What makes a villain?

[Iskar]

Yes, although that doesn't mean we can interpret it in an objectively true way (to its fullest extent). This applies elsewhere too. Suppose you witness a natural phenomenon, like a nebula or a shooting star. What you are seeing is objectively true, but that doesn't mean that you have - or even can - interpret the whole objective truth about it.

All of Scripture is true, but not all truth is in Scripture.

They had the man himself.

To be perfectly frank, I think Cyclops' ironic point flew well over your head like a stone at the stoning of the adultress.

Speaking of the latter, here's a joke for your enjoyment

Jesus and his entourage arrive at the stoning of the adulteress and he tells the people to stop, saying "Whosoever is without sin shall throw the first stone!" Wham! - a stone hits the woman right on the head, coming from the crowd behind him. Without turning around Jesus sighs: "Mother..."

Right, back on topic. There is a lot I wanted to respond to. In the past few posts we've had
1) moral relativism vs absolutism
2) heroes/villains from literature/narrations vs heroic/villainous behaviour in real life
3) communication as a means to arrive at common understandings/morals/truths

There were other things as well I found highly interesting, but about which I have nothing to say that would elucidate anything any further, so I'm gonna stick with those three. I'll try to deal with 1+3 together and get back to 2 later.

BPG advanced a position of stark moral absolutism which immediately showed its weakness, though:
Either you have to dictate a moral code to others and then probably cannot rely on their adherence to it unless you enforce it by threat of violence. This is something most of us would instinctively call immoral, but that is not an argument. For the time being, an authoritarian system with a externally imposed moral code for everyone may even be intrinsically consistent. I will have to come back to this later to argue why it is not. Mark this by (+).

Or you have to make inane claims about supposedly self-evident objective truths as the basis of common morals. But truth as a static, self-evident equivalence of an independently existing object and its perception by an observer has long been debunked, most famously by Kant, but already a couple years earlier by Descartes (his "cogito" is badly translated as "I think", more fittingly it should be "I doubt"). We've had plenty of discussion about this in the EMM and anyone interested in this issue itself can read them here, or just go and read Kant and Descartes, so I'm not going to elaborate on this any further (unless asked to).

The point is, human perception and thinking (the first, second, third order processing of perceptions according to the rules we call "logics"), are highly fallible, which gets us to the question of moral relativism: Usually this is worded in the way of "one man's hero/freedom fighter, another one's villain/terrorist" and suggests that morals are entirely arbitrary and subjective. I posit two things: One, that the relativism goes even deeper, and two, that this - surprisingly - makes the morals actually less arbitrary.
For the first point, go back to Kant and Descartes: Not only are the moral rules according to which we (wish to) act subjective and fallible, but even the "facts" (circumstances, actions of others, ...) to which we react according to such rules are only the outcome of highly fallible subjective perception and reasoning. We're not just applying different rules to the same facts, we're applying different rules to different perceptions. Taken at face value, this should actually result in societal breakdown and Hobbes' (not the tiger!) war of all against all. However, it doesn't, apparently, and that is because of communication:
The very fallibility of our perceptions forces us to cooperate with others and sort the reliable or "true" from the unrealiable or "false" perceptions by means of exchange of information and arguments, in order to ensure that we do not suffer harm due to misconceptions (like fire not being hot, humans being able to fly, and other stuff you may even have thought true at the age of three). Note that I put "true" and "false" in quotes, because I am not interested in supposed extrinsic truths: Even if the thing-itself exists independent of our thoughts, we can never access it (cf. Kant, again), so the only "truths" we need are reliably reproducible perceptions and reliably communicatable notions about those, something completely intrinsic to our mind.
How does that make morals less arbitrary? Well, in order to navigate your own sea of fallible perceptions and thoughts without running aground or sinking, you need to communicate with others - and in such a way that you can expect them not to willingly deceive you. In short, you need other people, not just incidentally because of the division of labour, but necessarily, on a purely epistemological level.

