Introduction
When I watched movies as a kid, I always liked the villains over the heroes. Heroes always seemed so boring, while the villains appeared cool, clever, dark, mysterious, and sexy. Take Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader for example. Which one seems cooler? Which one seems more badass? A silly farm boy on a sandy planet, or a dark lord under a mask with an intimidating voice, and is commander of an entire fleet? Obviously Darth Vader. If you chose Luke then I don’t know. I guess you don’t know what it means to be cool.
It’s not even that I don’t like the heroes; the heroes are great and I’m glad they win, especially because the villains really are so evil. It’s just that the villains are also cool! They’re so powerful! Everyone likes power, right? Actually, I have to say, In Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith, my favorite character was General Grievous. It wasn’t Obi-Wan or Anakin. Actually, Anakin was annoying.1
I recall many instances as a kid watching Revenge of the Sith purely for General Grievous, Darth Sidious, and Darth Vader at the end. But never really for Anakin or Obi-Wan. When I was eight I saw the 2003 Star Wars cartoon for the first time, and I fell in love with the cartoon General Grievous. The way he sliced and diced with his lightsabers was probably the coolest thing I’ve ever seen on screen, and I’ve watched a lot of TV in my life like most Americans.
Not only are villains cool, but so many of them laugh. It’s actually considered to be a common trope in cartoons and movies.2 While the hero seems to live an arduous life of work with a high chance of failure, villains get to look cool and have fun. So what gives, what is so exciting about evil? Is there something that I’m missing? Am I the only one that finds evil attractive?
About half a year ago, I got a job as a bookkeeper where I handle money everyday. And it occurred to me that I could steal hundreds of dollars and get away with it. And then I wondered if I should actually steal money. If I could get away with it, why not do it? I could be a sexy villain laughing all my way to the bank. Well, intuitively I knew why stealing was wrong, but intellectually, I wasn’t so certain. So that’s what I will be exploring: does it actually pay to be evil?
The Ring of Power
A great book that helps to answer this question is Plato’s Republic. Not only is it fundamental to Western philosophy and literature, but the essential theme that underlies this text is justice, which is exactly what we’re talking about. At the very beginning of Book One, Socrates gives arguments for justice against Thrasymachus. Thrasymachus was a sophist that believed power or injustice is more profitable than justice. But Socrates thoroughly embarrassed him in the debate by actually making him blush. Glaucon, on the other hand, was an intelligent interlocutor that wasn’t convinced of Socrates’ arguments so he posed a thought experiment steelmanning the unjust position. He had Socrates imagine a shepherd who discovered a powerful ring, the Ring of Gyges, which allowed him to turn invisible at will. With this invisibility power, he became a messenger of the king, which allowed him to seduce the king’s wife, kill the king, and take over the kingdom.3 The ring in this thought experiment shows what an unjust person would do with the powers of anonymity and immunity to consequences for their evil actions. This is a disturbing thought experiment because if someone had this power, there’s nothing really there, except morals, to stop them from being unjust. It appears that it indeed pays to be evil.
For the rest of the Republic, Socrates responds to this by imagining a perfectly just city, which to me fails to refute Glaucon’s thought experiment. For one, it seems like an extreme response to the possibility of injustice. This is understandable because if people could actually get away with whatever they wanted – and Plato being distrustful of people – it only makes sense to create a blueprint for a totalitarian dictatorship that regulated and censored people to goodness. But as a libertarian, I stopped reading by the middle of Book Five. Socrates going on and on about guardians and censorship was a huge turn off for me. I’m certain that unfree cities ruled by philosopher kings don’t work (but also there’s too much in the Republic to unpack for this one essay).
But it’s alright because Socrates gave convincing arguments already in book one; they just need reinforcement and reinterpretation. Basically, Socrates argued that people of different professions didn’t want to outdo one another. I interpreted this as not wanting to manipulate one another or get power over one another. For example, a doctor isn’t concerned with appearance as a doctor, or seeking rewards as a doctor; he merely wants to heal the sick. The good and the clever are people that don’t focus on outdoing, while the unjust and ignorant focus on outdoing one another.4 Furthermore he said, “Could you use anything other than ears to hear? Or anything other than eyes to see?”5 I interpreted this as one must perform the proper virtues to achieve one’s values. Without ears one cannot hear. It might be possible to pretend to hear by feeling vibrations with your hands or wearing cat ears on your head like a cute furry, but at the end of the day, without the virtue of human ears one cannot obtain the true value of hearing.
So going back to the ring or power, although it may grant the ring bearer anonymity and immunity to consequences, it doesn’t grant them true virtues and values, only illusions. It only appears to grant values and virtues, but appearance is not the same as actually having a value, and that is why injustice is evil and doesn’t pay because one doesn’t actually get what they want. A ring bearer as a false doctor may be able to convince everyone around him that he healed the sick, may receive rewards for healing the sick, but unless there is a true doctor to practice the virtue of medicine, sick people will die and the value of good health will be lost. People have real values that they care about and no amount of illusion or deception is going to satisfy this need for values unless there is true virtue to back it up, and this especially applies to the example of sick people because people’s lives are at stake.
Even though the thought experiment assumes there would be no consequences, there would be consequences! To say otherwise is not how reality works. Without consequences to a person’s actions the world would be rendered meaningless and nihilistic. In order for people to be deceived by an unjust doctor, they would have to prefer anti-values or false values over true values. They’d have to believe that their sick loved one(s) not being healed would be a good thing, or act as if their sick loved ones were healthy, or turn their attention away from important values like good health for trivial values that hardly matter at all. And depending on how often the ring was used, in other words, the more people engaged in deception or allowed deception, the more hellish the world would be. Granted, some deception might be possible to get away with, even without the ring people in the real world get away with deception, but that’s only because the world is ultimately based in truth. If the ring bearer, however, decided to exploit the entire world, if he allowed himself to indulge his vices endlessly, the world would surely collapse.
If I had the ring, I would hold it in contempt since I would be wise enough to understand that its only purpose is deception or fabrication of fake values and would be completely useless in the pursuit of authentic values; and authentic values are the only thing that makes life worth living.
