<story><title>The good guy/bad guy myth</title><url>https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-pop-culture-obsessed-with-battles-between-good-and-evil</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>coldtea</author><text>I think it&amp;#x27;s the inverse. Good-vs-evil narratives are not some progression, rather the inverse.&lt;p&gt;Whereas ancient peoples and older eras saw war as a necessary evil in some cases, and could see the enemy as regular people that they just had to fight (even down to the Iliad, the most heroic figure, Hector, is on the enemy side), the Good-vs-Evil narrative doesn&amp;#x27;t come to prevent war (except in dire circumstances), but to refuse the enemy its humanity and justify total war.&lt;p&gt;Good-vs-evil was used to justify the pillaging and goring of the colonial era, to the Nazi&amp;#x27;s extinction of the Jews, and so on.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s the route of modern diplomatic terminology (&amp;quot;axis of evil&amp;quot; and so on), and behind the dehumanizing of the enemy. And even civilian casualties don&amp;#x27;t matter much when you&amp;#x27;re fighting &amp;quot;evil&amp;quot; (e.g. Dresden, Hiroshima, modern Middle East, etc).&lt;p&gt;Another such trick is to promote (with articles, movies, etc) the &amp;quot;inner conflict&amp;quot; of your side (how they fear they&amp;#x27;re fighting an unjust war, the pain they get from the killings they had to do, PTSI, etc), thus humanize them more into good guys, while still painting the other side as caricatures. This faux-critique of war is an excellent way to say &amp;quot;we might do bad, but we&amp;#x27;re ultimately the good guys, the ones who actually do question what we do&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>mjw1007</author><text>I think people telling stories like Star Wars choose to make the antagonists Capital-E-Evil because modern audiences are much less happy to root for people who are fighting a war if they aren&amp;#x27;t shown that the war is thoroughly justifiable.&lt;p&gt;A few hundred years ago you could happily put a character in a saga and have them go off on viking raids and kill any number of people whose only crime is living near the coast, and still put them forward as morally admirable.&lt;p&gt;Nowadays if you want to have your protagonists shooting at their enemies or hitting them with sharp bits of metal you basically have to choose between a good-vs-evil narrative or having only anti-heroes rather than plain heroes (and both choices are now common).&lt;p&gt;So I think this bit is pretty much backwards: «
Good guy&amp;#x2F;bad guy narratives might not possess any moral sophistication, but they do promote social stability, and they’re useful for getting people to sign up for armies and fight in wars with other nations.
»&lt;p&gt;What modern Good-vs-Evil narratives are collectively yelling at us is the idea that _only_ outright visible evil justifies making war.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mjw1007</author><text>I think the main change over the last hundred years or so is that most people will no longer accept &amp;quot;we should go to war because war is in itself glorious and we will win&amp;quot;, or &amp;quot;to be a warrior is the ideal way for a man to live a flourishing life.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I agree entirely that if a country&amp;#x27;s leaders manage to persuade their people that they should go to war against their neighbour because they are Evil then the result is likely to be worse than if they just have a war because they think that marching an army in to take over a couple of counties is a legitimate thing to do.&lt;p&gt;But nonetheless I think that getting the latter generally seen as illegitimate is Progress with a capital P.</text></comment>
<story><title>The good guy/bad guy myth</title><url>https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-pop-culture-obsessed-with-battles-between-good-and-evil</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>coldtea</author><text>I think it&amp;#x27;s the inverse. Good-vs-evil narratives are not some progression, rather the inverse.&lt;p&gt;Whereas ancient peoples and older eras saw war as a necessary evil in some cases, and could see the enemy as regular people that they just had to fight (even down to the Iliad, the most heroic figure, Hector, is on the enemy side), the Good-vs-Evil narrative doesn&amp;#x27;t come to prevent war (except in dire circumstances), but to refuse the enemy its humanity and justify total war.&lt;p&gt;Good-vs-evil was used to justify the pillaging and goring of the colonial era, to the Nazi&amp;#x27;s extinction of the Jews, and so on.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s the route of modern diplomatic terminology (&amp;quot;axis of evil&amp;quot; and so on), and behind the dehumanizing of the enemy. And even civilian casualties don&amp;#x27;t matter much when you&amp;#x27;re fighting &amp;quot;evil&amp;quot; (e.g. Dresden, Hiroshima, modern Middle East, etc).&lt;p&gt;Another such trick is to promote (with articles, movies, etc) the &amp;quot;inner conflict&amp;quot; of your side (how they fear they&amp;#x27;re fighting an unjust war, the pain they get from the killings they had to do, PTSI, etc), thus humanize them more into good guys, while still painting the other side as caricatures. This faux-critique of war is an excellent way to say &amp;quot;we might do bad, but we&amp;#x27;re ultimately the good guys, the ones who actually do question what we do&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>mjw1007</author><text>I think people telling stories like Star Wars choose to make the antagonists Capital-E-Evil because modern audiences are much less happy to root for people who are fighting a war if they aren&amp;#x27;t shown that the war is thoroughly justifiable.&lt;p&gt;A few hundred years ago you could happily put a character in a saga and have them go off on viking raids and kill any number of people whose only crime is living near the coast, and still put them forward as morally admirable.&lt;p&gt;Nowadays if you want to have your protagonists shooting at their enemies or hitting them with sharp bits of metal you basically have to choose between a good-vs-evil narrative or having only anti-heroes rather than plain heroes (and both choices are now common).&lt;p&gt;So I think this bit is pretty much backwards: «
Good guy&amp;#x2F;bad guy narratives might not possess any moral sophistication, but they do promote social stability, and they’re useful for getting people to sign up for armies and fight in wars with other nations.
»&lt;p&gt;What modern Good-vs-Evil narratives are collectively yelling at us is the idea that _only_ outright visible evil justifies making war.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>humanrebar</author><text>Is the good-vs-evil narrative always a regression?&lt;p&gt;Caricature-painting is a basic tool of modern morality tales. Is it so universally regressive? Would we be better off if we portrayed Pol Pot, Heath Ledger&amp;#x27;s Joker, or Opposing Racist White Guy as trying to balance conflicting motivations?</text></comment>