“There is no good and evil, there is only power and
those too weak to seek it.”
- Lord
Voldemort, Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone
Something like
this could only be said by a person or character who was, is or is certain of
being in power in the near future. For a belief such as this can only be based on
thoughts and ponderings about oneself. If we were to reword Voldemort’s
statement we would be presented with something like this, “There is no good and
evil, there is only me and what I can do and you and what you can not do”. To
continue the thought, something like this could be added by Voldemort, “You weren’t
lucky, I was. I received the power. If you were in my place you would be doing
the same thing, making the same decision. Because you aren’t, you are jealous of
me and what I own and so call it evil”.
People can hold
on to such a repulsive belief only if they maintain faith in the fact that they
can walk away unpunished after committing heinous
crimes. For you can do whatever you like if you don’t think you have to pay for
it.
Someone who
could be and often is compared to Voldemort is Hitler, although Hitler might be
thought of as a banal example, he is
a more realistic and personally relatable figure. Hitler had points in his life
when he was in power, made decisions, but did not have to personally face the
consequences. This is the core reason he could keep on going, not because he
had faith in the fact that his deeds were bringing virtue and integrity into
the world. He recognized that what he was doing was evil. His suicide denotes this statement. When he
realized that he would not get away with the atrocities he had committed if he
was not the victor, he decided to take his life, rather than face the
consequences of his actions. His precise words were, “If you win, you need not
have to explain...If you lose, you should not be there to explain!” People
cannot believe evil things to be good, they can, however, believe that they can
avoid punishment for the evil they do. When in this belief, they will no longer
call evil by name, but no matter how hard they try, they will still see it for
what it really is.
1. Something- pronoun
2. By- preposition
3. Or- conjunction
4. Being- verb
5. Future- noun
6. Good- noun
7. And- conjunction
8. Evil- noun
9. Not- adverb
10. The- adjective
11. Jealous- adjective
12. I- pronoun
13. People- noun
14. Hold- verb
15. Repulsive- adjective
16. Away- adverb
17. After- adverb
18. Heinous- adjectives
19. Although- conjunction
20. Banal- adjective
21. Personally- adverb
22. Consequences- noun
23. Because- conjunction
24. Suicide- noun
25. Denotes- verb
26. He- pronoun
27. Atrocities- noun
28. Precise- adjective
29. If- conjunction
30. Beleive- verb
31. Avoid- verb
32. In- preposition
33. They- pronoun
34. Hard- adverb
35. Is- verb
I enjoyed reading your post. I liked how you started your writing with a quote from Harry Potter. I was able to agree with you when you wrote “You weren’t lucky, I was. I received the power. If you were in my place you would be doing the same thing, making the same decision. Because you aren’t, you are jealous of me and what I own and so call it evil”. I think it is true. Thanks for giving me new insights about how evil can be thought and considered as.
ReplyDeleteIt was very interesting to read your post! You have approached to the theme of "evil vs good" in a totally different angle from mine, that every idea was very fresh and intriguing to me. You said that people are all aware that evil cannot be good, but still they practice evil because they think they can avoid the consequences. But you clarified that no matter how hard people try to rationalize their evil behaviors, they will eventually see the truth behind their actions. And here are some questions for you: What about those who never realize their evil behaviors until their deaths? Do you personally think evil is relative or absolute? I appreciate your thorough post and I really like your comparison between Voldemort and Hitler :) Good arguments and ideas!
ReplyDeleteI love the quote from Harry Potter you started with. It is interesting how evil can have several names and how much we are deceived by those names. You used power and authority as an example, but I'm pretty sure that there're will be a lot more than that. We get good titles to do evil from evil's second names and we tend to justify ourselves with them.
ReplyDeleteThey will no longer call evil by name, but no matter how hard they try, they will still see it for what it really is.
But what if there's really a valid reason? Will they feel something different about their deeds? Can beliefs really cover up the feelig of guilt that should follow evil? How should we discrminate those two? Or can we? Seriously, there're too many questions I want to ask that I don't get to answer.I hope we can figure out them together.Thankyou for giving me those new questions.