Thursday, February 6, 2014
A Return to "Evil."
At the beginning of the year we wrote some blog posts exploring how concepts of "evil," threat, fear and desire are dramatized in stories like Dracula. Now we're returning to these ideas as we get ready to read Shakespeare's Macbeth. For this blog post, discuss and explore the ideas of "evil," fear and desire in our culture: you can focus on one concept or you could discuss how the three concepts interrelate or reinforce each other. What is "evil"? What kinds of things do we fear or desire, and why? Why are these things so deeply ingrained in us?
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One of the things that defines evil is temptation. People do not see things as evil. They will see them as new things that they would like to try. They are tempted to try things that they see as beneficial or addicting. Drugs and alcohol as viewed by many as evil, and those who do them do not. This also shows that evil is a perspective. One may scold those who drink while people such as bartenders would more support it. Evil can, "consume" one through desire as well. A baseball player wishes to hit more home runs, and is let to steroids, thought of as an evil, to pursue his desire. Evil also can come in the form of harming others. Revenge is an example of this. Getting back at someone for humiliation, or harming others to climb up the social latter, or royal latter in the case of Macbeth. It is difficult to be aware of what evil is until it has made a major negative impact on your life. If surrounded by good influences, this can be avoided. Macbeth, having an evil wife, cannot escape the constant pressure.
ReplyDeleteEvil, fear, and desire holds a big influence in our culture. They have a type of power over us that can affect our peace of mind, our decision making skills, and how we handle stress. Evil in our culture is not an uncommon thing, though people throw the word around like it is nothing. Evil is more than just wrong, it’s morally bad; someone who has no conscience, and doesn’t understand the feeling of guilt. Through the years it’s been ingrained in us that we should “fear” evil and abstain from evil. But fear is something that everyone faces, everyone is afraid of something. In our culture today, fear can be used for different things. Fear can push us, it can make us abstain from uncomfortable situations, it can make us back out of dreams we’ve always wanted. Fear is a trait of weakness we all wish we never had, though it’s one thing that makes us human. People usually fear rejection, disappointment, not being good enough. We fear things that make us feel bad about ourselves or the ones we love, that scare us, or make us feel uncomfortable. Then there’s desire. Desire is more than a want or a need, desire is a wish for something we know that isn’t in our grasp and sometimes people can only have this desire if they do something “bad”. People usually desire fame, love, or power. Fear and desire is deeply ingrained into us by society and pressure. It’s in books, movies, and we see it every day in people. We talk about it all the time and mostly because it’s frowned upon. Though, there are upsides in fear, desire, and evil. Without these things, there wouldn’t be good, success, and strength.
ReplyDeleteEvil is what people live and thrive off of. This may sound completely wrong but its true if you think about it. In our world today we go through life trying to forget about all the bad things and look at life like its perfect but its not. We are surrounded by evil every day no matter where we are. People are aware of evil and the horrible things in life because we are around it every day in and we see it in every day situations and places. Every day terrible things happen, tragedies we cant avoid, and death. Evil thrives in our culture because it keeps people on their toes and alert. We all go through life trying to make the best of it because we never know when a horrible thing will happen and when our time is up. We fear evil because it is mysterious and untimely and can come out of no where. We see evil every where even in the books we read, so when people say scary stories and tragedies are the best books to read its true. We as people are attracted to horror and evil because we learn of of the horrible fantasies or situations that happen to others and we have no clue when it will happen to us. Another reason our culture is because when we read horror stories we never know what will happen next so it keeps the reader reading and authors of these stories have mastered and learned how humans think. We desire evil because its mysterious and we don't know what evil really is until we experience it our self. Evil is ingrained in our culture because all these reasons, we fear and desire evil but evil isn't always a bad thing. Evil keeps our lives busy and a mystery and if you learn to deal with evil being around you every day rather than hiding from it your life will be a lot better. This is why our society desires and fears evil.
ReplyDeleteEvil has been ingrained in our minds as something that threatens, makes us fearful,and also sometimes what we desire. My idea of what evil actually is, is just us being scared of things. In our culture people have taught us to be scared of evil, but I believe we should not fear evil. The concept of evil just makes us feel afraid. Do we even know what evil actually is? What i believe is evil is anything any person fears and also it could be something or someone who is ruthless with no feelings at all. One of my favorite quotes is by FDR, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." I believe he is right, and if we don't have to fear anything than how could there be anything evil? The kind of things we desire as humans is to be powerful. This one concept is a really big reason why we think of things as evil. I also feel as if this concept of controlling power will be a big part of MacBeth. The reason why these things are so deeply ingrained in us is because that is what we have been taught by our culture.