The Ring is Here
Although Thrasymachus lost to Socrates in the Republic, that doesn’t mean some people don’t echo what he believes. Many later influential people have sided with him. There are two books that instantly come to mind that make a strong case for being unjust or pursuing the Ring Of Power. Those two books are The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli and The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. Machiavelli unapologetically wrote in The Prince, “Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.” As expected, many people have criticized these books for being psychopathic or amoral, but to their credit, it doesn’t come off as though they want to be evil; it’s more as though they’re pulling back the curtain on morality. Greene says that what separates us from animals is not our rational souls as Socrates would say, but our ability to lie and deceive. In fact, he would probably say that Socrates is attempting to deceive and play games like the rest of us by hiding behind the soul and justice. As he says, “To some people the notion of consciously playing power games–no matter how indirect–seems evil…they believe they can opt out of the game…You must be aware of such people, for while they express such opinions outwardly, they are often among the most adept players at power.”6
If you haven’t made the connection yet, The Lord of the Rings fantasy story by J.R.R. Tolkein is similar to Glaucon’s thought experiment. Even though Tolkein strikes me as someone that would side with Socrates, anyone that came in contact with the ring fell prey to it, or at least had to execute great temperance in the ring’s presence. Only extremely wise characters like Gandalf and Galadriel were able to refrain from taking it. The ring, in both stories, suggests that evil exists on a kind of metaphysical level, in all cracks and crevices of realit, and I think Machiavelli and Greene are here to tell us that. The power game is here and anyone, even if they are good, are still very much a part of the game. And because this power game is part of the world, Machiavelli and Greene suggest that being able to play the game well leads to positive results. They provide numerous examples in history where being “evil” has actually resulted in benefits rather than losses. In one of these examples Machiavelli points to a duke that took over a place called Romagna and put Remirro de Orca under its control. Remirro’s cruelty established order, and once that order was maintained long enough, the duke had him cut in half. The next morning everyone saw Remirror’s bloody body in the square leaving them “appeased” and “stupefied.” 7 Of course killing is evil, but Machiavelli has no problem with it because it’s actually useful for maintaining power and control. Sure, Socrates and justice might sound really nice, it might be ideal, but it’s not really effective. However, Machievalli wrote The Prince in the 1500s so killing and leaving people up for display may not float in 21st century America. But I’m sure people today tolerate different kinds of injustice. And where there’s human emotion or vulnerability to deception, doing bad things can often result in good consequences. Machievalli is just explaining that it works and how it works, and it’s the reason why The Prince is still read today among philosophers and political scientists.
Greene, on the other hand, even though was influenced by Machiavelli, saw his idea of power as more of a individual power like Nietzsche’s Will to Power.8 His motivation for writing his book was, ironically, a lack of honesty and power games that were going on in the various jobs he worked, so he wanted to write a book that exposed what was really going on.9 After working in hollywood, he said that instead of being upset at the lack of injustice in the world, it’s better to understand and learn the game that’s being played.10
So although just about every single law in the 48 Laws is manipulative and deceptive, these laws are there to show us what happens, how people have power over each other, and how they can actually be used to one’s benefit. In other words, it’s not really about goodness and badness, there is only power and playing for power is what works. But I say otherwise.
Evil is Powerless
About a month ago, Elizabeth Holmes was tried and convicted for her fraudulent company Theranos, where she convinced the public and investors alike that it was actually possible to run over 200 tests with a few drops of blood. This story is a convenient example of a person that accumulates a lot of power, but inevitably fails because they don’t have the virtue to back it up.
What’s amazing is that she managed to keep the deception going for over a decade! At one point the company was worth 9 billion dollars! In a sense evil does pay. But it’s only because the people surrounding her also lacked virtue. Since I define virtue as being able to authentically pursue and maintain one’s true values, a lack of virtue is someone who is not only one who deceives, but is deceived themselves in the pursuit of values. Looking at the investors on the board of Theranos, all of them were powerful socially, but they weren’t qualified to see if the Theranos products actually worked,11 which is what allowed Holmes to fool everyone. Holmes fooled herself in a sense as well, since she believed she could change the world with only one college semester of engineering! From a birds-eye view, one has to wonder what these people were really doing. What is this game they are playing? How absurd it all is to see so much talk and money going around, yet having nothing authentic to show for it. All these people wore a piece of ring on their finger and it blew up in their faces.
Even with all the illusions and lies, the only reason Holmes was even able to maintain the charade was because of 3rd party companies like LabCorp. These companies possessed true virtue and expertise by being able to actually perform lab tests on patients’ blood. Without them, Theranos wouldn’t have been able to exist at all.
The biggest failure in The Prince and The 48 Laws of Power is that they only focus on social power. It’s never about the cultivation of one’s values, but instead always focused on the emotions, feelings, appearances, and perceptions of people!
There’s only four laws in The 48 Laws that aren’t exactly connected to other people:
Law 9 Win through your actions
Law 23 Concentrate your forces
Law 28 Enter Actions with boldness
Law 29 Plan all the way to the end
All the other laws are a deliberate attempt to deceive and manipulate by playing on people’s emotions and expectations. Even with these four laws, Greene didn’t like them for virtue, or the generation of values, but for their ability to beat others. For example, I agree with law #9 that it’s much easier to win through one’s actions than argument. But he frames it in terms of deception. The example he gives is Michelangelo arguing with the Pope about how to paint a painting. Instead of trying to convince the Pope that he was right, he cleverly painted it the way he wanted it. The Pope, without realizing that it wasn’t painted the way he wanted it, ended up liking the painting anyway. Greene gave an example of how deception can be used for good results. Although, this isn’t a good law because it saves oneself from a petty argument with a dishonest person, it’s good because a true value was created that any authentic person can genuinely see and desire.
Going back to Elizabeth Holmes, her professor Phyllis Gardner, someone she first sought advice from when coming up with ideas for Theranos, seemed to be the most powerful person in all this chaos. Gardner demonstrated true power because she was an expert in fields of medicine and engineering, which allowed her to create much wealth and power for herself. She was able to start many successful companies, help her students create many successful companies making them millions of dollars, and also allowed her to see through Holmes’ deception.12 In the documentary that I watched, she said all this money creation created an “odd morality” but I say it’s a good morality! If Holmes’ would’ve simply taken Professor Gardner’s honest advice instead of detaching from reality with lies and illusion, I speculate that she would’ve ended up quite successful. In fact, it’s always so strange to me when people go through so much trouble to lie, manipulate and deceive when they could’ve just buckled down and learned an actual skill. It’s much better to invest one’s time into something sustainable and honest instead of faking one’s way with deception. But Holmes couldn’t accept her lack of virtue and expertise in the field, and didn’t want to go through the trouble to develop her skills. She turned to lies and deception out of weakness and impatience.
