Comradeship // Freechat

But have you met evil people in real life? They are often privileged white rich cis men, who had a wonderful and caring childhood, feel at home in society, love animals and share the exact mainstream value system that society at large propagates. They need no special logic besides “just doing my job” and being really good at compartmentalizing and having a glaring empathy gap for racialized people.

The most evil person I have met was nothing like this. I've had the misfortune to encounter a genuine psychopath and she was a poor woman who was homeless and had an alcohol addiction, a pathological liar, serial shoplifter, squatter, and just an all-around unhinged person who did not feel empathy for other people. She lied to multiple people promising to pay them in exchange for a room until she got back on her feet only to never pay them and refuse to leave as soon as she was situated and her complete disregard for their situations led to her getting people evicted - all the while stealing from them. She took advantage of my mother's generosity and almost got us evicted and it took multiple calls to the police to finally get her thrown out.

Evil is not unique to the ruling class.

Real evil is always surprising to people who do feel empathy. It never “makes sense”. You never go “Oh, of course, that explains why he got that way”. More like:“But why? You have everything! You don’t need to do that! Don’t you feel anything? How can you look your children in the eyes?” It’s always weird and strange, yet normalized. If you want to write realistic villains, they need to be unbelievable.

I'm sorry but this isn't viewing evil from a position of empathy; it's viewing evil from a position of naivete. I am an extremely empathetic person and I still fully understand why evil people act the way they do. Much as I'd love to believe cruelty & callousness are just blindly irrational and make no sense at all they aren't and they do. There is a logic behind evil deeds and that is what makes evil people and ideas so dangerous: they will always appeal to someone for some reason or another.

The woman I talked about above is an example of someone who has internalized the logic that her own survival is more important than anyone else's. She values herself above other people, and while that is strange to you or me it makes perfect sense to her. That is her logic and how she thinks. There is always a motivation behind evil even if it's just as simple as "I directly benefit from this".