Domesticating Evil
After watching How to Train your Dragon, two things come to mind. First, that evil exists. Second, that humans inflict it. Evil, being the abstract concept, cannot exist without a body. You cannot point at it, you cannot see it. But you can see its effects of its infliction through that specific body. Nonetheless, it was clearly humans who enforced evil through the dragons, therefore causing them to act in such manner. It is all within the human imagination in which becomes their reality.
Back to the movie - Humans lived among other living beings who do not resemble them in language, culture, or pastime choice of activity. The humans justified hurting them, likely because not much guilt comes from inflicting pain on others you don't know.
If we were able to turn wolves into toy poodles, why wouldn’t we be able to turn bad people into good members of the community? Could artificial selection determine such thing with people being their own judge? Wouldn’t that be evil within it self? dismissing a human from reproducing because the possibility of containing the evil trait is an ethical determinant on the individual level, but ethics come into play when this determining who can and cannot produce offspring becomes a system-wide operation that entire communities are forced to adhere to. Sometimes it feels that we are outnumbered by the bad people out there. Perhaps the greed for the world truly does create a better life for the individual once she/he is exposed to it.
My professor once gave us an example of the Indian Monkeys, many of these little dudes are crazy. Scientists have always wondered why some were simple insane! ?The mentally uncertain monkeys were outnumbering the stable ones. What they first found out that the crazy gene they carry helped reproduce more successfully living offspring. The second interesting thing they found was that the Indian monkeys are biologically related to Chinese Monkeys, but the odd thing about it is that the Himalayan mountains are a massive barrier between the geographical regions, so what kind of monkey would climb through the Himalayan to get the other side? You's have to be insanely adventurous.
My point behind this is that I can't help but wonder whether evil works the same way. Despite it being a horrible thing in society, are the humans possessed by evil genetically more successful in reproduction? Or is it all just due by chance and I am thinking way too much and should go to bed? I wish I were an biological evolutionist, it would be an interesting perspective to solve the problem of evil through an evolutionary lens.
So even though evil is not a dog nor dragon. Maybe domesticating evil will be the way to go. Attempting to "solve" the problem of evil isn't working for anyone, yet. The problem with the problem of evil is that it suggests that there is only one problem, also, it suggests that it has a solution. Both claims are false. I have stopped hoping for a solution, but I still hope for change.
According to Freud, the human mind has created two supernatural beings. Supernatural because it is what humans seek to be: God, containing the best parts of humans: Love, Goodness, Forgiveness, and Satan, being the worst of humans: Blood, Hate, Evil. We find in these two beings extreme differences, with each appearing to be on opposite ends of a table. We typically seek to be our best representation, Godly like. And we turn away from the worst parts of us, Satanic like. But with these two beings we find infinite power, the desire to rule, and the hunger to succeed.
But how could humans succeed when they have Satanic like creatures roaming the world (being the dragons) when humans crave to be the "Gods" of the kingdom? It is highly impossible not to assume that the dragons have most likely felt the same way. Because just as we (humans) see them as forces of evil, they feel the same way about us. When in all reality, dragons and humans are simply different species surviving to thrive and reproduce the strongest offspring. From an evolutionary standpoint, evil is the byproduct of destructive behavior or survival mechanism. We feel sadness when our house is robbed, and so we label that action as negative and hurtful as the result of an evil act. But on the other side of the window, the robber is happy. The feeling of rush and excitement of more wealth. Does the selfish gene win? Is evil a trait? Something a human being is biologically born with, and passed on to future generations? And the environment only influences that trait to seek its peek. Because the more evil you are, the better well off you could potentially become.
Back to the movie - Humans lived among other living beings who do not resemble them in language, culture, or pastime choice of activity. The humans justified hurting them, likely because not much guilt comes from inflicting pain on others you don't know.
Evil can feel like a magic trick, "Now you see it, now you don’t" type of deal. You can see it if you show it, if you make it physically visible to the human eye. How do we treat unseen evil? Does it still count if it's just a thought? Even the evil that lies within the mind can sometimes transferred to physical space through glares, gestures and body language. Like a trait. We inherent our eye colors and sense of humor from our ancestors, so why wouldn’t we inherent their evil as well?
All it took from that boy in the film was a reach of hand, and a throw of his knife into the river, to let the dragon see that the human did not see him as evil, but as a frightened creature alone in the valley. It was fear that caused the evil. Domestication of dragons in the movie was very similar to the way wolves were domesticated thousands of years ago: The least fearful of the human was approached. So if the least fearful of evil could be approached, what would it say about how easily people treat other ruthlessly?
If we were able to turn wolves into toy poodles, why wouldn’t we be able to turn bad people into good members of the community? Could artificial selection determine such thing with people being their own judge? Wouldn’t that be evil within it self? dismissing a human from reproducing because the possibility of containing the evil trait is an ethical determinant on the individual level, but ethics come into play when this determining who can and cannot produce offspring becomes a system-wide operation that entire communities are forced to adhere to. Sometimes it feels that we are outnumbered by the bad people out there. Perhaps the greed for the world truly does create a better life for the individual once she/he is exposed to it.
My professor once gave us an example of the Indian Monkeys, many of these little dudes are crazy. Scientists have always wondered why some were simple insane! ?The mentally uncertain monkeys were outnumbering the stable ones. What they first found out that the crazy gene they carry helped reproduce more successfully living offspring. The second interesting thing they found was that the Indian monkeys are biologically related to Chinese Monkeys, but the odd thing about it is that the Himalayan mountains are a massive barrier between the geographical regions, so what kind of monkey would climb through the Himalayan to get the other side? You's have to be insanely adventurous.
My point behind this is that I can't help but wonder whether evil works the same way. Despite it being a horrible thing in society, are the humans possessed by evil genetically more successful in reproduction? Or is it all just due by chance and I am thinking way too much and should go to bed? I wish I were an biological evolutionist, it would be an interesting perspective to solve the problem of evil through an evolutionary lens.
So even though evil is not a dog nor dragon. Maybe domesticating evil will be the way to go. Attempting to "solve" the problem of evil isn't working for anyone, yet. The problem with the problem of evil is that it suggests that there is only one problem, also, it suggests that it has a solution. Both claims are false. I have stopped hoping for a solution, but I still hope for change.
If we cannot justify or actually solve evil, our best bet would be to domesticate it, and by that I mean find the magic tricks that turn evil from the possessor to the possessed. Search for ways to make it under our command, out of the hands of destruction. Keeping it to a minimum. Grass made the dragons very content. Perhaps a rainbow painted leash will do the same for the evil in the world. Our complex minds are sometimes incapable of seeing the most simplistic things right in front of mother nature. We are too wrapped up in our wars, winnings, killings, and glory. If we just stop to look at history, there isn't a time that wasn’t filled with all that bloodshed. And all for what? Is glory really the best thing in the world when it is on the expense of another human being? Another tribe? Another nation?! This is where your selfish gene kicks in and says NO, but thinks yesssss! Selfish human beings both existing and inflicting evil.
Comments