Funnily enough, I think Robert Greene has caught onto this virtuoustic power over social power because he has an entirely separate book called Mastery where he walks you through the painstaking steps to becoming a master of a craft, and that developing a skill is the greatest power a person can do. I honestly believe that the ideas of Mastery will make one far more powerful than all the laws combined in the 48 Laws of Power.
In Glaucon’s thought experiment, he wanted to pose what a just person would do if they were stripped of all their possessions and status.13 If the just person were presented with the one ring while impoverished, they would immediately take the ring because they would receive all their wealth back. But as I’ve described above, stripping a virtuous man of his wealth and power is a contradiction because actually, they go hand and hand. People that can produce authentic values are guaranteed to make money and rise in status. Actually, Greene refers to this indirectly with law #11: Keep People Dependent On You. Again, Greene frames these laws in terms of deception, but on the positive side, people will always depend on those that have skill and expertise. Power naturally comes to virtuous people without manipulation or coercion, whether or not they want it, because they are indispensable to a business, market, or relationship.
If one masters people, they will get nothing. But if one masters reality, they will get both reality and people.
Evil is Dualistic Misery
However, to completely ignore the realm of social power would be a mistake. It’s really easy to talk about virtue, but acting it out is much harder. Life is a combination of good and evil, wearing masks, pursuing false values, and playing games. Morality is often gray and ambiguous, not cut dry into black and white. How do you really know which of your values are authentic? How can you know if someone is actually deceiving you?
The world is a modern jungle, and as much as I hate to admit it, social power does have some utility and it’s necessary to participate in. Sure, politics may be inauthentic, but politics is necessary and, again, the reason Machiavelli is read is because he looks at politics practically. Social power, even though it’s false and essentially powerlessness pretending to have power, it still is a kind of power.
When Greene says, “Yet another way of avoiding the game would be perfect honesty and straightforwardness, since the main techniques of those who seek power are deceit and secrecy.. But being perfectly honest will inevitably hurt and insult a great many people, some of whom will choose to injure you in return.”14 It reminds me of the woman who asks, “Does this dress make me look fat?” What is someone supposed to say to this question? If you’re honest, she’ll get mad and punish you. If you lie, then you’ll be able to preserve the peace, but then you’ll be considered “evil.” Although, one could say that the woman asking this question is dishonest to begin with; lying is merely reflecting back her own delusion. If she truly cared about her weight, she wouldn’t ask someone else; she would just get it under control. But because this cliché example feels so common to me it suggests that humans lie and deceive and play games all the time, probably without realizing it. I would take it a step further and say that even people who think they’re being honest, are often lying to themselves and other people. And just because the lady said “Does this dress make me look fat?” doesn’t necessarily mean she cares about her weight. She could be saying it as a joke. Should could be saying it because she needs genuine input because she has been working on her weight. Some dresses are different from others, and look different on different people. It’s honestly pretty difficult to navigate these situations. Ironically, Greene and Machiavelli are helping us find more authentic values and virtues. But again, where I deviate from Greene and Machiavelli is when they seem to say that power and deception certainly exists, morality is a power play, so we should double down on power and deception.
At the very beginning of his book, Greene says, “not having power is miserable.” This is certainly true if we throw ourselves into the realm of politics and Hollywood. There are many cases, not only similar, but much darker, of the lady who asks “Does this dress make me look fat?” Since these places are so devoid of authenticity and honesty, the only source of “goodness” is having power over others. The idea or the question of acting on deception is an indicator that one is already in hell.
There’s a play called The Tragedy of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, and like Lord of the Rings and Glaucon’s Ring of Gyges thought experiment, it revolves around the concept of power. Basically, the main character Dr. Faustus sacrificed his soul to have all the power in the world. And there’s a really interesting scene where Fausuts asked a demon if hell exists and where it is. The demon is not only confused because he’s direct evidence of hell, but he says that hell is everywhere. “Within the bowels of these elements, Where we are tortur’d and remain for ever: Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib’d In one self-place; but where we are is hell, And where hell is, there must we ever be: And, to be short, when all the world dissolves, And every creature shall purified, All places shall be hell that are not heaven.”15 Faustus responded to this simply saying that hell doesn’t exist even though there’s a demon right in front of him. It’s honestly kind of hilarious and silly, but to me it suggests that when people act on evil and deception they don’t know how bad things actually are. If you’re making deals with devils and demons, participating in deception, playing power games, sure you may have a lot going for you, but you have to admit something is wrong. You have to admit you’re not in a good place. Deciding to act on deception means one is already unhappy.
In Lord of the Rings, Gandalf and Galadriel were tempted to take the ring, for example, but it’s not like they really needed it. Even though they were wise and able to see, they were also powerful and wealthy already. Again, goodness and virtue is powerful, so the ring doesn’t make any sense for them to take. Why would Gandalf and Galadriel want to deceive anyone? People do not pursue power because they are happy and content; they pursue it because they are desperate and weak.
Saruman, which is the same power equivalent as Galadriel and Gandalf, decided to pursue power, or join the dark side, because he was afraid; he thought he was going to lose. Again this not only suggests the ambiguity of morality, but also that he was desperate, he felt like he had no other choice.
When we give into evil, especially out of desperation and unhappiness, on the one hand being invisible and deceiving everyone gives someone great power, but their life becomes dualistic. They can’t show their true selves; they can’t be authentic. This is why I think it’s a bit funny when in Glaucon’s thought experiment the shepherd seized the throne and married the man’s wife like nothing happened. Sure, he was able to do bad things and get away with it because he was invisible, but wouldn’t it be pretty obvious that the shepherd killed the king, especially after marrying the king’s wife? Like wouldn’t you see the shepherd on the throne the next day? Like are people dumb or something? I don’t know how someone can get away with murder and expect everything to be all fine and dandy. But then everyone would tell me that I’m missing the point; the ring frees the bearer from consequences. But this only reinforces how dualistic the whole thing is! There is a consequence to freeing yourself from consequences. In order to fend off reality, to maintain the deception, the person would have to be invisible all the time. And more realistically, more tricks and deception would have to be created to maintain the levels of power that one has achieved. Essentially, a false self or an evil self would arise as a direct contradiction to the authentic, good self. The shepherd would have to be a faceless king, in an empty marriage with the king’s wife, not being able to express himself authentically.