ReplyDeleteDesire and an others success drives people to want and be greedy. People that get what they want and take more come across as evil. People are scared that they will loose what they have and want to be immortalized in the history books or in literature. People crave that success that others have and want to be them which makes them evil because like MacBeth so far you will do whatever it takes to achieve success. Society teaches us that this is ok in a way. We show everyone these amazing stories of athletes that came from nothing becoming great so we all want to be them for their money and power. Society pays to watch these stars do their profession and makes them heroes and what boy does not want to be that superhero? We all grow up cheering for the people that have success secretly wanting to be them. People want to be President and schools honor that by having elections and giving you a taste of power. Once you get that taste of power you just want more and more that is why some of the biggest evil doers in our society are almost idolized in a sick, twisted way. Just take Darth Vader that guy killed children, teachers, and his own best friend yet since he can use the force he is idolized by everyone who buys the movie. A real life person would be Adolf Hitler he is in the history textbook and will never be forgotten because of how successful he was doing his evil deeds. Who does not want to be a leader, a powerful country or just idolized? These things make us as a society striving for better things for our own personal reasons and that is why evil, fear and desire exist.
ReplyDeleteEvil is something that is in certain people. Evil is something that is caused by greed and jealousy and wanting what you can't have. And sometimes people will do anything to get what they want, some people will go as far as murder to achieve this. And when a person commits an evil act it's is usually followed up by some form of justice upon the villain. Evil is a feeling that is in most villains within novels and movies. Like in the novel harry potter voldemort is the villain with the series and kills hundreds of people just to get to harry and kill him so that he can prove that he is the strongest wizard in the world. But it backfires on him and justice is served when harry is reborn and defeats voldermort. Most villains always preform these acts because they want power or they have power and want more. I think that evil and desire exist within society because we want what we can't have, and sometimes we are willing to do anything to get it.
ReplyDeleteEvil is a word that describes something bad and sinister. "Money is the root of all evil" means money causes people to do bad things and to be greedy. Greed is a feature of being evil and it is not a good thing to be greedy. As a society we fear failure and evil things that bring us to failure. We are scared of failure and the embarrassment of failure so we are paranoid all the time and don't trust people because of this. People are scared of losing there job that supports there family. We fear evil people that try to bring us to failure in something thats why people have trust issues. If you really think about it you are always scared of failure like as a kid when you thought of monsters you were afraid of death which is failure. We are afraid of this because failure is never a good thing and people are afraid what people will think of them if they fail. These are so deeply ingrained in us because fitting in society is considered important now a days so people care what they think of them.
ReplyDeleteEvil, fear, and threat are deeply ingrained in us because of everyday sources of entertainment. Whether its a book, movie, sport, or group of people, there seems to always be a good guy and a bad guy, a good group and a bad group, or a good team and a bad team. The bad (evil) person or group usually goes about life, or acts in ways that instill fear in other people. They give a sense of not caring for others, and doing things to hurt people. Being constantly exposed to these examples of fear, evil, and threat, cause the three to be deeply ingrained. "Evil" is a description of somebody or something that does not care about others, intends to hurt others, or wants something for bad reasons, usually selfish. The opposite of evil, good, would be a description of somebody or something that cares about others, has good, unselfish intentions, and intends to help others, as well as being generous. Something evil usually causes fear. First, it will do this with a threat. A threat usually is not guaranteed to actually happen, but there is always a possibility. This possibility instills fear. The fear caused is then directed back towards the source of evil, which then either takes action or not. The cycle then repeats. There are many things that we fear. One such thing are terrorists, because they don't care about others, hurt people, and kill people. Essentially, they are "evil". Another thing we fear is our future, because we don't know what to expect, and know our everyday choices affect it. Evil, threat, and desire have all been ingrained in our minds, for very apparent reasons.
