What an interesting article. The themes regarding demonisation and 'evil' are particularly true. Over the past few weeks, the furore over Carr has been ridiculous. She's a moron - plain and simple... and she probably deserved a slightly stiffer sentence, but the writer is correct to suggest that the media has wanted to turn her in Myra Hindley. What makes me laugh is the fact that the talking heads on the news were casually dropping the 'H word' into the chatter... only to later report on the 'development' that the public consider her on a par with Hindley. A messy cause and effect.
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Originally posted by greedy_lars
There is a gap between cause and effect, and if you don't use the concept of evil to bridge it, you'll have to find another word with the same meaning.
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How true.
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the case of Harold Shipman... the best journalists can do is say that he was driven to succeed by an ambitious mother who cosseted and petted him. Vera Shipman died suddenly when he was 17, and the shock of her death is meant to have pushed him into depression, drug-taking and, finally, murder...
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Jeeezus... the fleet-street, Division of Armchair Psycho-analysis cranks up again. Suddenly, a man who went to his grave having given absolutely nothing away, has the few known facts of his life moulded into a lay-psychological theory... you can see the fat-arse, cigar-smoking journo-hacks attempting to paint Shipman's life story, based loosely on a Norman Bates-esque, mummy's boy characature. Why? Because
eventually, they've got nothing else to say.
To be honest, I doubt the relatives of his victims will be comforted by the crap that's been built around the reporting.
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The German-American intellectual Hannah Arendt gave the best reason why not when she invented the phrase 'the banality of evil'. (Her use of the word 'evil', by the way, can be excused by the fact that she was writing in 1961, an unsophisticated time when we hadn't learned that it was sinful to be judgmental.)
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???
???
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And that, I think, is about as near as you can get to defining evil. It is pure selfishness and pure thoughtlessness.
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Again, how true.
Good post Greedy
Cheers