We don’t see the shepherd’s mental anguish that comes with invisible deception because it’s just assumed by Glaucon he would get away with it, but in Lord of the Rings we do see it. Arguably, the most important character in Lord of the Rings is Gollum; and unlike Saruman, Gollum had a direct, compulsive, and obsessive connection to the ring. Or should I say Smeagol. I’m not sure which name to use because he’s literally two people living in the same body. Gollum was split into two separate personalities with different goals: one that wanted power, and the other that wanted love. Setting aside the fact that Gollum spent centuries all by himself alone and isolated, being deformed into a wretched creature (clearly Tolkien thinks that giving into power leads to a horrible existence), he struggled tirelessly with his darker half. In general, not just in Lord of the Rings, there are so many villains that struggle with their light and dark half. Another example that’s very similar to Gollum/Smeagol is the Green Goblin in Spiderman.
Anyway, Frodo saw Smeagol while Sam saw Gollum. It’s interesting because as they got closer to Morder, the ring grew stronger, and the setting surrounding them started to look like actual hell. It represented a race to the bottom. Each of them tried to achieve power over one another, they questioned each other’s values and virtues, they lost their own virtue, and it’s not until they’ve reached absolute hell in Mount Doom that things collapsed. The ring was thrown into the lava unwillingly when Gollum and Frodo fought over it. Tolkein seemed to suggest that evil collapses on itself, and I agree. But I also think that when we’re pursuing authenticity, in a sense we have to find and face evil directly, which is shown by throwing the ring into Mount Doom. It’s easy to ignore evil and fake values while evil stretches over the world, but it’s also incredibly difficult because we can become evil ourselves in trying to overcome evil.
In another book called Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky, the main character Raskolnikov commits a crime in which he kills an old lady to steal valuables. The old lady isn’t a good person: she abuses her niece and doesn’t do anything with the money she has. Raskolnikov is desperate for money because he’s practically starved and doesn’t have the funds to pay for schooling as a law student. To pay for his schooling, his mother and sister sent him money, especially his sister because she planned to marry a rich man to help fund her brother’s needs. Basically, Dostoyesky sets up a story where the main character has a very good reason to do evil, or use the ring. This seems like a case where deception and power has its uses.
However, before and after Raskolnikov commits the murder, he’s in a state of constant suffering and insanity. In the beginning of the book we realize that he spent most of his time in isolation, while deliberating and wondering if he actually wanted to go through with the murder. Even though he thought rigorously about the murder process, we could say that he utterly failed executing his plan. For one, he killed the niece unintentionally. After he killed the old woman, he didn’t realize the niece would be there, so he had to kill her too. Second, he barely got away with the murder. When he was about to escape there were two men on the outside of the old woman’s apartment, so he couldn’t leave until they decided to leave. Luckily both men decided to leave, giving Raskolnikov the chance to escape. Not to mention, he didn’t realize he had blood on his pants and socks suggesting that there were many important details he was unaware of that he should’ve been. Third, he didn’t even use the items he stole. He just buried them behind a building because he didn’t have the strength to fully commit to what he was doing. With all these reasons, it’s safe to say that Raskolnikov, even though he was a law student and thought carefully about what he was going to do, failed at what he set out to do. The punishment for the crime wasn’t getting caught, but trying to hide it.
Raskolnikov acted out this murder because he aspired to be like Napoleon. By his reasoning, if Napoleon could do it, especially to benefit mankind, then he should also be competent enough to do it. Similarly, I think the reason why The 48 Laws is so successful is because people fantasize about how powerful and cool they’ll be following these laws, in the same way that I love watching supervillains on TV. But when one actually opens up this book, it’s actually quite difficult to implement. 48 laws is a pretty large number and I remember as an edgy 16-year-old trying to memorize all these laws and feeling that it was a bit pointless. Many of the laws seemed to contradict each other, especially because there’s a “reversal” at the end of each chapter giving a warning of how practicing a law too much can reduce power. So are these actual laws or are they more like tips? Couldn’t these laws be condensed? How do you juggle all these laws in your head? How do you practice all of them consistently? It feels like Greene is expecting people to be these calculating machines executing things flawlessly, when actually, most people are like Raskolnikov missing subtle details because life is far too complex and nuanced to manipulate things to one’s advantage. It’s much easier to simply focus on honesty and authenticity instead of playing all these games of deception.
In Crime and Punishment there’s so many references to the color yellow, the yellow walls and the yellow faces. Yellow is often associated with youthfulness and intellect, but also mental insanity, which perfectly describes Raskolnikov, and by extension Elizabeth Holmes. Many people that aspire towards deceptive power, I think, tend to be clever and youthful, but are psychotic.
Although, one can object and say that Crimes and Punishment is merely a story with a strong narrative that could be argued against. Dostoyesky has spent time in prison so he’s had first hand experiences with criminals. But maybe getting away with murder is actually pretty easy depending on the person, if you’re Napoleon for example.
But let’s go back to Elizabeth Holmes because she’s a real life example. In one interview with Bill Clinton, she was pressed to answer questions about technology, and towards the end of the interview she gave an answer that she clearly faked and the expression on her face looked incredibly desperate.16
I almost felt kind of bad for her. When I saw this interview I wondered what was going through her mind. Did she ever think, “Was this really worth it?” I bet she really wanted to be invisible, to put on the ring, to take the attention away from her during that interview. Her feelings were likely heightened because of Jack Ma sitting next to her, another tech entrepreneur participating in the interview. It was easy to tell that he knew what he was talking about, and it was funny to see his facial expressions while Holmes spoke. Like Holmes’ professor, he’s actually virtuous because he’s an expert in business and technology, and he could see through her nonsense.
