Leo D.M.J. Aurini - What is the Nature of Evil？

00:00:00.000 Many years ago, when I still had the honorific corporal in front of my name, I was down in the

00:00:10.260 United States at Fort Knox doing a joint military exercise with the Americans. And they had us 0.94

00:00:16.380 staying in these shacks, these two-story shacks with, you know, bedroom showers and whatnot,

00:00:23.160 that were no longer authorized to have permanent residency in, but weren't condemned. You know,

00:00:31.400 you can have the Canucks stay there for, you know, a week or two or whatever. And the reason for this

00:00:36.780 was obvious as soon as we got inside. As soon as you got up to the second story, you could actually

00:00:42.180 feel the building shifting under your weight. Particularly if you went out on the balcony,

00:00:47.700 you could feel the whole thing swaying to the left and the right. The building was just falling to

00:00:51.300 pieces. Which says sad things about the American military, quite frankly. But the reason I bring

00:00:57.860 this up is that I think this is a really great metaphor for where we find ourselves in the West.

00:01:07.960 The institutions, the society, is beginning to sway. We can feel that the structural integrity is

00:01:15.940 falling. But the problem is, we don't really know why. Now let's say this structure has an infestation

00:01:24.340 of carpenter ants. They've gone up into the beams, they're eating their holes through it, laying their

00:01:29.820 nests. The problem is, we long ago forgot our entomology. Nobody can tell the carpenter ants apart from the

00:01:40.640 the regular black ants outside. And so, nowadays, you've got these two groups. You've got this one

00:01:50.120 group, the liberals, who are shouting about how ants are fine, you need ants to eat all the dead insects

00:01:57.080 on the lawn, how they're good for it, they're healthy for the environment. And you've got this

00:02:01.260 other group screaming about how ants are evil, ants need to be banished, we need to destroy all of them. 0.99

00:02:07.100 The moral majority. And both of them are absolutely idiotic, and it all boils down to the fact that 1.00

00:02:15.580 they can't tell apart a regular ant from a carpenter ant. We've got a lot of problems plaguing us in 1.00

00:02:24.900 modern society. Pornography, for instance. But see, here's the thing, most people can't tell the

00:02:31.660 difference between the kink.com people and the casting couch. There's the video game thing. But

00:02:42.780 again, video games are not all the same animal. You've got something like Fallout New Vegas, or

00:02:49.280 Dragon's Age, where it's got a lot of catharsis, complex plot, it's got some value to it. And then

00:02:54.740 you have something as empty and meaningless as Angry Birds or World of Warcraft.

00:03:02.340 Violence in cinema. Violence in media. This is a problem nowadays. It's being celebrated in an

00:03:09.540 orgiastic manner.

00:03:10.580 But to compare some schlock action movie to something like We Were Soldiers, or to mistake

00:03:21.860 something like the hostile movies, to put them in the same category as something like Men Behind

00:03:28.420 the Sun. These are two different things. They are completely different from the ground up. They

00:03:35.220 are more different than regular ants and carpenter ants. And yet, the liberals defend all of it.

00:03:42.580 And the moral majority condemns all of it. Completely ignoring the fact that we've had

00:03:47.860 violent stories in the past, except these had heroes in them. They had plots. It was justified.

00:03:55.140 These were Saracens that we were fighting in these stories. Unlike now, we just have this

00:04:00.500 orgiastic violence in all of it. The other day, I posted an article on my blog. I'm going to link

00:04:10.660 to it below. I won't go into too many details. It involves a webcomic, and to explain it, I'd have

00:04:16.500 to tell you about the backstory of these characters and a whole bunch of Dungeons & Dragons nonsense,

00:04:21.860 because it's in that universe. But essentially, people could not tell the difference in this comic

00:04:28.900 between bullying prejudice, on the one hand, and righteous standards. They couldn't understand why

00:04:41.940 a righteous cleric would not make friends with a paladin. They would make friends with a vampire.

00:04:48.100 A man with the same ethics as a paladin rejected the vampire, rejected any negotiation with him.

00:04:54.180 They saw this as prejudiced, as cruel, as not accepting of others. Perfect example of the

00:05:01.700 problem we have nowadays. Later that day, after writing that blog post, I watched the movie

00:05:08.100 Let Me In, which is about evil. And ironically, also about vampires. A link down below to a review of the movie.

00:05:18.100 Absolutely brilliant. I highly recommend the film. It really explores the question of evil.

00:05:23.860 Discusses it. Shows you what it is.

00:05:29.300 Because here's the thing, folks. Evil does not, it's not a thing. It's not something that you can point to.

00:05:40.260 There's the saying. Most people think it's from The Usual Suspects or The Devil's Advocate. The earliest

00:05:51.620 reference to it was from the poet Beau Dallaire. But the saying goes that the greatest trick the

00:05:57.780 devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist. Usually the people that say this are

00:06:03.060 incredibly stupid. But it's an interesting little statement. You could just as easily say the 1.00

00:06:10.260 greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people that he did exist. Because what's our modern

00:06:18.340 conception of villainy? Why don't we skip the discussion of these insane terrorists in the action

00:06:28.020 movies? Of these ugly monstrous killers in the torture porn? And, you know, let's just go straight 0.98

00:06:34.020 to Godwin's Law. Hitler. Hitler, the most evil man who ever lived. Who was also a conscientious vegetarian, 0.68

00:06:42.900 who liked animals, who was a very sensitive painter, and happened to kill millions of people and start a

