Recently, I've written a quote for one of my books, where I said a little about heroes and villains... I sent this quote to a friend, and she answered, "isn't it unlike? Like mostly the villains don't have a life love".
The quote said:
— "I noticed that heroes are those who are up to sacrifice their love of life in exchange to save the World... The villains are those who are up to sacrifice the World in exchange for save their love of life." Read again and think, who would be you in this situation.
Well, before all, how can we define the love of life from somebody else? Maybe, the first thing that came to your mind is the classic romantic love, but why not go a little more deeply and think about other things that we also can love?
For example, a villain's love of life can be themselves... A desire... A person... Even a worldview.
And well, if you start to notice, a lot of current villains have started to have this kind of "love of life".
From that point on, the villains started to awakening "humans" characteristics... In other words, they stopped being characters essentially bad, where their purpose is word domination with an ultimate horror or anything like that, and they start having a kind of "justification" to do what they are doing.
So, that has meant if this villain has a justification, at least something that makes some sense to us, we stop seeing the villain as the worst being in the universe, so we ignore even the ethics and our interest in the villain, increase.
For example, I'm gonna use a Naruto character:
In Naruto, there is a character call by "Itachi"... This character was from a Clan (kind of family or ethnicity) extremely strong, known as Uchirra Clan.
In short, this character (Itachi) killed almost all his clan, leaving just his younger brother alive...
During all the first part of this story, and as soon as you know the story, automatically you see this character as an extremely dangerous villain, after all, he committed a genocide... This hate for "Itachi" is extremely represented by his younger brother who had as a goal, kill "Itachi" and with this, avenge all his clan...
After a lot of stories and things at the midway, Sasuke (Itachi young's brother) could accomplish his goal and avenge his clan, killing his brother (Itachi).
However, after Itachi's death, Sasuke (the young brother) and us, find out that Itachi killed his entire clan to protect the 2 things that he loved the most in world:
Your village (kind of his country) and your young brother (Sasuke)... Why? Well, the Uchirra Clan, was politically dissatisfied and wanted to create a revolution/secession, where supposedly, will create a civil war, and with this, millions will die, or they will create a new strongly country...
Anyway, maybe you are wondering why this example matters... Well, if we stop to think rationally, everything that he did was a genocide of a group of people that had a different opinion from them (Itachi and the country leaders), in favor to save his love of life... The country and his younger brother.
Despite all of this, if you ask the people who had already watched all the anime, probably one of their favorite characters will be Itachi.
If we go a little more deeply, we start to notice that, somehow, if we ignore ethnics points (usually many people do it), the titles of Heroes and Villains, pass to a subjective state.
And this is also explored in Naruto's narrative... Kind of, Itachi becomes a hero to Sasuke, and Sasuke starts to see his country as a villain that ideologically compelled his old brother to commit a genocide and hide the truth from anyone, make him as the most dangerous villain in the anime until his death... From this point, Sasuke wanted to destroy his country and avenger the brother who he killed.
Well, who's the villain, if we think just in Itachi and Sasuke?
Maybe, the point that I'd like to make with this article is to understand that, sometimes, villains and heroes are the same people, just in different situations.
And, same goes for each of us.
Considering our day-to-day common people, each of us will be a villain is someone's story... And each of us will be a hero in someone else story.
Although, anything can change or justify the ethnic violation... If the love of your life is a person, maybe it doesn't see in the same way, and, well, you can not use force to change it... If the love of your life is a desire, you can not compel people with violence to accomplish it for you... If the love of your life is a World vision, you can not compel people using aggression and coercion to believe in the same vision you have.
This may even seem obvious... However, when we go to reality and start ignoring the natural ethical precept of humanity, that is, non-aggression and private propriety; what happened in the fiction anime Naruto, becomes seen as something justifiable to happen
And that was how, many genocides happened during human history... For me, the structure that allows the breach of each individual's freedoms and discards the basics ethics of non-aggression, and encourages the breach of private propriety is the true villain of this story.
It was the use of this coercive power that killed millions and millions of people around our world and in Naruto's world...
Sasuke believed in a lie that was told by a group of people, so he justified the murder of his brother... Itachi, was encouraging to believe that the only way to save his country, was obliterating the problem in the easier way, so he justified the murder of an entire ethnicity... The leader and high ranking agents that encouraged the plan with Itachi, justified their decision with the sentence "is for the common good of population".
"Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group—whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called 'the common good'."
~ Ayn Hand.
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Written by: Lucas Garcia
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