that gives your audience the impression that they can't do evil. After all, _they_ don't have evil motivations! I think it is in fact important to show that conflicting motivations can lead to evil. Heck, even _good_ motivations can. That way people might actually stop and think about whether what they're doing is in fact evil. Or to put it in Godwin's Law terms, your typical Nazi was trying to balance conflicting motivations. The right lesson to be learned is not "Nazis were evil, so they did evil things" but "we better watch out for conditions that cause people to behave like that".

goatlover 9y ago
Your average Nazis and German society in general, sure. But the ones who architected the final solution and world war? That's a different matter. Sociopaths exist, as do people with deep hatred for certain groups, and a desire for power and glory no matter the human cost. A better way to frame the matter is what sort of conditions in a society lead to dangerous people being in charge.
- bzbarsky 9y ago
  Just to be clear, the "ones who architected the final solution" attempted other solutions first (e.g. having Europe's Jews emigrate from Europe to somewhere else; they were stymied by other countries not being willing to accept them). I'm not saying this was a _nice_ thing to try to do, but even they did not start with cackling evil laughter and wanting to wantonly slaughter people. Something that often gets left out of histories of WWII.
  - goatlover 9y ago
    And I'm sure serial killers start out with fantasies and stalking instead of melodramatic laughter. What matters is what people end up doing. The Nazis did very bad things. And I've heard Eichman's rationalizations for keeping the trains running on time. He was doing his duty, it was lawful, nobody around him opposed the policy, etc. It's all BS to excuse his moral choices and anti-semitism. And yeah, we need to understand how groups of people come to justify genocide and other terrible practice, but keep in mind not everyone went along with it in WW2. Bulgaria refused to hand it's Jews over. There were German police and army who refused to cooperate with the SS. It was possible to resist participating in genocide, and sometimes without consequence.
    - bzbarsky 9y ago
      > What matters is what people end up doing. Sure, I agree. My point is that we need to get people to notice that they're on a slippery slope to doing bad things and stop. And that this is easier if they admit to themselves the possibility that they might end up doing bad things. As you note, during WWII there were people who noticed and stopped. I just wish more had.

goatlover 9y ago

Your average Nazis and German society in general, sure. But the ones who architected the final solution and world war? That's a different matter. Sociopaths exist, as do people with deep hatred for certain groups, and a desire for power and glory no matter the human cost. A better way to frame the matter is what sort of conditions in a society lead to dangerous people being in charge.

bzbarsky 9y ago
Just to be clear, the "ones who architected the final solution" attempted other solutions first (e.g. having Europe's Jews emigrate from Europe to somewhere else; they were stymied by other countries not being willing to accept them). I'm not saying this was a _nice_ thing to try to do, but even they did not start with cackling evil laughter and wanting to wantonly slaughter people. Something that often gets left out of histories of WWII.
- goatlover 9y ago
  And I'm sure serial killers start out with fantasies and stalking instead of melodramatic laughter. What matters is what people end up doing. The Nazis did very bad things. And I've heard Eichman's rationalizations for keeping the trains running on time. He was doing his duty, it was lawful, nobody around him opposed the policy, etc. It's all BS to excuse his moral choices and anti-semitism. And yeah, we need to understand how groups of people come to justify genocide and other terrible practice, but keep in mind not everyone went along with it in WW2. Bulgaria refused to hand it's Jews over. There were German police and army who refused to cooperate with the SS. It was possible to resist participating in genocide, and sometimes without consequence.
  - bzbarsky 9y ago
    > What matters is what people end up doing. Sure, I agree. My point is that we need to get people to notice that they're on a slippery slope to doing bad things and stop. And that this is easier if they admit to themselves the possibility that they might end up doing bad things. As you note, during WWII there were people who noticed and stopped. I just wish more had.