Is "Evil" defined by action, intent, both or neither?

Relevant to both the upcoming Going Rogue and the Hero/Villain relationship in City of Heroes, I ask you the subject line: Is Evil defined by action, intent, both or neither?

Let me use the example I used when I brought this up in Comic Culture well over a year ago... Meet Team Dark:

(From Left to Right: Shadow, Rouge, and E-123 Omega)
Taken from Sonic Heroes, Team Dark has always fascinated me. Sonic Heroes is about 4 teams, each with their own agenda, playing a hand in saving the world. What intrigues me about this team, however, is their behavior and motivation. They are as follows:

• Rouge: Dr. Robotnik is rich. Steal everything you can, manipulate everyone into helping.
• E-123 Omega: Dr. Robotnik offended me by saying I'm obsolete. I want to destroy virtually everything he owns out of spite.
• Shadow: Can't remember my past Rouge says if I help her rob this Robotnik fellow blind, she'll help me find my memories.
• Team Dark: Destroy Dr. Robotnik.

Those motivations don't seem very noble, do they? Rob, destroy, and "do whatever it takes to get what I want". Yet, in the story of the game, the level of destruction that they cause and the Chaos Emeralds Rouge steals are absolutely vital to weakening Robotnik's army enough to save the day. Also, they don't cause any standing damage to anything "Heroic" like a bystanding city or civilians (After all, their quarrel isn't with them).

So, for selfish, violent, and greedy reasons, they play a key role in saving the world.

Are they heroes or villains?

Is "Hero" defined by the intention of your action or its result? If it's result, Team Dark is one of the greatest hero teams in Sonic Lore. If it's intent, they need to be locked up alongside the Eggman.

Discuss.

Combination of both

If you mean well, but do bad, you're not evil (but you may go to jail).
If you mean bad, but do well, you're not evil (you can always get away with saying you meant well).
If you mean bad AND do bad, then you're evil (which includes kicking puppies and clubbing baby seals).

It can go either way.

As an example of intent, one of my Star Wars fan-creations is kinda like that: his backstory is that he's a fallen Jedi who enrolled at a Sith academy (this is KotOR-era, so well before the Rule of Two), but due to losing out in the backstab-war he had with another apprentice he left in disgrace. He wants her dead, and all the rest of the Sith with her, so he started traveling with a Jedi and a few other good guys who were also after her, since it was a favorable deal for him to do so - so like Team Dark, he's helping the heroes. However, I have no delusions that the goals he shares with the company he keeps make him a "good guy" or even gray: Maraz Vax is an evil, evil man, driven by out-of-proportion hatred, who isn't so much interested in ridding the galaxy of a threat as making that particular threat suffer just for the sake of it, and that kind of malice is evil any way you slice it.

As an example of action, still on the topic of Star Wars, look no further than Darth Vader. He was really trying to be good, but he was so misguided as a young man that it bit him in the ***. I doubt I need to say more and I don't feel like it anyway.

I think that if someone has done ill, they must accept the consequences, even if their intentions were good. On the other hand, good intentions are a better indication of future trustworthiness. In both cases, the objective is to prevent future harm.

I would say they all have evil intentions. Their actions may lead to good results, but that is only because their evil is directed at another evil.

For clarification ...

Let's say you have 2 alien races out of a multitude of races in a galaxy. One race is bent on destruction of all other life forms. The second is bent on collecting all the "inobtanium" there is, and they'll stop at nothing to get it.

If all the inobtanium happens to be owned by the first alien race, the 2nd one helps everyone else out by fighting the first race. But the 2nd race is not good in itself.

I've never played the game, but I'd call them villains that had goals that aligning with the heroes, in this case.

Should they be locked up? That's a harder question to answer. On one hand, their motives weren't noble at all, and if their malice directed at another target it's likely they'd be running from the law. On the other hand, they likely weren't actually doing anything different from Sonic (at least the destroying Robotnic's toys if past games are any indication). Would you lockup Sonic for destruction of property? I'd wager not, so Team Shadow probably shouldn't be.


(Again, haven't played the game, so details that aren't outlined in the OP may change my mind.)

I'm gonna' have to step sideways here and say that what defines who is good and who is evil is the author, himself. Granted, when an author pulls a mood whiplash and fails his author's saving throw, his audience just leaves, but excluding such extreme examples of ineptitude, the author generally dictates this with the tone of the narrative and how it regards the character.

I tend to suffer metaphorical mood swings when drafting the very loose premise of a story. I'll start with a character, build a bit of timeline around him, paint him as the hero, then put in a new character and suddenly I'll feel "But what if he was actually evil?" It's fairly easy, then, to twist the narrative into painting this previously good character as arrogant, thoughtless, self-righteous and eventually outwardly evil without actually retconning everything. Then a while later I'll think and decide "But what if he was actually good after all?" and just flip things around.