From that we can easily derive some sort of basic "epistemological" morals:
Treat others always in such a way that you can expect them to engage in honest communication with you to reduce the life hazard of unreliable ("false") perceptions or thoughts.

This is also, where the authoritarian system (see (+) above) with enforced moral code fails: The authoritarian power does not treat the others subject to their set moral code according to the above rule. On an abstract philosophical level a "villain" is then anyone who disregards the integral importance of other people to his/her own existence and fails to respect their dignity as equal participants of discourse.

All moral systems that go beyond that in scope or detail are again, subject to communication and exchange of opinions and arguments - which is where narratives come in. They are a means to enable communication across larger temporal or spatial distances, within or even across cultural reference groups. As such I do not find it so surprising that most "heros" or "villains" in such narratives are broken characters with both good and evil aspects on either side: They serve as anchors for questions you have to ask yourself rather than answers you are supposed to accept. It is easy to declare A as good and B as bad, but what really defines a moral system is what situations it recognises as not clearly decidable, as moral dilemmata, and what attempts at resolutions it offers. This even applies to religious narratives/texts: As a Catholic I may believe that scripture holds ultimate moral truth (among other truths), but my reading (perception!) or understanding (thought!) of it may be wrong, and I need to communicate with others identifying as Catholics (in my case) to arrive at a reliable understanding of it. This understanding is still subject to our joint fallibility (even though that is likely smaller than my individual one), so we claiming to have entirely fathomed the divine will on some issue would not only be blasphemous hubris, but also epistemological nonsense.

Lastly, since you brought up the Thanos/Tony Stark example, Cyclops, I think many "superheroes/-villains" from the comic universes do not fit the actual hero/villain motives from literature/older narratives: They are mostly described as morally unambiguous (and usually given some exemplary scene of saving a single random civilian), but ultimately (and I think this gets really clear when watching the Avenger movies and their likes) these stories do not depict moral conflicts, but merely titanic struggles of Titans A against Titans B where one group of titans is arbitrarily labelled as "ours" or "good". Superhero movies really are more akin to the stories of titan/god struggles from older mythologies than to hero/villain struggles - their prota- and antagonists aren't human, are not subject to human moral questions and ultimately do not care for humans. (There are of course, exceptions, Spiderman probably being one of the morally more interesting characters, at least in the beginning.)

[Cope]

To be perfectly frank, I think Cyclops' ironic point flew well over your head like a stone at the stoning of the adultress.

The intention was to diffuse his appeal to ridicule and respond to a common (yet poorly construed) criticism of English-speaking protestants (i.e. we believe the KJB makes us infallible).

[Iskar]

I don't think Anglicanism was the target of his remark. I read it more as ridicule of the idea that some objective (moral) truth is "just there" by which we can universally judge every action (as depicted in BPG's post).

[Cyclops]

I don't think Anglicanism was the target of his remark. I read it more as ridicule of the idea that some objective (moral) truth is "just there" by which we can universally judge every action (as depicted in BPG's post).

Quite right, I feel like you've understood me well.

I suspect we generate truth as much as access it, in a weird quantum-esque way, but I lack the brain power to establish that.

I do love studying documents like The Ten (or so) Commandments, they make amazing gateways to a series of past mindsets. There's definitely truth there, or truths, as much as I doubt the Truth.

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and saint and heard great argument
About it and about: but evermore came out
By the same door as in I went

The poet of getting drunk with young women and unironically dissing formal education in a superbly educated style (must have been an humanities tutor-typically villainous behaviour!) does I think show the point of pointless discussion: at the very minimum you learn the lesson there is no lesson. Its pretty grim "no future get drunk now", and I believe there's more but we don't get to it by staring hard at one past imagined version of a further past, rather by hearing all the voices.

