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Overview

Have you ever wondered why Hitler is considered an evil man, even though Mao Zedong killed more people? And have you ever thought about why Batman is a hero but real-life vigilantes are often labeled as dangerous outlaws? These key points will explore the role of villainy in modern society and culture. In these key points, you’ll discover how George Bush probably won’t be remembered as a villain; how criminality and villainy relate to one another; and why fiction changes our perception of villainy.

Big Idea #1: “Goodness” and “badness” are just figments of our imagination.

How do you decide if someone is good or bad? It’s not as easy as it seems, because we generally judge people based on our own biases. For example, we might believe that a person is born either good or evil. In reality, there are more philosophical reasons behind the way we perceive villains. After all, our definitions of “good” and “bad” are influenced by cultural concepts generated through shared understandings of history and stories told to us when were growing up.”

For example, many Americans believe that Russians are bad people because of their history and stories. However, the opposite is true for Russians because they have a different definition of good and bad.

Philosopher John Rawls came up with a thought experiment to explain why we are incapable of having an unbiased definition of “good” and “bad”: the so-called veil of ignorance. Imagine that you’re given the opportunity to play God and create a brand new society from scratch. You could make whatever laws or social conventions you want. But the catch is: once the new society is created, you’ll enter into it as a brand new person with no way of knowing what position you’ll be in. You might be homeless, a refugee or a terminally ill person with completely different morals from the person who designed the society you now live in.

With this veil of ignorance, you would probably try to create a society that is as fair and as “good” for everyone. But what does it mean to say that a society is good? For instance, if a refugee has experienced trauma, he might have different standards than someone who grew up in comfort.

Big Idea #2: The term “Machiavellian” is closely related to villainy – for seemingly good reasons.

When you hear the term ”Machiavellian,” you might think of a villain who is deceitful and scheming in order to obtain power.

But when Niccolò Machiavelli wrote his influential book, The Prince, he was not setting out to create an instruction manual on how to be “bad.” Modern scholars have suggested that The Prince may have been a criticism of the political practices of his time.

But when author Niccolò Machiavelli wrote The Prince, he wasn’t trying to write an instruction manual for being “bad.” Scholars now believe that The Prince may have been a criticism of the political practices in Italy at the time.