Are Some People Just Evil?
Watching the news these days makes me believe in Hollywood. My hyper-critical-movie-critique-alter-ego used to criticise blockbuster villains for being too evil (John Lithgow in Cliffhanger (1993) comes to mind). I longed for more complicated characters. I wanted to understand why they became evil. However, watching Iraqi citizens in Fallujah rejoice at the site of burning cars and charred bodies dragged through the streets makes me wonder: Are there truly evil people in this world? I’ve often likened Osama Bin Laden to the villians I used to see on the Superfriends cartoon; you know, the real evil fiction-style villians, like Dr. Evil from Austin Powers. But are these people among us? Today, the Boston Herald has a story about Weldong Xu, a Harvard professor and Dana Farber cancer researcher who bilked his students and colleagues out of $600,000, claiming to be raising money for SARS research. Ironically, it was to fund a questionable Nigerian business deal which promised a $50 million profit.
So did Hollywood have it right? Are some people just plain evil to the core? And if so, does one of them live next door?
April 14th, 2004 at 4:09 pm
News stories like that are why I avoid the news and watching TV in general. I clicked on the link and read the story (curiosity killed the cat) and felt sick to my stomach afterward. Ignorance truly is bliss. However being ignorant is part of the problem, not the solution. You can’t help but feel how insurmountable the world’s problems are and how little you feel in the grand scheme of things. And that’s when I decide to change the channel.