That said if I have offered criticisms of Anglicanism as well, by implication more than direct intent, its understandable. Anglicanism is in a liberal/Liberal Australian Irish Catholic upbringing such as I enjoyed, the villain, just as Catholicism has been a villain for Anglicans (not to mention many Australian Irish ex-Catholics).

My own theological studies have shown me how close many Catholic and Anglican doctrines often are, how both serve political as well as social and even (surprisingly) religious ends. I recall fondly a beatific Anglican lecturer (truly ecumenical and philanthropic) and his nemesis, the grave and sulky Jesuit who specialised in Taoism and horrendously unhelpful essay corrections (he famously underlined what I thought was a reasonable statement about "the Way" and cryptically noted "I blame myself for this" with no further elucidation).

Its very silly to cast "Anglicanism" as a villain. The Church of England is a "tall" church, like a slice of cake (or perhaps several slices cut by various reformers) with many layers carved from the Great Church, just as the Catholic church is several slices of even more layers cut from the Great Church (if it were ever one cake-obviously it was a babka at one point). There's a great deal of room in such a complex for genuine belief and great and heroic deeds, such as the anti-slavery crusade.

One might see Henry the Poxed as a villain (its a bit of stretch to see this wife murdering preTrump as a hero but anything is possible) and makes for a wonderful cartoon villain in a cartoon version of history but so much good has been done by Anglicans it would be villainous to dub them particles of villainy in a villainous whole.

I have an ancestor who "did good" as an evangelical Anglican, I'm surprised he did not become a Methodist (portraits show a beaming benevolent man, generous to the last whisker). Incidentally he contributed to what the UN now defines as genocide. He helped set up a tract of land as a refuge for several aboriginal Australian groups. Forcing them together created conflict, and at that point my ancestor's health broke and he withdrew from the project. Once forced together the aboriginal groups were subject to rape, abuse, malnourishment and salami tactics that whittled their land down to a stub, from which they were later ejected (they remained by squatting and subsequently made the land their own again winning land rights through dodged political action).

So my ancestor is a hero in one sense (he defended the poor and down trodden including aboriginal people, and did his best for them) and a villain (in that he kicked off genocidal trends, with a stated intent of erasing Aboriginal spiritual beliefs through Christian conversion).

So to address your point Iskar about simple and complex heroism and villainy, I think the dance is always complex, the simple form of hero/good and villain evil is always just a snapshot. If the story is simple its because it is momentary or sliced down one axis. Heraclitus wins again: as he might have said "its all fluxed up".

Enough for now, this is too interesting and I have a family you know. I have to tell my son "maybe" and "I don't know" when he wants definite answers, its a full time job. It helps that Mrs Cyclops is always right.

[numerosdecimus]

What makes a villain?

One word: Coercion.

It is the root of all evil.

[Prodromos]

What makes a villain?

One word: Coercion.

It is the root of all evil.

I don't know about that. Coercion is evil, but some of the worst evils are voluntary, like idolatry and sexual immorality.

[Iskar]

I don't think coercion works as a criterion. Societies also use coercion to enforce laws that serve the public good, so it would be hard to label all that as villainous.

[numerosdecimus]

But coercion is the violation of another's fundamental right to be autonomous. With coercion, all agency is denied from a person.

I know it's just my opinion, but I can't think of a more evil fate imposed upon someone.

[Iskar]

Individual autonomy is not boundless and finds its limitations in the rights of others. The autonomies of individuals must be balanced against each other and those overstepping their bounds are kept in check by coercion so they don't deny others their agency in turn.

[numerosdecimus]

Individual autonomy is not boundless and finds its limitations in the rights of others. The autonomies of individuals must be balanced against each other and those overstepping their bounds are kept in check by coercion so they don't deny others their agency in turn.

I never said it was boundless. Indeed it finds it's limitations in the rights of others, for if it infringes them, by definition, it must be under the form of coercion. Think of it as the "rules of engagement", a set of principles that must be always respected when interacting with another. In case any of these principles are not respected, it becomes an infringement of another's agency and the party harmed by it now has the right to engage in self defense and active discrimination.

