Author: Elizabeth Gaucher

Evil, Meet Science

/ Elizabeth Gaucher / 4 Comments

The concept of evil is so ancient, vast, and complex that even though I think about it often I hesitate to write about it.  A story on NPR yesterday made me change my mind.

Consider this (emphasis added is mine):

Inspired by the structure of Dante’s circles of hell, Michael Stone has created his own 22-point “Gradations of Evil” scale, made up of murderers in the 20th century. “I thought it would be an interesting thing to do,” he says.

Dante's 9 Circles of Hell

His scale is loosely divided into three tiers. First are impulsive evil-doers: driven to a single act of murder in a moment of rage or jealousy. Next are people who lack extreme psychopathic features, but may be psychotic — that is, clinically delusional or out of touch with reality. Last are the profoundly psychopathic, or “those who possess superficial charm, glib speech, grandiosity, but most importantly cunning and manipulativeness,” Stone says. “They have no remorse for what they’ve done to other people.”

Stone hopes the scale could someday be used in prosecutions. “The people at the very end of the scale have certain things about their childhood backgrounds that are different,” he says, from those who appear earlier in the scale.

That a modern-day psychology/medical professional would use Dante to consider how to interpret and respond to criminal activity fascinates me.  I have a foundation of respect for things that are ancient and complex, and genuinely believe that no matter how “evolved” we become as a species we may never be able to get any closer to the Truth of some things than we did hundreds of years ago.  In fact, I often think we lose knowledge by insisting that something explained by older civilizations must need polish and improvement.  If it’s old-school, primitive hindbrain stuff, maybe not.  Avarice, gluttony, wrath, betrayal, etc. seem resistant to “evolving” out of human nature.

But how we interpret and label our condition is important.  How we position the concept of “evil” in the world is crucial to how we respond to it.  My life changed the day I internalized the concept, “We are not punished for sin, but by sin.”  Naturally the human justice system can only focus on punishment for, but the larger idea of why we suffer is directed by the idea that following certain inclinations rather than resisting them inevitably will lead to a bad situation.  It’s as guaranteed as basic addition.

When we label people themselves as evil, we are taking the easy way out.  If anything, Michael Stone’s analysis of the 22 murderous types indicates that the more abuse and trauma an individual as suffered, especially early in life, the more prone they are to a psychotic break that disconnects them from a capacity to participate in anything but increasingly violent and disturbing behavior.  There is clearly a stress point for the mind, and the scale suggests that it’s the passing of that point that creates an inability to ever go back.

Which brings us full circle (pardon the pun) to Dante.  

Reading Stone’s profiles of murderous behavior and its origins supports Dante’s story.  What we call “evil” is a concentric, spiralling energy that with each pass pulls one deeper into a level more difficult to escape.  Properly managed, this connection of old and new thoughts on the influence of evil on our lives has the potential to reinvigorate public interest in prevention of and intervention in abusive environments, especially for the very young.

It also reminds me that, past a certain point, there are still limits on what people can fix.  That doesn’t mean it can never be repaired.  See Dante.

Men Who Eat Biscuits

/ Elizabeth Gaucher / 1 Comment

I watched Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart (2009) Saturday night, and was awed by his performance as a 57-year-old alcoholic “has-been” country singer trying to find a reason to live.  Bridges won the best actor award for this role last year, and I was remiss in not seeing this sooner. 

Jeff Bridges as Bad Black

Bridges is one of my favorite actors, and is a man who (much like my beloved husband) cannot disguise a core of masculine beauty, despite his best efforts.  His character, Bad Blake, somehow manages to shine glimmers of someone uniquely special and attractive, even grizzled, overweight, and covered in his own vomit.  To some degree it feels like he is trying to become as unappealing as possible to repel human interest so he can drink and die in peace, yet he is failing miserably.  Everywhere he goes, the people he encounters still want his attention and his story.  Part of the trouble is that he is encountering fewer and fewer people. 

The movie bills itself as about Bad’s ongoing struggle to deal with the success of a young man he once mentored who now is a mega-star out of Nashville playing to crowds of thousands, while Blake is playing bowling alleys.  I didn’t see this angle as key.  It was mildly interesting but seemed to be only a vehicle to drive dialogue about Bad’s real issues.  He abandoned a young son 24 years prior, and hasn’t written a song in decades.  He has almost no money, and what he does have he drinks.

Crazy Heart is the second movie I’ve seen in which the male lead is drinking himself to death.  The first was Leaving Las Vegas (1995), with Nicolas Cage.  Cage’s character Ben utters one of the most poignant statements on alcoholism I’ve ever heard when he says, “I can’t remember if I can’t stop drinking because my  wife left me, or if my wife left me because I can’t stop drinking.”  In contrast, the line Bad delivers that stuck with me after the movie was his statement to a four-year old boy, “Whole worlds have been tamed by men who ate biscuits.”  This was delivered with humor, but was like a laser cutting through all of his dysfunctional garbage.  Inside, this character clearly was still a gem who would get out if he could, he had just lost his way and had no idea where the door was anymore.

Both films are Oscar winners, and both use alcoholic disintegration as a lens into human pain and struggle.  LLV is a powerful movie, one that successfully explores some very difficult elements of the human condition; but it also presents a man who has no interest in disconnecting his life from alcohol.  It is very dark, and very depressing, and Ben’s problems seem so self-absorbed and self-centered it was difficult for me to have true empathy for him.  The human condition can surely be dark and depressing, but it can also be much more inspiring, and Crazy Heart shows a man on the edge of losing his options who grabs control of his life back in a very intentional and resurrectional way.  Directed by Robert Duvall, Crazy Heart shares some thematic relationships with The Apostle.

If you haven’t seen the movie, I won’t ruin it for you with much more detail.  I will say that it does one of the best jobs I’ve ever seen of honoring characters who make unexpected choices, and of following them through the fallout from those choices to a thoughtful conclusion.  If you love character as the real story in film, you will like this movie.