In another interview when she was directly asked about her company’s product she didn’t seem that excited to talk about the details of Theranos. Obviously because there was nothing truly there to talk about, but it’s also kind of sad. She spent the entire interview dodging the interviewer’s questions.17 Tech entrepreneurs are usually excited to talk about the new technologies that their business created because it’s something they actually created and are passionate about. That’s one of the great things about being authentic and genuine is that one can express themselves exactly how they want to. But when someone is forced to lie about their product because they created nothing, I think that really has to hurt one’s soul. It makes me think that Holmes really sold her soul to the devil. Is all the wealth and power truly worth your authentic identity?
It’s funny how in Plato’s Republic he created a blueprint for a totalitarian dictatorship because he seemed so incredibly distrusting of people by giving the ring of power too much credit. Strict censorship or control over a city is unnecessary. The opposite is the correct approach, because in truth, goodness is all around us, even with the lies and deception. It’s not truth that’s at the mercy of lies, it’s lies that are at the mercy of truth.
One employee at Theranos recalled the extreme paranoia that ran through the company. People rarely had heart-to-heart conversations with one another, there were cameras installed, keystrokes were saved, emails were monitored, nothing inside the company could be disclosed to the outside.18 It looked like a mini totalitarian dictatorship. People who are evil and have a lust for power, are the most paranoid and therefore strangle any attempts to acquire true values.
I’d like to take it a step further. Sure, it can be argued that power and deception is important in business and politics, even though the examples above say otherwise, but what among friends and family? Robert Greene makes a disturbing point that one should even study their friends and family. “Never discriminate as to whom you study and whom you trust. Never trust anyone completely and study everyone, including friends and loved ones.” 19 Are these really circles of power and deception? Well, they could be, but if they are, that should raise gigantic red flags and sounds of blaring alarms. Of course we should always be cautious when trusting anyone, but applying this calculative mindset to one’s closest relationships sounds nihilistic and empty. These relationships cannot and should not be about power. That would defeat the entire purpose of friends and family. Love cannot be experienced when treating friends and family as objects of manipulation. Love is a far more important value, and protection, from whatever other value one hopes to attain through deception. Greene may accuse me of trying to assert my own power by hiding behind love morality, but this sounds like projection.
Machiavelli, on the other hand, seemed to treat the pursuit of power as a kind of passion. In Machievalli’s biography, one finds that he lived and breathed politics. He collapsed into despair when he was exiled to a farm residence unable to participate in the political game. In a sense, I don’t have a disagreement with Machiavelli if someone holds their authentic value to be political power. It would be the most virtuous to follow The Prince If one wanted to sustain their title as a Prince or Leader, even if at the cost of other values. My only objection is is this truly authentic? Is being a leader really a life worth living at the cost of everything else? What in the literal hell are you doing surrounding yourself with manipulative and nihilistic people? This is like standing on the edge of Mount Doom and not throwing the ring in the fire. Leave politics and other places convoluted with power games to psychopaths and narcissists. Anywhere or anyone who pulls us into a power game should be abandoned because it’s not worth stooping down to their literal hell.
For most of us who don’t aspire to be political leaders, I think the characters and examples above show us that even with a little inkling or desire to do evil, even in the pursuit of good, still has disastrous consequences. Even if $100 were left on the table, it’s best to avoid the money altogether. Because thinking about stealing throws oneself into a dualistic chaos and uncertainty. Robert Greene says that not having power is miserable 20, but actually the pursuit of deceptive power comes from misery and creates a psychotic dualism..
Evil is a Dehumanized Demonstration
When I observe evil, it shows an unwillingness to accept life for what it is. Life isn’t embraced, but avoided. Instead of pursuing authentic values with a virtuous character, values are achieved by means of deception. In the process of deception one dehumanizes themselves trying to become a god.
There’s a controversial book by Hannah Arendt called, Eichmann in Jerusalem: The Banality of Evil. Obviously this caught my attention because it completely contradicted my view of supervillains. What? Evil is banal?! If you don’t know who Eichmann was, he was a Nazi official responsible for transporting Jews across Europe to be slaughtered in death camps. Many people immediately deemed him to be an utter monster, but when Arendt said that his evil was banal it was certainly controversial. It flies in the face of how we typically see evil. This was no mastermind supervillain like in the movies. It wasn’t a Sauron or Darth Vader. It was a rather ordinary man. She says this because she observed his constant use of cliches and an inability to think from another person’s perspective.21 He wasn’t motivated by anything else other than advancing in his career. Eichmann pleaded innocent because he was merely following orders and doing his duty. What’s shocking about Eichmann’s job is that he was able to kill literally millions of human beings while at the same time not feeling responsible. Arendt at the very end of the book mentioned the issue of abstractions.22 The Ring could represent the Nazi machine because it made people invisible and ultimately dehumanized. In other words, Eichmann wasn’t the monster exactly; it was the system that reduced human beings to numbers on pieces of paper. Eichmann was able to fill out the paperwork without suffering any of the consequences since the Jews he sent to death were invisible to him and he was invisible to them. These atrocities were able to be committed because the world was rendered meaningless and inauthentic, a combination of symbols and abstractions taking the place of real human beings!
I often feel like I am Eichmann by going to university. The entire system is so large and looming devoid of authenticity. The classes feel so meaningless and pointless. The degree on the piece of paper is a symbol representing the knowledge that I’ve supposedly accumulated, but it’s still just a symbol. My knowledge is acquired regardless of a degree, but I go to school anyway because the world has convinced itself that the degree is more important than the knowledge itself. It feels very much like rising up the ranks, and being held responsible for doing one’s duty feels unfair because everyone else is doing it and that’s what the machine demands. The monstrous seems to be a machine, or institution, a generality, or idea that is devoid of any real human authenticity, and at the same time has grown out of ugly proportion with power and influence.
It also reminds me of the days when I used to hack Mario Kart Wii. With these hacks, I felt like a god because it gave me limitless power to wreak havoc on the game. I spammed blue shells, bombs, bananas, bullet bills, everything I could possibly think of. But within a short period of time, I discovered that being a god of Mario Kart rendered the game boring and meaningless. Winning races ceased to matter because I was always guaranteed to win, either by spamming bullet bills or pressing a button that would award me first place even if I got last place. The only interesting thing left to hacking was trolling other people online. I trolled people so bad that people would just quit the race before the race even started because they knew I would bomb them endlessly. Again, the game was boring again.
