Selfish and Selfless; Heroes and Villains
- Jerome Tan
- Jun 6, 2020
- 6 min read
Updated: Jun 9, 2020
One of my all-time recommendations for a binge-worthy series would be A Series Of Unfortunate Events, based on the books of Lemony Snicket and directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. The series's plot seems unoriginal at first, with the villainous Count Olaf going after the family fortune of the Baudelaire children after their parents had passed on from a mysterious fire. In fact, throughout the whole series, the show can easily be mistaken as a shallow and typical comedic series meant for children. However, do not be fooled by the false facade that Snicket used to cover the real meaning behind the series. But I shan’t talk about the series any longer, in fear that I would be spoiling it for all of you. Instead, let me give you my opinions on a subject that is deeply explored in the fore-mentioned series, Heroism and Villainy.
Well, let's start with a simple question, what makes the hero right and the villain wrong?
A simple enough question, but a question only meant to be thought about and never answered. It is simply a question of morality and what makes something right or wrong. Throughout the years of philosophy, so many have constructed their own interpretations of morality, formulating their own theories such as deontology, utilitarianism, virtuism, just to name a few. But I for one, do not believe in morality. I don't believe that right and wrong can simply be judged by a series of equations and rules. In fact, for many moral theories, they are often circumstantial. And in the heat of a moment, we can't all simply stop and ponder, is what I am doing right or wrong? That's simply unfeasible. So I am sorry but to me, morality simply isn't a matter of equations. And I can just simply end off now and say: hence Heroism and Villainy simply does not exist, but that’ll be disappointing won't it?
Well, we can say that the idea of morality can exist but not as a general idea. It all boils down to the singular idea which helps us differentiate the heroes and villains in our life: perspective. Where we stand in the schism that divides us we often only see the 2 sides: whether an action will benefit us or not. I mean loads of other factors do constantly bounce their way in, ideas such as emotion, societal norms and even the idea of following the fixed morality theories. But ultimately, it depends on where a person stands in a certain situation. For example, a villain usually acts on behalf of his own selfish actions and in his eyes, he isn't doing what he deems as villainy, to him, he is simply benefitting himself. However, there are a few exceptions, a group of villains I would like to call complex villainy, of which I would talk about soon enough. So when we talk about villainy, we mostly talk about them having the arrogance or selfishness to perform a scheme, and we can perhaps decide that such emotions can be deemed negative and hence villainous, but yet all of us face such situations, where we put ourselves ahead of others to suit our needs. In fact, we need to have such selfishness to survive in a world as tough as ours. So we can all say that we all have been placed in similar situations where we were all selfish, but yet, we don't say that we are villainous when we ignore others who needed our help. So now we are left with the scale of the situation at hand. To that, I say that it makes no difference. The desire to do something selfish oftentimes depends on the capabilities of the person. For example, if we have an idea, and that idea works, and we have the ability to execute such an idea, then, by all means, we would go ahead. Look at all the corporates in the world, they see opportunities to earn money and they have the means to do so, and there, they go ahead and do it, not caring about any negative externalities or whether their actions would create any dents to anyone's livelihood. Ultimately, the combination of our desires and capabilities makes us perform selfish acts, not morality.
Now let's hop on the train to heroism. Heroes are often seen as people doing so much good to save that much worse. They often not care about their lives and simply display that selflessness that we all so often call heroism. Don't be fooled by that flying cape or that charming smile, heroes are heroes because of their own desires. Of course, acts of selflessness do exist, for example, if we see a baby trapped in an escalator, we do have that urge to protect and save that baby. But to constantly try to be a hero, and to go around trying to solve the problems of the world ultimately boils down to either selfishness or arrogance. Perhaps a hero simply is one to boost his arrogance and to have that status or recognition for helping people, or that hero does it to feel good about himself. He does it because he thinks he is doing something good, and by thinking that way, he simply does it to gain pleasure from doing it. In Chinese, we have this phrase '助人为快乐之本' which translates to pleasure derived from helping others. This phrase basically tells us how some heroes simply do it for that selfish pleasure. Of course, we can say that heroes are heroes because they have that sense of duty to be a hero. But that self-given duty can be interpreted as arrogance which generally isn't a trait that most people associate with a hero. Furthermore, such an idea can be seen as duty ethics or deontology which have their own fair share of criticism, but a subject I do not wish to dwell upon.
Now for complex villainy. To me a complex villain would be a villain that has a certain depth to them; for example, Thanos or Count Olaf. Well, I will still stick to the point that villains do not exist but these character in our films and series, do acts that question morality but doesn’t simply do them because of selfishness or arrogance. Don't get me wrong, they do have their fair share of arrogance and selfishness, but the main reason why they perform villainy would be due to a much different reason. For example, Thanos was a character who saw the bigger picture, of course, he had this arrogance to believe that he should be the one to murder off half the universe, but his intentions were purely selfless, which makes him a rather complex villain in the sense that he did, in fact, perform villainous acts but did it on a selfless and altruistic intention. Count Olaf in a Series of Unfortunate Events also has a different complexity to his villainy. He became a villain because he felt the meaningless of life. Throughout the series, he tries to give himself meaning by attempting to find love or making his mentors proud, but ultimately he is unsuccessful. Giving up on the idea of meaning in his life, he ends up pursuing a life of villainy and crime. Olaf once said that "Everybody runs around with their secrets and their schemes, trying to outwit one another, and then they die." This phrase here already tells us how Olaf had given up, he knew the end was the end, and he simply wanted to reach it. Of course, this may be seen as selfishness, but as Olaf once said: "There are no noble people in the world." These are villains that we can in some way admire since their complexity allows them to be different and unique in their own way.
Well, this post really is an opinionated one, but to summarise all this up: actions can be selfish and selfless; heroic and villainous, but characters can't. This post talks about the general heroes and villains, and there may be in fact some characters that may have special situations to them, however, it's determined that if actions define a character, a character can never be a hero or a villain. A common Chinese proverb states that 'You can never be happy at the expense of the happiness of others.' One's hero can be another's villain and one's villain can be another’s hero. As I said previously, it all really depends on perspective.
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