On the other hand, if the interaction with another individual is done through a voluntary agreement between the two, there is no violation of another's autonomy and agency.

And no, a voluntary agreement does not imply that the terms of that agreement satisfy entirely the wishes and/or objectives of each party. This is why negotiation exists, so the interests of both parties can (sort of) balance with one another. Should one party find the terms of an agreement unfeasible and intolerable, that party can withdraw.

(edited)

[Derc]

So whoever takes away the rights of others can be considered a villain, even if it is to protect the community. At the same time one who fights back can also be considered a villain, for he puts the value of his individual freedom above community. A fitting example how grey everything is. And a great issue of our time.

[Sir Adrian]

If you give up your rights to someone else for a little safety you will end up losing that safety as well because you have just created a dictator.

[Iskar]

I never said it was boundless. Indeed it finds it's limitations in the rights of others, for if it infringes them, by definition, it must be under the form of coercion. Think of it as the "rules of engagement", a set of principles that must be always respected when interacting with another. In case any of these principles are not respected, it becomes an infringement of another's agency and the party harmed by it now has the right to engage in self defense and active discrimination.

On the other hand, if the interaction with another individual is done through a voluntary agreement between the two, there is no violation of another's autonomy and agency.

And no, a voluntary agreement does not imply that the terms of that agreement satisfy entirely the wishes and/or objectives of each party. This is why negotiation exists, so the interests of both parties can (sort of) balance with one another. Should one party find the terms of an agreement unfeasible and intolerable, that party can withdraw.

(edited)

That's a fair point where direct, individual interaction is concerned. But what about intermediate interaction? The current pandemic provides an excellent example: Even if someone behaves irresponsibly they are usually not measurably harming anyone directly on the spot, at least not in a practically provable fashion, but are still harming basically everybody by potentially spreading the virus. We have laws or administrative decrees that prohibit this and our societies use coercion to enforce them, even though there is no directly measurable initial coercion by the perpetrator. Is that still villainous?

[numerosdecimus]

That's a fair point where direct, individual interaction is concerned. But what about intermediate interaction? The current pandemic provides an excellent example: Even if someone behaves irresponsibly they are usually not measurably harming anyone directly on the spot, at least not in a practically provable fashion, but are still harming basically everybody by potentially spreading the virus. We have laws or administrative decrees that prohibit this and our societies use coercion to enforce them, even though there is no directly measurable initial coercion by the perpetrator. Is that still villainous?

You bring up a lot. I'll try to be succinct.

Concerning the dynamic between legislation and morally correct. The two aren't always in sync and I view our current "emergency pandemic laws" as a demonstration of it. In fact I view them as gross, abominable violations of human rights and settings a dangerous precedent. Honestly I wouldn't use our current pandemic laws as an example of anything, I view them as simply being despotic in nature and based on technocratic decisions, that push a dogmatic narrative of "trust the science" and not sound science based on the scientific method.

As for "indirect interaction", I suppose you're using this example as a means to avoid legal responsibility (and I have seen it being used professionally by "elites" who wish to avoid responsibility of their clearly illegal actions). Well, I won't delve in great detail, so I ask you take the worth of my opinion at face value, and feel free to discard if it's not trustworthy for you, but professionally (and for privacy's sake, without giving specific details) both I and my father have seen this first hand in the office world of the "big shot elites" that these people want complicated legislation as a means of redundancy in the form of loopholes. These people despite law which is simple, generalist and close and faithful in nature to the fundamental abstract concepts of that is morally correct and what is not, even at the cost of complexity.