ReplyDeleteEvil is a concept that lurks in everyone's mind. The crazy thing about an idea as bold and controversial as evil, is that its presence can be felt by any one with any background. Evil can be taking as three ideas; a state of mind, religious belief, or supernatural occurrence. To some the word "evil" strikes a thought of horrible people that's actions have been considered inhumanly, labeling him or her as something of evil. The concepts meaning has not only been thought through myths and theory's , but by religion. Religion brings up a curious question, why is it that an idea as loved and worshiped as religion, requires one to believe in evil, in order to be able to receive positive assistance. Evil is craved through entertainment that is created with imagination giving the brain an unsteady but excited, on the edge of your seat feeling. Whether it is presented in images, words, beliefs, or moral actions evil has an effect on the world in impactful ways.
ReplyDeleteEvil is said to be something harmful, scary, or even immoral, but is not that what fear? Actually these two are connected without people usually noticing it. Evil is a mirage that people construct in their minds to block out the real fears or to make up for reasons of explaining their fears. It is almost a way for people to cope with those beliefs or desires we cant explain, hence why we don't like it. This evil almost becomes an addiction, a drug that we need, that we desire so that we can somehow come up with an excuse and block out the feeling of fear. So then why do people go watch horror movies. Why are they so obsessed with fear if evil is a mirage to cover up for it? The thing is, is that people do this to reassure that the things that happen in those movies or stories aren't true or will not happen in real life. Distractions from the real fear we desire so that we do not have to deal with the actual emotion or feeling. In a way, scary movies, haunted houses are "evil", they are a mirage to block out the actual belief. The reason avoiding fear is so deeply ingrained into every single person's character is because it is a weakness. It crippled us, and kept us from surviving. So objects or events that were not explainable and somehow harmed us and created fear in ourselves bothered us. So we tried to cover up what made us weak by fully disguising that fear as evil. Evil was and still is a way to keep us from having that feeling of fear, it explains why we desire evil so much, because it helps to cover up our weaknesses.
ReplyDelete“Evil”, threat, fear, and desire can be easily noticed in our culture. “Evil” is a very broad term, so there is no particular way to define it from a cultural standpoint. Since the people of any culture all have their own unique perspectives, something that is diabolic to one person may be completely acceptable to another. That being said, everyone’s perspective of evil can be used to bring excitement into their lives. As we discovered earlier in the year, horror and evil is not an everyday basic occurrence, so the presence of evil in society can give an entire culture a form of excitement. A major factor in people’s perspective of evil is mainstream media. Mainstream media is a major factor because—even in the United States—censorship occurs on a hidden level. When a government censors what its citizens see in the news or any other media outlet, it can be directly used to alter an entire culture’s perspective of “evil” (an obvious use of this would be to make American culture think of “evil” as an exclusively foreign trait, making the United States seem “perfect” to its citizens). When you hear of a terrible thing that occurs anywhere in the world, you feel bad for those involved, but you are immediately interested and begin to get excited about the fearful situation. This is because, culturally, people are influenced to seek out “evil” and learn about fearful situations, all in the pursuit of excitement.
ReplyDeleteEvil is a characteristic. It is not usually a temporary thing. Many people use the word evil to describe someone or something that has caused harm or displeasure. Others use it to describe an act of doing something harmful. Evil can lead to power and power can lead to being evil. When a character in a story is evil it tends to be the character that is causing problems and that the reader wants nothing more in the story than for that character to be killed. Readers are drawn to evil because it adds suspension to a story and usually is the factor to the plot of the story. Most people tend to enjoy reading about things they desire. Different people desire different things but books that become classics will usually capture common desires for many people. Many factors draw readers in to books but desire and suspense(lead by evil) are the most common.
ReplyDeleteEvil, fear, and desire are three unwanted, but oh so necessary, anchors that will forever weigh down the haunting ships that float in the darkest part of our minds. Hidden behind all of the glory of the world, evil, fear, and desire never really gain our respect. People are always playing with evil, selling their soul to the devil, so to speak, to gain money, fortune and love; the three opposites of evil, fear, and desire. People also never consider this; what if this unwanted set of triplets did not exist? What if they were just pigments of our imaginations? What would the world come to? There would be no hell, but that means there would be no heaven. We would be living in a constant state of purgatory. To have desired, blissful, and beautiful things, we also must have their counterparts. This is what society does not understand. They always push away the worst, and try to race right for the happiness, but unfortunately that does not work. If everyone in the world races for happiness, then we will all get there at the same time and what happens from this? Destruction, fighting, and poverty. One beautiful disaster that is a perfect example of this is the Great Depression. Everyone in society races to be the richest and the most loved, but once they reach the top everything plummets. There has to be evil, fear, and desire, or else the world would be one ugly place.
