{"id":858,"date":"2017-12-13T10:08:54","date_gmt":"2017-12-13T15:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/?p=858"},"modified":"2017-12-13T10:08:54","modified_gmt":"2017-12-13T15:08:54","slug":"heroism-v-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/2017\/12\/13\/heroism-v-evil\/","title":{"rendered":"Heroism v. Evil"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although I was unable to attend Chris Gavaler\u2019s lecture on Superheroes, I encountered the idea of heroes and superheroes in my personal research project on the Origins of Decision, and particularly evil. Superheroes are defined as having supernatural powers, but also \u201c<\/span>dedicated to fighting crime, protecting the public, and usually battling supervillains.\u201d Heroes, though originated in comics, movies, and books, are ever-present today as notable figure of humanity by carrying out the same tasks as the aforementioned superheroes. But where do the lines between humanity, heroism, and evil separate? Having written my research paper on this topic, this is a particularly idea of interest. Hannah Arendt\u2019s \u201cBanality of Evil\u201d is rooted in the idea that the evil that occurs in society is not actually as a result of the existence of \u201cevil people,\u201d but rather that evil can be drawn out in any one of us. <\/span>A seemingly evident and defined line separates “evil and good,” one that separates terrorists from figures like Ghandi, MLK, or even everyday people, such as yourself. In turn, categorizing good and evil is also categorizing “moral and immoral,” immediately casting the two far apart and unable to mix, flow across, and combine. Though it is easy to initially cast one another apart, we immediately recognize that this is not reality, as there are not globally specific locations of evil, encapsulated within a town or state border. It is easy to embrace this lack of personal responsibility, settling for the mentality of evil in the “other.” As Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn explains, \u201cIf only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human-being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?\u201d This divide is expressed in a number of ways, such as in art, as created by MC Escher\u2019s \u2018Angels and Demons.\u2019 This piece is a geometric tessellation of black devils and white angels – hinged on the viewer\u2019s perspective. The Yin & Yang of human dimension, the devil and angel represent good and evil in the world, however the image merely poses the two extremes. Visually, and metaphorically, the transformation from good to evil can happen immediately yet is fluid, seemingly without any conscious choice. The same idea separates heroism and normality, that any one human can be a hero, or a villain.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although I was unable to attend Chris Gavaler\u2019s lecture on Superheroes, I encountered the idea of heroes and superheroes in my personal research project on the Origins of Decision, and particularly evil. Superheroes are defined as having supernatural powers, but also \u201cdedicated to fighting crime, protecting the public, and usually battling supervillains.\u201d Heroes, though originated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6299,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[378492],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6299"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=858"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":859,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858\/revisions\/859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}