I remember one last ditch attempt to actually enjoy hacking and this was with my friend. For some reason we got the idea to troll Japanese people. We were Americans so we were denied access to a game mode that only allowed Japanese people. But since we hacked the game it allowed us to play these Japanese races, and our character names were “Japan Sucks!” of course in hacked letters. In these races, we pretended to play legit, but we would slowly increase our item hacks. Every now and then we would hack a blue shell or bomb and sarcastically say, “Oops!” Over time, however, the item hacks spun out of control until it became an absolute warzone. My friend and I laughed our asses off the whole time.
But looking back on this memory, I feel a little bit ashamed. First of all, we were teenagers so I guess it wasn’t that big of a deal. And it was just a video game, it wasn’t like we were robbing a bank or anything. But even just that little amount of power turned us into monstrous human beings. It quickly devolved into trolling and taunting people, because again, that was the only thing left that was interesting. And setting that aside, it was absolutely absurd. Video games themselves are kind of meaningless, but hacking them makes them feel even more meaningless. And even though I was laughing with my friend, we hated each other and were hacking Mario Kart because we hated our lives.
Going back to Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, he does something very similar with his godly power. Similar to hacking Mario Kart by pushing a button to win the game or spamming bombs, there’s a pretty funny scene where Doctor Faustus played tricks on the pope by snatching his dishes.23 It’s interesting because Faustus sold his soul to the devil to have all the power in the world, and yet he was spending that time, basically being an early modern troll. In another scene, Faustus wanted a wife, so he used his powers to summon one, except a hot whore appeared instead. The demon that helped him summon the wife made excuses about how marriage is a silly game and that a whore is preferred.24 Not only was this a funny part because Faustus is just like, “What sight is this?” as he was not expecting a hot whore – the book actually says “hot whore” – but it shows that having great power doesn’t actually bring us what we want, or we settle on false or fake values at the expense of real one’s. What’s interesting is that I completely stopped hacking Mario Kart because none of the values were authentically acquired. What I actually found most meaningful in Mario Kart were games in which everyone played legit and relied on their skills, their virtue of playing Mario Kart well. Even when I lost these races playing legit, these were the most fun and meaningful because it was a true test of skill. This was especially true when I achieved a time trial time of 2:12.21 on Bowser’s Castle in 2014. This was huge for me because of all the people that played Mario Kart Wii in the United States, my time was in the top 10 fastest times. It felt like a huge accomplishment, especially because there’s a shortcut on Bowser’s Castle that is incredibly hard to do. It took a tremendous amount of time and practice to do it, so when I was finally able to do it, and to do it consistently to get the desired time trial time, it felt like I was achieving an authentic value that actually mattered to me. If I hacked this time trial, which many people did hack their times, it wouldn’t have mattered at all. Some people may interject to say that the shortcut is a glitch, which is cheating or a form of evil deception. I can understand why someone would think that, but I’d argue that it depends on your authentic values. In the Mario Kart Wii community, especially among the most competitive players, it’s considered respectable and admirable to pull off this shortcut, rather than seen as a form of cheating. That’s why the Mario Kart community developed a system dedicated to recording time trial times that were achieved without hacking. Because there’s something meaningful, authentic and virtuous in it.
Considering the fact that we’re talking about hacking and video games, this can be broadly applied to the internet. The internet is like the One Ring broken up into millions of pieces and dispersed to everyone that participates. Everyone is granted anonymity, which means freedom from consequences. Everyone is ridiculously powerful with knowledge at their fingertips. Everyone has influence over each other, yet is disconnected and alienated from one another. Using the internet turns you into a kind of god, which is also dehumanizing. On a side note, so many people watch porn on the internet as a kind of substitute for real authentic sex. Now one can make excuses that a wife is silly, but watching porn is very similar to Faustus summoning a hot whore.
Everyone online fights to be seen because everyone is essentially invisible. No one is actually seen for who they are, everyone is seen for who they are not. Everyone seems to think that if they become more dramatically deceptive they’ll somehow be easier to see, but the exact opposite happens. When Frodo puts on the ring he’s invisible to real human beings around him, but he becomes so utterly visible to Sauron, the great eye. The internet is like the great eye watching over everyone. It’s an inverted, corrupt form of visibility. People strive for values but never get them because it’s all fake! There’s an endless amount of porn. Again, like Faustus got a whore wife, people on the internet get sexual images as a replacement for actual sex.
And similarly to how hacking Mario Kart made me a demon, people on the internet become demons. There are mountains of evidence showing how humans hurt themselves and each other online. It’s amazing how this tremendous amount of power is used in the pursuit of petty, trivial, fake, vain, shallow, unthinking, narcissistic, and ultimately, inauthentic values. The internet is truly a kind of hell. It is the ultimate machine of dehumanization, converting human beings and values into abstractions and symbols to be manipulated and played with by false gods.
Given everything I’ve said so far, the idea that nihilism is evil, how humans are becoming gods online or by means of deception, the idea of pursuing one’s authentic values and virtues, I can’t help but mention Friedrich Nietzsche. He is vital to this discussion, especially when he said that man will be like apes to his concept of the Superman. Is the Superman a kind of God? The use of technology, and the glorification of supervillains like Darth Vader and Lord Sauron seems to run dangerously close to the Superman in all the wrong ways. Would Nietzsche approve of the internet and the one ring? Would he approve of Lord Sauron taking morality into his own hands and pursuing his will to power? It’s hard to know, especially because I’ve barely started to read Nietzsche. For this essay I have only read Beyond Good and Evil. I thought it was an appropriate book since it feels very much like we’re going beyond good and evil, especially when determining authentic values from inauthentic values. As the example I gave already, is the glitch on Bowser’s Castle a form of deception or a genuine pursuit of a value? Unfortunately, I only understood about 30% of Beyond Good and Evil, so I’ll have to set Nietzsche aside to unpack later in future essays.
However, with Nietzsche’s famous “God is Dead” I think people have attempted to usurp Him and will continue to do so. I’ve often heard the criticism of conservatives that not believing in God results in people projecting God onto other areas: the state, an ideology, or especially themselves. The idea of God, to me, is evil personified. God is the most general abstraction, the greatest manipulated symbol, the biggest anti-value value, and the most powerful anti-identity identity. He has all the power in the world to do whatever he wants, yet is completely invisible. He is never held accountable for his actions, unless they are perceived to be good. He was the first ring bearer, but certainly not the last. As a god, human beings cease to be human beings. A person isn’t human, other people aren’t human, nothing is human. There are only objects of manipulation and entertainment. Life ceases to be meaningful or even interesting.