ReplyDeleteEvil is false happiness. It can offer you all of these wonderful things, when in reality, it is all a lie. Being evil is wrong, but it can make you feel powerful. You have the feeling that you can do anything because you have no boundaries or rules. We are told evil is wrong. Why? Because we are afraid of evil. People feel helpless and weak in the presence of evil because we think evil is stronger. Evil is mischievous and morally corrupt.
ReplyDeleteEvil is something that some people can or cant control. Its all in our head and sometimes people carry that evil out of them and use it in real life situations. I believe that everybody has some type of evil in them but the people who are mature and good people hold that in. Some people have a hard time doing that. In some cases, evil can completely take over someone. For example, Dracula is someone who is 100% evil and there isn't really anything he can do about it. It's just how some people are. Evil has a huge impact in today's world but there isn't much we can do to stop the evilness in some people.
ReplyDeleteEvil is the immoral maliciousness that some humans impose on others. These people use their evil to create fear and increase their power. Fear is a terror felt by human beings that is created when people feel that there is something threatening or dangerous that they will have to face. Fear is exploited by those who control with evil. Desire is the impulse to want something that is not in the possession of the person with the desire, whether it is a tangible object or a personal characteristic.
ReplyDeleteEvil, fear, and desire are three concepts that are brought out in many different cultures. The three concepts play off each other, increasing their prominence in culture. The two main roots of evil are fear and desire. Desire creates jealousy, which can lead to bitterness. Once someone develops a bitterness towards someone else, they have a much stronger capability of performing an evil action towards that person. Fear also helps evil grow. If someone finds that they are feared by another, they have a sense of power over that person. This sense of power is reassured by being evil before the person with the fear, because evil actions will increase the level of fear. Desire and fear have their own relation as well. When someone is afraid of something, they wish to no longer be afraid of he something, or they wish to become the something. People who are filled with so much fear can eventually have such a strong desire to relieve the fear that they become the type of evil that they themselves were afraid of, inflicting fear upon others.
Evil, fear, and desire are characteristics that almost every human being shares. This is because of their ability to promote the other two while still promoting themselves. These traits aren’t as displayed by people when they are younger, but as people interact they create one or more of these qualities in the people around them, which then are able to build each other up on their own.
The term “evil” is an ancient term that is commonly used to describe a variety of things in today’s day and age. Evil can describe a multitude of things, whether it is someone looking evil or having evil traits or displaying so called evil actions. In today’s culture the term is used much too loosely. This can be seen when a student calls their teacher evil for giving an essay, or when a pet looks evil because they have red eye in a picture. Although, these things are not evil! The true meaning of evil is an act or thing that is meant to hurt someone or something on purpose. A teacher giving you an essay is not meant to hurt, but to better ones self. This exact logic is what drives me to say that we use the term evil incorrectly most of the time. A real example of an evil act is something such as sabotage, murder, or possibly setting someone up for something. All in all the frequent term “evil” is not used correctly amongst the people of today’s society.
ReplyDeleteFear and the desire to be frightened are forms of entertainment for some people in today’s twisted society. For example, in many horror films of the modern times and of the past, directors have always created that feeling of waiting for something to jump out at someone or an event that happened, and the audience has to wait the duration of the movie to figure out what happened in the event. The context is basically saying, the desire for the action and entertainment of an event or an object fears someone to an excited mood. Why does the sign of fear and evil create such an excitement for people? A desire for entertainment is what causes this fear. Another way that people are trapped in a feeling of evil is commercials. These rich, hollywood actors and directors are telling people to watch their shows because “it is a thrilling sensation for the whole family” or critics tell people that “I left the socks that I jumped out of at the theater after I watched the film”. This puts evil and desire in a different perspective because it shows it from the minds of the rich and how they easily make money from the middle class/poor. It is disgusting how these people of society are lured into Hollywood’s scams of today and are making millions of dollars an hour by cheesy directing and acting. It shows fear because it tells you, “Is the world really this dumb? Is it this easy to make a hundred trillion dollars on a movie it took a group of losers 6 months to film?” This kind of stuff makes the media cringe--but not really because TMZ is always reporting about stupid stuff that actors and the rich do. That show’s theme IS fear and evil.