It's a bit like what defines cool vs. lame in stories, and how you can tell whether shaming the crowd will work or not - the author decided what happens. A character pulls a stupid, insane, reckless stunt and... The author has a choice. Have everyone erupt in cheers, applauding the daring, courageous hero, causing the stuck-up officials to abandon protocol for a moment and realise that this spirit and creativity is what their stale bureaucratic military actually needed. Or, he could have everyone react with stunned silence, appalled at his reckless abandon and disturbed at how someone could disrespect the rules so badly, causing the wise officials to condemn him and explain how his heedless cowboy antics are a symbol of everything that is wrong with the disorganised, hot-shot army of today.

There really is nothing that mandates one situation over another. It's down to the author's choice at that particular moment.

Let me give you a direct example - professional wrestling. Yes, professional wrestling, the soap opera for macho men. Ever notice how quickly wrestlers switch from hero to heel? One day the guy's rotten attitude and defiance of authority is seen as the sign of a rebel against corporate greed and vapid entertainment, then the next day he's the hated thug who attacks the real heroes in the back to cheat his way into titles. Then the day after that, he's the people's rebel, striking out against the villains who brute-forced their way into titles they didn't deserve, and who need to be attacked from behind. And it goes on and on and on AND ON. And, really, it's the writers who decide who is who. The audience generally just goes with the presentation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

They're evil. This one time they're actions dont have negative consequences, but they likely have in the past and will in the future.

Of course they shouldn't be locked up. Not until they actually DO something bad... which seems like it'd be fairly likely to happen soon after Eggman's defeat and they don't have a unifier with the heroes anymore.



EDIT: Thank you, Mental Giant. Ozy is a much better example than Vader.

in my opinion, evil is what people in power call anything that threatens their power.
there is no such thing as objective good or evil in either thought or action. it all depends on who is judging.
example:
have you listened to recluse's propaganda over the speakers in grandville? he portrays statesman and paragon as oppressors etc.. and in paragon if there were television that we as players could watch i'm sure they'd call recluse a terrorist or something. i dont really know all the lore behind gr but the way i see it is basically a 3rd faction that finally agrees with my line of thinking. allowing for a more realistic ambiguous faction will bring me to reactivate my main acct when gr goes live. that and all the shiny new content.

T.S. Eliot must have foreseen Sonic Heroes' Team Dark when he wrote, "The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason."

Firstly you've got to define Good and Evil... Since different people have different definitions.

Personally I prefer the following definitions.

Evil: Generally Selfish acts or acts which spread emotional or physical pain.

Good: Acts which are altruistic in nature, helping others, supports emotional well being.

Now with Good and Evil so defined...

If you mean Good (Altruism, Helping others, Supporting Emotional Well Being) but do something Evil (Spreads Pain) then you've performed an Evil act... Regardless of motive.

If you mean Evil (Selfish Acts for Selfish Reasons) but do something good (helping Others by doing it) you've performed a good act for an evil reason.

As you can see, the Act itself is unchanged based on motivation... The person is either good or evil by their own nature. A Good person who spreads emotional and physical pain by committing an evil act, with the best of intentions, is still vilified by the act.

An evil person who does a good thing for evil purposes is still an evil person, even though he's held aloft as a hero.

It's not a question of Good or Evil, under this definition. It's a question of Right, Wrong, and public opinion of the acts.

-Rachel-

Good and evil are human terms and, like moral and immoral, they depend entirely on the person defining them.

Is it moral, or good, or evil, to kill one person to save a thousand?

Some would say yes.

What's the balance point? Is it okay to kill a thousand people to save two thousand? Or a thousand and one?

There's no actual answer to the question, would be my point.

'evil' and 'good' are largely based upon who is perceiving the action.

Freedom Fighters think they are doing good.

The country that calls them a Terrorist Organization would disagree.

Rarely is the world so comically black and white that you can look at any situation, and decide for certainty, that someone was evil. I think very few people in the world would ever label themselves as evil, and so you must also ask yourself who is judging good or evil, and are they worthy to do so?


But to play with your question, I beleive the intent is more important than the action. If you were *trying* to slaughter everyone, but wound up making the cure for cancer instead, you were still *trying* to slaughter everyone. Actually slaughtering them just gets you our attention, but it doesn't make you any more or less evil, just more infamous.

Conversely, someone who was trying to save everyone, but did it by capturing random people off the streets, preforming experimentation on them, and recreating them into horrible abominations in the belief that doing so would cure them of all disease and grant them immortality meant well, but committed actions that broke a number of Laws, and is likely to be perceived as something they ought not have done. They will be punished for their actions, and they may even be met with hatred for their actions, but this does not make *them* evil. Misguided, perhaps, but not evil.


Law and Chaos are the missing factors of your example, and are guiding factors for good and evil. Unlike Good and Evil, Law and Chaos are set in stone, and are not changed by someone's perception. The choice to break the Law can have either good or evil intent just as often as choosing to uphold it can. Which still leads us back to the same place; Good and Evil are decided by intent. *actions* are what make them matter.

I actually wrote an article for the City Scoop on this exact subject almost two years ago. Take a look.