Complexity of Villains in Human Morality

Villains serve as a complex reflection of human nature, challenging and exposing the ambiguity of collective morality.

### Understanding the Complexity of Human Nature and Collective Morality Through Villains
* 😈 Villains help us understand the **complexity of human nature and collective morality**, challenging traditional **dualistic views of good and evil**.
* 📜 Throughout history, villains have been used to represent **humanity's deepest fears**, serve as **warnings**, and justify **moral and social values**.
* 🔄 The concept of **enantiodromia, where things often transform into their opposites**, is frequently seen in the construction of villains.
* Villains are often portrayed as complex characters with **motivations, desires, and personal stories**, blurring the lines between **good and evil**.
* 🤔 "Regardless of the decision you make, you will be a hero to some and a villain to others because it depends greatly on each person's **moral values**."
* ☯ The Chinese concept of Yin and Yang illustrates the **interdependence and harmony between opposites**, suggesting that both **good and evil are different expressions of the same reality**.
* 🧘 Recognizing the potential for **evil within ourselves and others** can help us avoid projecting it onto scapegoats, promoting a **more balanced approach to life**.
* 🌱 Despite the challenges and pain it brings, the experience of life can lead to **growth and awakening**.

In childhood, we usually root for the heroes, but as we grow up, we come to understand and sympathize with the villains. I don't know what disfigured your life this way; perhaps normal people don't know. Maybe it's just you. Could it be that life's adversities, the lies, and betrayals we suffer, make us stop seeing the good in society and in things? The truth is that it's all much broader than a mere dualistic question of good and evil, right and wrong. Because if we take a step back, what would good and evil be? Who defines that? Would it be God, your religion, the government, the law, the authorities, the rich and powerful, your parents? Well, in this video, I will show how emblematic villains can help us understand the complexity of human nature and, above all, of collective morality. Who are you looking at, idiot? An analysis that challenges our common sense, challenges our basic perceptions, and still reveals something fascinating about ourselves. Figures of evil have always been present in our history, whether in mythologies, legends, or religious texts. They appeared as a way to symbolize humanity's deepest fears and to justify the existence of moral and social values. They served as warnings, as lessons, representing what could happen if the paths of virtue and order were abandoned. As time evolved, we saw these figures becoming increasingly complex. Authors like Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky decided

Three-dimensional characters with motivations, desires, and personal stories, a development that allowed readers to understand villains not just as simple embodiments of evil but as human beings with conflicts and understandable desires. Usually, the villain tends to be the guy who sees the world in a way that most don't, a guy whose experiences he has lived through and suffered are the main drivers of his actions, where the search for justice and revenge are the solutions that life has taught him for his problems, so cruelly deceived that he can't trust anything anymore. Let me help you, sorry, but no. And let's be honest, who has never felt deceived, betrayed, or wronged in life? Villains, through their controversial actions, manifest and expose an evil that, despite varying from person to person, in some way, everyone carries within themselves. The popularity of villains as protagonists is not by chance. People identify by deeply exploring this dark side, allowing us to understand what shapes these complex characters, revealing that the struggle between good and evil is much broader than fairy tales suggest. If society teaches us notions of right and wrong, over time, we realize that the results we obtain are not directly linked to these rules of good and evil. As Machiavelli said, any man who tries to be good all the time is doomed to end up in ruins among the large number of those who are not good. Therefore, a prince who wishes to maintain

Your authority must learn not to be good and to use that knowledge or refrain from using it as needed is a mere illusion if you see yourself as a good person all the time because no matter how good you are, you will always be the villain in someone's story. Morality is not a set of fixed and defined rules to be followed, but something that is constantly changing with much ambiguity and numerous conflicting perspectives. The problem with morality is precisely these pre-established rules, making it a rarely questioned topic, something bigger than ourselves, be it something Divine, structural, or forbidden, and thus it becomes unquestionable, superior, and eternal. But I wanted to propose to you to question morality and the elements that support it. Ask yourself what morality is, who it serves, and why it cannot be questioned. It is a human construct, a reflection of specific customs and values of a time, maintained more out of habit and submission than the value it supposedly has in itself. Once obedience to its precepts is established, it tends to prevail because it is already internalized in people. The interest in villains is often provoked by the rejection of this collective morality. They create their own morality, are free from doctrines, and act according to their own justice. To better understand this issue of the ambiguity of morality, one of the dilemmas I like the most is the train dilemma. The question is:

Would you divert the train track to save five people at the cost of one life, or would you not interfere and let the train continue on its normal course, killing the five people? Obviously, many people want to understand more about the situation. Who are the people on each track? Do you have any family members, acquaintances, children, politicians, or anything else on the tracks? But for the sake of simplification, consider a homogeneous group that you are unfamiliar with. What would you do? Proponents of consequentialism will say that the morally correct action is to maximize joy or minimize suffering, and therefore save the five lives at the cost of one. On the other hand, according to deontology, an ethical theory by Immanuel Kant, human actions should be guided by moral duty and not by the expected results. From this point of view, it is morally wrong to harm an innocent person even if it leads to a greater general good. In the end, the reality is that regardless of the decision you make, you will be a hero to some and a villain to others because it depends greatly on each person's moral values. And mainly on how the story is told. The classic cartoon of Tom and Jerry is an example of this. Initially, we get the impression that Tom and Jerry are mortal enemies, but as the episodes progress, we realize how their interactions strangely suggest a mutual dependence. Without Jerry, Tom would lead a relatively peaceful but monotonous life. Without Tom,

Friends making Tom constantly have to pretend to hate Jerry as a way to protect him so that Tom's owner doesn't want to replace him with a cat that really wants to kill him reveals how our roles are not fixed, how our perceptions can change, and depend on various perspectives that can have multiple layers of meaning that go far beyond our understanding of right and wrong. Another representation I like is the final scene of the movie Batman: The Killing Joke. I don't know what warped your life this way, but maybe I've been through that. We can work together; I can rehabilitate you. You don't have to be alone in this. In this scene, the Joker sees himself defeated by Batman, who instead of finishing him off, offers him help, an unusual situation that even leaves him somewhat speechless. Sorry, but it's not too late for that. But quickly, he returns to his character. This reminds me of a joke, a joke that is nothing more than a metaphor for this situation. Once upon a time, two guys were locked together in a madhouse, and one night they decided they didn't like it there anymore and decided to escape. The two crazies in the story represent him and Batman, who are tired of living in madness. They climbed up to the terrace and on the other side of a small gap, they saw the rooftops of the whole city, they saw all the freedom. The first guy jumped to the other

Afraid of falling, Batman was the crazy one who managed to jump, and the Joker was the one who was afraid of regaining freedom and once again not being able to deal with the sufferings and sanity that would require. So, the first guy had an idea. He said, I have a flashlight here. I can light up the gap between the buildings, and you can cross through the light and come here. This passage symbolizes Batman offering help to the Joker in his rehabilitation. But the second guy said, Do you think I'm crazy? You'll turn it off when I'm halfway there. This way, the Joker reveals his fear and distrust, believing that they will lose faith in his recovery and that he will be abandoned in the middle of rehabilitation. Sorry, he starts laughing, and Batman also laughs, indicating that he understood the joke, realizing that despite wanting to help the Joker, he is incurable and still does not wish or hope to be rehabilitated. Therefore, Batman sees him as a threat to society and feels compelled to kill him right there. [Laughter] Although it is not clear in the image, it can be deduced since only Batman's laughter is heard in the end. This is not to mention the name of the movie itself, The Killing Joke. I told all these stories to exemplify how complex the issues involving morality are and how narrow the line that separates the hero from the villain is. After all, is Batman

Could the Joker rehabilitate from madness, or would Batman be a society's protector or a cold-blooded killer who served justice with his own hands? To understand these aspects, it is essential to recognize the polarity of life, that is, the idea that there are opposing and complementary forces in constant interaction, instead of an absolute and irreconcilable conflict between good and evil. It is very common to see people denying and devaluing philosophies that soften the absolute differences between good and evil. However, there lies the great paradox because the tendency to condemn others and find evil in them is directly linked to a person's lack of awareness of their own dark aspects. The psychoanalyst Carl Jung proposed that the evil we identify in others often reflects what we deny or do not recognize in ourselves. What man does not understand, he fears, and what he fears, he tends to destroy. Heraclitus, an ancient Greek sage, discovered what Jung defined as the most fantastic psychological law of all, the regulating function of opposites called enantiodromia, which means running in the opposite direction and brings the idea that things often transform into their opposites. A concept widely used in the construction of villains, where a traumatic past is reflected in a malicious future. I will mention some examples to make it clearer, like in the Batman movie The Killing Joke, which I have included here.

In the final scene before the movie, it tells the story of the Joker, showing that initially he just wanted to make people laugh and take care of his family. How are we going to feed our child? Do you think I'm not worried about that? I'm sorry, I can't support you, it's okay, the baby is only due in three months. I have to get you out of here before the baby is born. But the tragedies that happen in his life end up leading him to the other side. There was an accident this morning, a short circuit, and my wife died. I'm very sorry. The policeman said the chances were one in a million. You are another representation of the Joker that also explores this concept is with Arthur Fleck from Joker. A victim of society who rebels against itself, like Anakin Skywalker, who starts as a promising hero destined to bring balance to the force, but his growing insecurities and desire for power lead him to the opposite side, transforming into [Music] Darth Vader. Breaking Bad's Walter, a underestimated family man and chemistry teacher with a terminal diagnosis, transforms into a manufacturer and dealer of methamphetamine. Two-Face from Batman in The Dark Knight is an upright district attorney where his strong belief in justice is corrupted by chaos, turning him from a law defender into someone who subverts it based on chance. [Music] And to close the case, Syndrome from The Incredibles, who is an unconditional fan