Thinking of a stereotypical robber or thief, what does he wear? A face mask. A mask so people can’t figure out his identity, in other words, we see a decrease of humanity. When I look up to the great supervillains on TV, I essentially worship them as gods. It was a mistake to believe I loved them as human. All of them have lost their humanity in some way. Basic human activities have ceased to be possible for them. Imagine sitting next to Darth Vader, Sauron, or Lord Voldemort to have a drink with them? The simple act of eating and drinking is beneath them; they are too powerful for that, too alien for that. But this is also what makes them so captivating. Without an identity, being deprived of a human face, enveloped in mystery, spurs our imaginations and projections. Anything could happen and could be under the mask. When I look at them, it’s as if I could be them. Because anyone can put on a dark suit and look badass. It’s so easy to convince ourselves that we are special, powerful, and meant for greatness. Even when we don’t believe in our own power, we worship power in other people the same way we worship god. Power is everything.
Narcissists and psychopaths are inverted versions of Nietzsche’s Superman, especially leaders like Napoleon and Hitler. Hitler was convinced he would do something great by a religious figure to help with his eyesight.25 They always have a belief in their specialness, that they were meant to do something great.26 Which is interesting because Nietzsche praises Napoleon in Beyond Good and Evil.27 Napoleon crowned himself emperor, as though it were a theater play, convincing everyone that he was somehow above being human. Hitler spoke dramatically playing to people’s emotions, was the very first to use the newest technology, used all kinds of symbols within Nazism to catch people’s attention. Elizabeth Holmes modeled herself after the famous Steve Jobs by the way she held up her blood stick, lowered her voice to sound more manly, wore turtlenecks just like him, and even the action of dropping out of college the first semester. As Robert Greene says in the 48 Laws of Power, there are four laws that explain the behavior above: law 27 create a cult-like following, law 32 play to people’s fantasies, law 34 act royal in your own fashion, and law 37 create compelling spectacles. If you follow these laws, if you put on a show, you will gain some kind of power.
In my monster essay, I said that Elliot Rodger essentially became a monster because he fell on two extremes of taking responsibility and taking no responsibility. On one extreme, he took no responsibility by placing all his happiness on winning the lottery while also hoping a beautiful girlfriend would automatically approach him without even trying. On the other extreme, he took too much responsibility, elevating himself to the status of a god, in which he took the lives of innocent people. I should’ve made this the main argument of my monster essay; after all, it is titled Demonstrations. Not only did Elliot Rodger fail to take responsibility as a human being, but he created a delusional narrative placing himself as the victim. He reminds me of Anakin Skywalker in his melodramatic moments. They both talk about how unfair life is, yet they are the most fortunate and privileged people to ever exist.29 When Anakin is the youngest Jedi to ever participate in the Jedi Counsel, which is a great honor, he thinks it’s unfair that he’s not granted the rank of master. One only has to watch one or two of Rodger’s videos to see how fake and delusional he is. There’s one video that he never released to the public, but authorities recently released it after finding it on his phone, and in the video he goes around badmouthing people in his car.30 Nothing truly injustice was being done to him. It’s very strange to see him twisting and distorting so much of the truth to convince himself and everyone else that injustice was being done to him. It makes me wonder if the people that are the most outraged from injustice are actually the most unjust themselves. Rodger’s videos, along with the manifesto and the school shooting, truly is nihilistic and inauthentic. What all these people in their desire for power have in common is a refusal to accept the mundanity and normalcy of existence. Their life is a DEMONstration, a monstrous show devoid of meaning, pretending to be something as a nothing, a conglomeration of easily manipulated symbols, props, cliches, slogans, and anti-identity abstractions to suit one’s dehumanized, godly narrative.
Art as Evil
In my Monster essay, I also briefly mentioned how furries are like monsters. Wearing a fursuit hides one’s face rendering a person less human. It makes me wonder if being a furry is giving into nihilism. In fact, this video in itself makes me wonder, since not only am I using the evil internet, I am not showing my face; I am expressing myself through my furry avatar. There is a hint of anonymity. It seems as though I am putting on a show making a literal monster out of myself.
Well, I think one of the main reasons that I was attracted to being a furry was because life was “too much” for me. I remember always wearing a hat, glasses, and my noise-canceling headphones everywhere, especially in middle and high school. Not necessarily to listen to music, but to block out noise. To shield myself. I hated noise, especially loud noises, and I hated talking to people. They overloaded my senses and hurt my peace of mind. As Socrates said that one needs the virtue of ears to hear, wearing headphones to block out sound must be a vice. It’s an attempt to dehumanize myself, to sever contact with the outside world and other people. To filter the world into bigger abstractions so it’s easier to manipulate. This helped elevate me to a god-like status. Wearing glasses, a hat, and headphones made me feel more confident. Since the noises weren’t so jarring and intense, since my self-awareness as a weak human being was dulled and blurred, I was able to hold my eye contact with people for much longer. I was able to speak more boldly and more fluently. It’s like my entire existence became more bearable and therefore more powerful, and all I had to do was dim my immersive experience as a human being. Wearing headphones, and by extension being a furry, is like wearing the one ring or becoming a supervillain. I think that’s also another reason why people on the internet can boldly say horrible words, or why supervillains dress themselves in all black, sexy costumes. These people feel immune to their consequences.
And this is all under the guise of art and music when I’m a furry wearing headphones. People think I’m listening to music, not blocking out noise. People think I’m expressing myself artistically as a furry, not hiding myself from life. But, is there really any harm in it? Is this a healthy escape from the rawness of life? Is art a healthy form of nihilism?
In the Republic, interestingly Plato banned all poets in his ideal city. Plato feared the misuse of knowledge, and I guess by extension, propaganda and deception. And I kind of agree because people can accumulate mountains of power through art or deception. Even in the dialogue called Ion, Socrates questions if poets actually possess true knowledge? In a sense, what is actually happening when you consume art?