00:06:50.180 world war. This is our modern conception of evil. This ridiculous, black, vile, cruel, tyrannical sort of a 1.00

00:07:04.100 thing. And, you know, maybe you can point to a few examples like that in history. Stalin comes to mind. 1.00

00:07:10.980 But really, with your mundane evil, with your standard evil, it's not an evil person doing it. It's a good

00:07:20.900 person doing evil. The thing about evil, it's not seeking after evil. The idea of the black priest that 0.86

00:07:30.900 wants to kill babies because he wants to be more evil is pretty ridiculous. That's not what 99% 1.00

00:07:40.820 of evil looks like. Evil is a man who wants to go buy something for his girlfriend. So he shoots a

00:07:50.900 stranger and takes his wallet. The evil is pursuing something good. Evil is almost always pursuing something

00:08:01.700 good. Eating feels great. Eating is necessary to survive. But gluttony, when you completely give in

00:08:11.540 to the obsession for this, that's when it becomes evil.

00:08:15.220 Drugs. Drugs. Drugs are not evil. We tried prohibition. The moral majority tried shoving

00:08:26.820 prohibition down our throats. What happened? A whole bunch of alcohol overdoses, a bunch of gang

00:08:32.900 violence. Because they mistook the fact that although overconsumption, although addiction

00:08:40.260 is evil, you're seeking after the good feeling you get from alcohol to the point where you destroy

00:08:46.420 everything else in your life and can no longer afford alcohol, they mistake that for the drug.

00:08:53.300 So they say all alcohol is evil.

00:08:57.700 We've lost the ability to perceive the differences in things.

00:09:01.060 And this is where we get back to the liberalism. Not being able to recognize that the vampire,

00:09:08.900 in either of those stories, the D&D comic I talked about or the movie Let Me In,

00:09:14.340 modern tolerance and liberalism cannot recognize the vampire is evil. That this vampire is exploiting

00:09:22.340 others. They're drinking the blood of innocence to maintain their own corrupt existence. And on top of 0.92

00:09:28.020 that, anybody that comes into contact with the vampire winds up corrupting their own lives,

00:09:34.100 becoming just as bad as the vampire. Let's go back to this robber. This robber comes from a

00:09:42.340 disadvantaged home. You know, had bad luck growing up. You know, he needs to show off in front of this

00:09:47.700 girl or else she's going to leave him for somebody flashier. And he's really in love with this girl.

00:09:52.100 So he goes and robs a stranger. So you or me, we call this out. We say, no, this

00:10:02.260 cocksucker is an evil son of a bitch. He needs to be locked up. He needs to be punished. He needs to be 1.00

00:10:07.140 caned. This guy's not only a danger to society and he needs to be locked up, but he is a bad person. 0.99

00:10:14.580 And he needs punishment. Where's your heart? Why aren't you more tolerant? You know, we all go

00:10:24.100 through difficult times and, and you get to modern liberalism where we can't even see evil for what

00:10:32.260 it is. We're looking for the devil. We are looking for Hitler. We're looking for Stalins. These big, 1.00

00:10:39.860 ridiculous crime lords that apparently don't love their families and aren't nice to their dogs at the 1.00

00:10:45.940 end of the day. This, this cartoon super villainy. 1.00

00:10:52.260 And the result is that we can't call somebody evil when they're doing evil things.

00:11:01.700 Oh, charity's a part of it, of course. None of us are perfect.

00:11:05.140 But that's the thing. When you start to notice what evil is, that evil is just pursuing good things

00:11:11.540 in the wrong way, you start to become far more critical about your own behavior, analyzing your

00:11:16.660 own behavior. Is what am I, I am doing, is it right? But these people, they don't analyze.

00:11:26.900 They know if they ever looked into their own souls that they'd find so much ugliness in there.

00:11:31.940 And so, as soon as we start to critique somebody else, criticize somebody else for their choices,

00:11:38.740 for their behaviors, all of a sudden, well, you know what? I could be the next one on that list

00:11:45.540 of people that are being shitty people. And since they don't want to reform their behavior, since they 0.96

00:11:52.420 don't want to atone or make amends, they just want to keep doing what they're doing. They want to keep

00:11:57.540 snorting the coke. They want to keep skimming off the top. They want to keep lying, manipulating,

00:12:03.860 just being these shitty, destructive people. The carpenter ants in the woodwork. 1.00

00:12:09.620 They tell us we can't criticize the outright criminal.

00:12:20.980 And so this is why

00:12:24.180 children's entertainment, children's cartoons, it can't have conflict. It can't have violence in

00:12:31.540 it. And they dumb it all down. So instead of blood or death in children's cartoons,

00:12:38.420 we have the Power Rangers. Sparks flying with each ninja kick. Nobody really gets hurt. The bad guy

00:12:44.500 just explodes into fireworks at the end of each episode. And so we've got a generation of kids

00:12:51.300 that's taught that people don't get hurt in fist fights. That violence is fun and cool with no

00:12:58.260 consequences. But that standing up for something and actually going into combat because it's right,

00:13:08.020 even when you're afraid? Well, they've never seen that their entire lives. Just sparks flying. Do a cool

00:13:14.740 ninja kick. This inability to call out evil when we see it. This inability to tell the difference

00:13:26.180 between right and wrong, between carpenter ant and regular ant. This is one of the big things at the

00:13:34.900 core of our modern dysfunction. The opposite of discriminatory is being indiscriminate. Irini out, folks.

Leo D.M.J. Aurini - March 07, 2013

What is the Nature of Evil？

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