ReplyDeleteSome (hopefully most) people believe that physical substances like drugs are signs of evil and should be feared by the public in todays society. Though they are signs of death and harsh living conditions, it gives people the sense of having more “swagger” (Google Docs considers that a word...). It shouldn’t because when you think about what these substances actually do to someone's physical and mental body, they cannot be good. Depression and death are not signs of happiness (to all people), and could therefore be seen as a symbol of fear and evil. The desire of people to use these substances and then going to perform a surgical procedure does not sound like a good time for the whole family either, and this does not cause a mood of entertainment, this is the other meaning of fear and evil: revolt and nausea.
The concept of evil is one that has an infinite amount of definitions. What is considered evil or not is different for every single person. These beliefs are shaped by past experiences, personal upbringings and the influence of cultural and societal beliefs. The world may not agree on what is evil, but they do agree how describe and classify something as evil. Evil is something that antagonizes someone’s very identity and corrupts his or her moral fiber and beliefs. How someone thinks of evil shows their deepest fears and causes destructive ideations. When someone is evil, they take advantage of the truth, innocence, beauty and justice of everyone else and abuse or deform it. Evil blackens the things that we hold closest and destroys the goodness and moral standards of all those who touch it. I don’t believe that someone can be born evil. I think that evil is caused by desires that can take over a life until they consume the possessor. The moment that they would do anything to obtain their desires is the moment that they embody evil. Evil, fear and desire all play off of one another. Evil is caused by the race to catch desires and stems from the fear that one will never reach their desires and ideals. When there is desire, there is always risk that it will spiral out of control and cause fear, the root of evil.
ReplyDeleteThe concepts of “evil,” threat, fear, and desire are all spread differently throughout our culture depending on the person. Evil is used to describe someone who is an awful and has done or has planed to do something horrible that will negatively affect others. Everyone uses the word evil in all different ways. Someone who gives someone a threat could be described as someone who is evil because they are trying to get something in a frightening way. This gives people fear. Fear is an emotion felt by an individual because someone or something is causing them to feel uncomfort. Fear is directly related to evil because that's the goal for the evil person or their “desire” is to make people fear them. Evil is caused through their surroundings. Evil is someone who wants to cause other people uneasiness and this is what the evil persons desires. Desire is a strong sense of wanting something. We desire to be safe and protected. Evil doesn't agree and desires to bring out the fear in us which is why this makes them evil. Evil happens because people influence and make people think and want different things. Although many people can agree on most things that are evil some may have different opinions. Everyone has different fears and desires so this can affect whether they believe something is evil or not. Evil, fear, and desire are ingrained so deeply in us because we live our life with this picture set in out minds of what is good and bad and what our opinion of what's right and wrong with people. We also all have different fears that affects our perception of what is evil and what isn’t. Overall, to me evil is a characteristic of someone who desires to scare people and cause them fear. These concepts are all dramatized throughout novels like Dracula and Macbeth because they are all things people can relate to even after cultures change. Evil is such a broad statement that people can use to make connections with many different things.
ReplyDeleteUnlike in books, we see fear, desire, and evil much different in reality. Fear, people may say, is all mental, and in some ways this is true. People imagine their own sort of fate, sometimes with a bad outcome, initiating some sort of phoney fear. It makes you feel unsafe and on-edge, though there is no actuql reason to feel this way. On the other hand, we fear tgat others will judge us, or we fear a particular person, themselves. Though we may also fear evil in real life, it is usually on a much smaller scale than in the movies or in a book. Evil is not about witches or goblinsasin a fictional story or a fairy tale, but is really much more subtle. Evil may catagorize as a way a person thinks or asthe wrongdoings a person may donto another. Something may only be seen as an evil act, however, if it was done intentionally. On most occasions, it is evil that brings about fear, but it is also seen that it is desire that has the potential to bring out evil. For example, in MacBeth he wants to be kings and is willing to kill the next in line to the thrown in order to get what he wants. Fear, desire, and evil, therefore, are all very real.
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