What is evil? Are people who commit heinous acts evil? When do we divorce the act from the actor? And is the one act of a person the same as someone who lives to hurt? We live in a world that paints evil with a broad brush. The word is used so much it’s lost its meaning.
Years ago, I was listening to an interview with the film director, Stanley Kubrick. Of the many themes in his films, one relates to the question of inherent evil. Does man carry the propensity for evil or does an act define them as such? Like Kubrick, I see evil as a spectrum in a world of binaries.
Over the past year, I’ve seen literally every true crime show filmed in the past decade. I get obsessive like this—fixated on a particular subject until I exhaust it, until I can fully wrap my head around it. But this felt different. I felt as if I was consuming all of these shows for an intended purpose.
Over the course of hundreds, perhaps thousands of brutal murders, one word is a constant: evil.
I would never want to diminish the pain a victim or their loved ones suffer. Their pain is real, acute, and unrelenting. And they are deserving of justice. However, if you take an objective, detached examination of all of these cases, they lie on a spectrum.
Now, there’s Ted Bundy evil. Evil that inherent and born or evil that is honed over a lifetime. But Bundy is that rare human who lives to hurt. There exists no repair—he was someone who would kill again and again if he were allowed to. But then compare it to a person who murders under a specific set of circumstances. They snap. They’re under duress. They’ve been abused. Or they simply want to end the life of one person. Yet, they can be reformed. And while there is no excusing of their actions, while they deserve a punishment fitting for the crime, I would posit that not all murderers are evil.
Some were decent people who did a terrible thing. Yet, we group those with an inherent predilection with those who committed a terrible crime. And I think that’s wrong.
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