Trust me when I saw this, but the problem of "indirect representation" can be solved 100% if you throw away more than 90% of all legislation. Basic, constitutional law is more than enough to deal with these situations. These parasites despise such a concept, they want no accountability and all the means of acting without responsibility by having ready a legal system which puts then in a position of legal privilege by always transferring the risk of any decisions to their "underlings"

This is where I got my worldview of "less is more" in terms of legislation and the closer the legislation is to simply follow the basic concepts, the more efficient and morally correct it is.

I know I wrote a lot that ultimately can't be verified, so I'll leave you to be the judge of validity of what I wrote.

But at least I hope you got some perspective as to why I have learned to give value to the concept of both autonomy and accountability.

[Iskar]

You bring up a lot. I'll try to be succinct.

Concerning the dynamic between legislation and morally correct. The two aren't always in sync and I view our current "emergency pandemic laws" as a demonstration of it. In fact I view them as gross, abominable violations of human rights and settings a dangerous precedent. Honestly I wouldn't use our current pandemic laws as an example of anything, I view them as simply being despotic in nature and based on technocratic decisions, that push a dogmatic narrative of "trust the science" and not sound science based on the scientific method.

As for "indirect interaction", I suppose you're using this example as a means to avoid legal responsibility (and I have seen it being used professionally by "elites" who wish to avoid responsibility of their clearly illegal actions). Well, I won't delve in great detail, so I ask you take the worth of my opinion at face value, and feel free to discard if it's not trustworthy for you, but professionally (and for privacy's sake, without giving specific details) both I and my father have seen this first hand in the office world of the "big shot elites" that these people want complicated legislation as a means of redundancy in the form of loopholes. These people despite law which is simple, generalist and close and faithful in nature to the fundamental abstract concepts of that is morally correct and what is not, even at the cost of complexity.

Trust me when I saw this, but the problem of "indirect representation" can be solved 100% if you throw away more than 90% of all legislation. Basic, constitutional law is more than enough to deal with these situations. These parasites despise such a concept, they want no accountability and all the means of acting without responsibility by having ready a legal system which puts then in a position of legal privilege by always transferring the risk of any decisions to their "underlings"

This is where I got my worldview of "less is more" in terms of legislation and the closer the legislation is to simply follow the basic concepts, the more efficient and morally correct it is.

I know I wrote a lot that ultimately can't be verified, so I'll leave you to be the judge of validity of what I wrote.

But at least I hope you got some perspective as to why I have learned to give value to the concept of both autonomy and accountability.

If the Covid legislation is too contentious a point, then let us use another one, as I do not want to get into a discussion about the former in this context. By indirect interaction I do not mean what you alluded to (and I don't really follow the point), but cases where actions have collective rather than individual effects. There are many examples for this in modern society such as climate, environment, social security, but they tend to be politically contentious, so I will restrict myself to the basic and largely apolitical example of the Tragedy of the Commons:

Consider a village with a common green. The green belongs to no particular villager but all have the right to use it to graze their sheep. As long as everyone uses this right with moderation all works fine, but individual villagers may use the green more than others to safe their own lands for other uses (more sheep, other crops), thus gaining an advantage. However, if a majority of villagers do this, the green will be trampled to a muddy wasteland and no one will be able to graze their sheep there. The individual choice of each villager to overuse the commons does not directly apply harm/coercion on any other villager, but the collective overuse does so for all. In such cases societies use laws enforced by coercion to prevent this behaviour, like mandating a maximum number of sheep to be grazed per day on a maximum number of days per week by individual villagers, and applying penalties (coercion) to those that do not comply - even if grazing one more sheep for one more hour would apply no direct or measurable harm to any other member of society/the village.

Therefore I would posit, that not all forms of non-reactive coercion are villainous - unless of course you take "coercion" to have so broad a meaning that it includes collective harm by overuse of common goods.