Superheroes are mainly from Mr. Incredible, you're the one who fights after being rejected by technology to eliminate superheroes. I wanted to help you, that's all I wanted to do, just give me a chance. It's just because I don't have superpowers, right? Not all superheroes are super powerful. You can be super without them, no problem. It's super now, a destructive obsession seeking to eradicate those who he once aspired to be. But I learned an important lesson: you can't trust anyone, especially not your heroes. I was wrong to treat you that way. In real life, enantiodromia is often an unconscious process used by the mind to correct imbalances in our lives. We think that by acting this way, we are on the path to liberating internal conflicts, but it is nothing more than a response to a lack of understanding and integration of aspects of our minds. According to Jung, the only person who escapes the implacable law of enantiodromia is the one who knows how to separate from the unconscious, not by repressing it because then it simply attacks from behind, but by clearly placing oneself in front of it as what it is - consciousness. Being aware that the potential for evil exists in both ourselves and others can reduce the likelihood of projecting it onto scapegoats. This means pointing fingers, blaming them for personal problems instead of recognizing one's own inability to deal with their dark sides. This practice

A simplistic dualism of us versus them, avoiding recognizing the real complexity of events. The famous Chinese concept of Yin and Yang explains well this idea of interdependence and harmony between opposites. Where the Yang, the white and positive part, and the Yin, the black and negative part, are represented by two fish that seem to be eating each other's tails in what seems like an eternal conflict. Now, the key question is: are these two fish really in conflict? If that is the case, then it is clear that life is fundamentally nothing more than a dark competition. If one represents the good subject and the other the bad subject, if one represents order and the other chaos, then there is a battle between them, and normally this is how we deal with conflicts in our lives: simply trying to hide our dark side to make it disappear. But, consider for a moment, what happens if the white fish swallows the black fish? It simply ceases to exist because it only appears in relation to the black. So, if these two fish become aware and understand this dynamic, they will realize that they are one. They walk together, they are inseparable from each other. And this realization is the experience called Awakening in Buddhism, an Awakening that life is not really a competition to make the positive triumph over the negative because both sides walk together; opposites are just different expressions of the same reality. An understanding that allows you a more balanced approach.

The experience, no matter how painful and bad it may seem, can lead us to growth. They refuse, they cling to the realm or the gods, or love illusions. Only the ladder is real, the CL is all.

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The Complexity of Villains and Collective Morality

As we mature, we start to empathize with villains and question the concept of good and evil.

Villains have evolved from simple embodiments of evil to complex characters with relatable motivations and desires.

The popularity of villains as protagonists allows us to explore the struggle between good and evil in a deeper way, challenging traditional notions of morality.

The interest in villains is often due to a rejection of collective morality, as they operate outside of its pre-established rules and create their own sense of justice.

The Ethical Dilemma of Diverting the Train Track

Diverting the train track to save five people at the cost of one life is a moral dilemma often analyzed through consequentialism and deontology.

The situation raises questions about moral duty versus maximizing overall good, with the potential to be perceived differently based on individual values.

The complex nature of moral decision-making is illustrated through various perspectives in popular culture, such as the dynamic between Tom and Jerry, as well as the interaction between Batman and the Joker in "The Killing Joke.

The Complex Moral Dynamics Between Batman and the Joker

Batman offers to help the Joker with his rehabilitation, but the Joker expresses fear and distrust, leading Batman to see him as a threat to society.

The story exemplifies the complex issues of morality and the thin line between hero and villain, reflecting the idea of opposing and complementary forces in constant interaction.

The Batman-Joker dynamic is a prime example of the psychological law of opposites, where a traumatic past can lead to a malicious future, as seen in "The Killing Joke" movie.

The Joker's origin story reveals his initial good intentions before a series of tragedies lead him to villainy.

Various other fictional characters, such as Anakin Skywalker and Walter White, undergo a similar transformation from good to evil.

The concept of enantiodromia, the unconscious process of correcting imbalances, is explored in these characters' arcs, according to Jungian psychology.

The Concept of Yin and Yang in Chinese Philosophy

The concept of Yin and Yang illustrates the interdependence and harmony between opposites in Chinese philosophy.

It challenges the idea of a simple conflict between good and bad, emphasizing the coexistence and inseparability of the two forces.

This understanding leads to a more balanced approach to life and the recognition that opposites are just different expressions of the same reality, ultimately leading to growth and awakening.