This is one of the great and most important purposes of art. Art allows us to have our values without having them. It’s like having one’s cake and eating it too. It is a middle ground in which someone gives up some authenticity of a value, in exchange for a less real version of the value.
While the evil people I mentioned earlier engaged in deception in real life, I think they would’ve had much greater success by putting deception in its proper place. Art is a form of deception. Paintings are all about illusion. Movies are all about illusion. When we find ourselves desiring power over others, we should take a step back and ask ourselves what art we can create. Maybe it’s time to compose a song, paint a painting, or write a story! Art also allows us to be evil without being evil. If one wants to live out dark fantasies without consequences or wants to experience life from a perspective that is impossible to them, art is a powerful medium for doing that. Want to know what it’s like to be a serial killer? Read or write a story about a serial killer. Want to indulge your fantasies of grandeur by living like a god? Paint or compose an art piece expressing those feelings!
It’s so very interesting since Hitler, Napoleon, Elizabeth Holmes, and Elliot Rodger would’ve had great success as artists. Hitler actually started out a painter, but when he failed, he turned to the art of politics. And what led to his success was his ability to speak and appeal to people’s emotions! Watching his speeches, it’s easy to imagine as though he’s performing in a play or putting on a show for people. I would go to one of his shows if it wasn’t true Nazi ideology being acted out. People often compare Donald Trump to Hitler, which is a bit ridiculous, but a common theme I see between them is their acting. After all, Trump was a TV personality. And since politics is a game of deception anyway, it’s no wonder that these artistic types do very well in politics since there isn’t really much of a difference. I think Trump’s popularity can be attributed to the fact that he’s just interesting, he’s different. He’s absurd and ridiculous. He knows how to put on a good show, a demonstration.
Elizabeth Holmes probably failed because she created her product in healthcare, but since Silicon Valley is known for its leading progress in technological innovation, and since technology turns the world into easily manipulated abstractions and symbols, I bet she would have succeeded in tech. If not that, she would’ve done amazing as a politician. Her answers were awful as a tech geek CEO, but as a politician, she would’ve done absolutely great! Even Elliot Rodger wanted to be a writer! I think he was on the right track since he created a crazy narrative placing him as an incel hero. It takes a creative mind to pull that off. Interestingly, he loved the Game of Thrones series, and it’s all about power games. Too bad the book went over his head because I think, especially towards the very end of the series when the evil ice king and zombies were coming to take over, I interpreted that as death coming. Death was coming, and yet all these human beings were fighting each other for power, control, and dominance. The message of Game of Thrones is that one should focus on living instead of dying for power.
Authenticity
Evil surrounds us everywhere, but it does so out of ignorance or desperation. Although the pursuit of authentic values is difficult because it is so often gray and confusing, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. It’s important to not sacrifice our most authentic values for false values, otherwise we run the risk of dragging ourselves down to hell, sometimes literally. This temptation almost always reveals a desire to become God, resulting in an ostentatious and ridiculous demonstration depicting the loss of our humanity as we give into nihilism. A nihilism that renders the world meaningless because values are falsely obtained by the manipulation of symbols and abstractions rather than by the immersive life experience practicing one’s virtues. But due to the intensity of life, sometimes we prefer our values diluted or less authentic, and art is a powerful and healthy medium for delivering these half values. Morality is often gray, and only a character of integrity can navigate morality authentically, and only one’s private honesty can attest if they are truly being authentic or not.
Notes
- Star Wars 3, https://youtu.be/jBCoyeSItVs
- Evil Laugh TV Tropeshttps://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilLaugh
- Plato and John M. Cooper. Completed Works. (Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1997), 1000.
- Plato, Completed Works, 993.
- Plato, Completed Works, 996-997
- Greene, Robert. The 48 Laws of Power. (New York: The Penguin Group, 1998), preface.
- Machiavelli, Niccolò, George Bull, and Anthony Grafton. The Prince. (London, England: Penguin Books, 2006), 25.
- Robert Greene, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2Ndl0cdn_E
- Robert Greene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2Ndl0cdn_E
- Robert Greene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hGRCGlj4eg&t=0s
- Elizabeth Holmes Documentary, https://www.amazon.com/Inventor-Out-Blood-Silicon-Valley/dp/B07PMVDHM6/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2OM61YCAEU4YH&keywords=elizabeth+holmes&qid=1673226586&s=instant-video&sprefix=elizabeth+holme%2Cinstant-video%2C181&sr=1-1 39:10 – 39:45
- Elizabeth Holmes Documentary, Professor, https://www.amazon.com/Inventor-Out-Blood-Silicon-Valley/dp/B07PMVDHM6/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2OM61YCAEU4YH&keywords=elizabeth+holmes&qid=1673226586&s=instant-video&sprefix=elizabeth+holme%2Cinstant-video%2C181&sr=1-1 – 25:48 – 26:24
- Plato’s Republic, 1002
- Greene, 48 Laws, Preface
- Tragedy Doctor Faustus, 19-20
- Holmes Interview with Bill Clinton, https://youtu.be/l7Be_6NEPQE, 24:13 – 25:40
- Elizabeth Holmes Interview, https://youtu.be/YecjzEScXqU , SAWS dodge https://youtu.be/tzyGx3vAGbQ
- Elizabeth Holmes Documentary, https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B07PR1G2WF/ref=atv_hm_hom_1_c_lZOsi7_2_1 – 56:30 – 58:06
- Greene, 48 Laws, Preface
- Greene, 48 Laws, Preface
- Arendt, Banality of Evil, 48, 49, 53,
- Arendt, Banality of Evil, 296, 297
- Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, 37, 38
- Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, 20
- Hitler Documentary, https://youtu.be/nUXxFfjr7og, 13:00
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- Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 85
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- Anakin unfair https://youtu.be/jBCoyeSItVs, ANDelliot rodger unfair Rodger, Elliot, “Lonely Vlog, My Life is so unfair,” May 23, 2014, Internet Archive Videos, 1:00 to 2:00, https://archive.org/details/elliotrodgermanifestomytwistedworld/Elliot+Rodger/Season+1/S1E21+Elliot+Rodger%2C+Lonely+Vlog%2C+Life+is+so+unfair.mp4
- Elliot rodger, unreleased https://youtu.be/gKjWzWmuHLU