[numerosdecimus]

If the Covid legislation is too contentious a point, then let us use another one, as I do not want to get into a discussion about the former in this context. By indirect interaction I do not mean what you alluded to (and I don't really follow the point), but cases where actions have collective rather than individual effects. There are many examples for this in modern society such as climate, environment, social security, but they tend to be politically contentious, so I will restrict myself to the basic and largely apolitical example of the Tragedy of the Commons:

Consider a village with a common green. The green belongs to no particular villager but all have the right to use it to graze their sheep. As long as everyone uses this right with moderation all works fine, but individual villagers may use the green more than others to safe their own lands for other uses (more sheep, other crops), thus gaining an advantage. However, if a majority of villagers do this, the green will be trampled to a muddy wasteland and no one will be able to graze their sheep there. The individual choice of each villager to overuse the commons does not directly apply harm/coercion on any other villager, but the collective overuse does so for all. In such cases societies use laws enforced by coercion to prevent this behaviour, like mandating a maximum number of sheep to be grazed per day on a maximum number of days per week by individual villagers, and applying penalties (coercion) to those that do not comply - even if grazing one more sheep for one more hour would apply no direct or measurable harm to any other member of society/the village.

Therefore I would posit, that not all forms of non-reactive coercion are villainous - unless of course you take "coercion" to have so broad a meaning that it includes collective harm by overuse of common goods.

It's interesting, the example you mentioned falls perfectly within the definition of the "tragedy of the commons". The concept of "public property" is in reality an oxymoron since by definition the term "property" implies ownership from a private individual or institution.

The root problem of the scenario you described comes from the existence of "public property", as it goes against the axiomatic principles which define human nature. Consequently, we see the dysfunctional and long term unsustainable behavior from all who take advantage of the "green". To use a set of measures based on coercion will not solve the situation at its origin and it's akin to creating a new problem in order to solve a previous problem.. Remember, the dysfunctional, selfish behavior is a symptom, not the origin of the problem.

My solution for your scenario? Sell it to a define private owner. Let the new owner set the terms of its use and how it plans to best make use of it.

[Iskar]

One might well disagree that private, individual property is "human nature", but that is not necessarily the point here. You might try to sell off the common green by lot, but you cannot do so with actual public goods like clean air, fresh water, the high seas etc., so the point remains.

[Kjertesvein]

Interesting comments so far.

OP

https://youtu.be/djmahoN32A8

In the LotR: Return of the King, there's the initial scene where Sauroman stand atop of the tower of Orthanc. Even when he is beaten, he scolds the victorious good guys. Paraphrasing
"Aragorn is but a strider from the north, what makes you the right to be king? Theoden, victory at helms deep does not belong to you, Theoden horse master. Gandalf, so eager to sacrifice those he professes to love."
These 3 things comes up later, when Aragorn proves himself worthy of the throne, by facing death and subsequent battles. Theoden is the main saviour of the Battle of the Pellenor Fields. Gandalf, has his interactions with Pippin, Frodo, and Sam.

All of these statements are true, to some degree. As we see, all of 3 good guys feel it pierce through their weakest spot. They look downwards and realise he knows things they might've not heard from anyone else. Sauroman made them aware.
Who would St George be without the dragon? Just George. Who would Batman be without he Joker? Bruce Wayne with severe mental issues.
A triumphant roman general need a slave to tell them they're mortal.
Every medieval lord needs a churlish rustic serf(?), middle english origin of the word villain.

I don't know exactly how to articulate it, but there's something villainous about some one who can point directly at your shadow, even when you think you're at the top of the world. Only by interactions with your villain, thesis meet antithesis, can there be a synthesis.

It doesn't have to be a person. Take your own shadow. Deep anger, even justified. If you feel deep resentment for someone/something, then it's not good. Obviously, but at the same time, a golden opportunity for success. What you need will be found where you least want to look.

~Wille

[enoch]

One might well disagree that private, individual property is "human nature"

One should.

[Himster]

Often, it is a misguided sense of victimhood that makes a regular-Joe into a villainous-Joe.
I struggle to think of a single exception to that rule, either in fact or fiction.