The Writing Life: a random bit, to start off the weekend's writing...

[lagilman]

"Nobody sets out to be a villian."
"Some do."
"Some set out to cause harm. They rarely set out to be a villian. To themselves, they're heroes."
"We could be villains to someone else."
"We could."

Comments

[merlinpole.livejournal.com]

At least one of my college classmates -did- regard himself as an evil fellow, and there were some scary things about him. He probably was/is a sociopath and/or psychopath, who was generally publically well-behaved about it--obeying social rules because there were benefits to doing so, not because he had any moral values that they should be obeyed because it was proper objective behavior. [I'm not phrasing that well... there are people who do things because they feel that those things have moral values which are positive and it is good to do them. There are others who obey social conventions because everyone else does, or because if they don't they will be penalized for it and they don't want to be penalized, or because people whose opionons/company they value will think badly of them and shun them, or because there are benefits to gain that they want--depravity as regards the concept of there being intrinsic values and doing good for the sake of doing good.]

He's far from the only socially functional sociopath I've known. People who think that they are doing Good who are insensitive/oblivious/antagonistic to anyone whose values are different from theirs in what they regard and moral and "good" and ethical, can be a lot more dangerous to others that various of the sociopaths I've known--the sociopaths sometimes can be reasoned with, in that while they might not see an intrinsically worthwhile reason for doing something, extrinsically they value other people's opinions enough to consider whether other people will regard it as acceptable or not--that is, sometimes public opinion, or the opinion of associates, does act as an external moral brake/moral guide on people whose own are dysfunctional. In the case of political ideologues and religious fanatics, though, their internal value systems trump all. They have internal compasses and run according to those and aren;t interested in things like calibrating them to consideration for others' opinions, values, well-being, etc.

E.g., there's the neocon crowd, which probably includes a lot of people who are deeply convinced that their values are honorable who believe that their missions in life include bringing the Truths they believe in to others. Most of the sociopaths I've known have been more willing to consider, again, other people's interests and adjust their own actions, for the benefit of other people, for the purposes of supporting continued social and economic etc. intercourse with them. True believers looking forward to any of martyrdom, the Rapture, Armageddon, Gotterdamerung, the triumph of their faith over disbelievers, etc., aren't interested in continuing non-hostile interactions with or the continued existence of those who adamantly are unreceptive and averse to complying with or adopting the true believer's faith.