What Darth Vader can teach us

One of the most famous and unforgettable icon of evil in pop culture is Darth Vader from the Star Wars epic. Clad all in black, with a metallic helmet and visor that concealed all traces of humanity and with a deep and cold voice totally devoid of emotions, Darth Vader looked like Death incarnate. If you just watched "A New Hope" and "The Empire Strikes Back", you would probably see Darth Vader as the ultimate manifestation of pure evil, a person who is so corrupt and wicked that he is no longer human. But yet as the story unfolded, both forward in time (when Darth Vader was finally touched by the goodness of his son to turn back from the Dark Side) and backward in time (in the prelude when he was a hot-headed and ambitious Jedi Warrior known as Anakin Skywalker), we came to discover that Darth Vader wasn't born Darth Vader and that once upon a time, he was even regarded as a hero, as the one who would "bring balance to the Force". On a closer scrutiny, we might even find that Darth Vader wasn't really any more different from all other humans. Remove the mask, the suit and of course the light sabre and you would see a man, who could well be our neighbour, friend or family, in other words a normal human being with the capacity to do both great good and evil.

Many of us have problems comprehending evil. No. I am not saying that we cannot recognize evil acts. All of us can do so very well in that we do not hesitate to condemn a cold-blooded murderer or rapist. It is also not like we cannot understand small acts of wickedness, like bullying, theft, slander or backstabbing. However when confronted with acts of "great evil" like mass murder, at the scale of the September 11 attacks or the Holocaust, our mental processor overloads and after the initial reaction of horror, disgust and even some fascination, we dismissed such "super villians" as mad, psychopathic or just not human. In other words, instead of trying to comprehend why some people could commit acts of such great evil, we simply tagged them and put them in a far corner in our mental shelves like some kind of gadgets that we bought from the hardware store which failed for inexplicable reason and therefore could only sit on a dusty shelf in our storeroom. The shocking truth is that examination of many personalities of great infamy revealed them to be not so different from us and that in other circumstances, these great villians could be one of our casual friends or acquaintances. Maybe not the most likeable but at least tolerable.

Consider the comments of Thomas Keneally, author of "Schindler's List". When asked what he felt was the difference between Oskar Schindler and Amon Goeth, the commandant of the Plaszow concentration camp for the Jews in WWII (and therefore an active participant in the massarce of the Jews), he said that there was not much difference and that had there been no wars, both might have been drinking buddies and business partners, relatively harmless and ineffectual as historical personages.

A closer examination of the lives of many of the perpetrators of the Holocaust which killed 6 million Jews also revealed that these "super villians" were not so different from many people. Granted that Adolf Hitler wasn't an angel no matter from what angle you look at him, but if he had not become Fuhrer of of the Third Reich and the mastermind of the Holocaust, he would just be another "harmless and ineffectual personage". He would probably just be another down and out part-time painter and writer, who difted from one workplace to another and an insecure, petty and bigotic person who harboured weird fantasies.

My whole point here was that Evil is not an external force and people who did heinous acts are not some kind of aliens that wear the skin of humans. Everybody has the capacity to do great evil. How many times have we read with a sense of incredulity about certain gruesome murders committed by otherwise ordinary people, people who have been described as nice neighbours and good mothers and fathers? As long as we continue to see evil as something external and that only sadistic and perverted people can commit great acts of evil, we blind ourselves to the dangers of how people can change and act in almost unpredictable ways in certain circumstances. Only by been aware that any of us under certain circumstances can become the like of Eichmann (one of the chief personalities who run and oversee the systematic extermination of the Jews in the death factories of the Nazi concentration camps), can we guard ourselves against our inner demons. Here I would like to quote Baumeister on how belief in evil as existing only in certain people helps to perpetuate evil by "... [encouraging] people to believe that they are good and will remain good no matter what, even if they perpetrate severe harm on their opponents. Thus, the myth of pure evil confers a kind of moral immunity on people who believe in it... Belief in the myth is itself one recipe for evil, because it allows people to justify violent and oppressive actions. It allows evil to masquerade as good."

One need not think far to find two good examples, or rather two sides of the same coin. George Bush and his advisers who led the invasion of Iraq and Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Are they not more similar than different in branding each other as "evil" and in their all out attempt to destroy each other?

The lesson that Darth Vader teaches us is that all of us are Anakin Skywalker and if we are not careful, circumstances around us can easily turn us to the Dark Side...