Oh I agree. If one looks to the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ I believe the root of all really is pride. As to monsters, I defer to Dungeons and Dragons. Animals are completely neutral. They are not ‘moral’ creatures and rather driven by instinct so can’t be good or evil. A shark is gonna shark.

When you think of villains and the rise of evil, I agree that selfishness is a major contributor, but I wonder if selfishness is more a symptom of evil than it is a source of evil. If you look at original evil, you’ll find that the devil became the devil only after he believed he was as great as God (Isaiah 14). Why would he think he’s as great as God? Pride. When you look at original sin, you’ll find that the devil convinces Eve that God is holding back on her and Adam. God tells Adam and Eve that they can eat from any tree but from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. When the devil asks Eve if God really said that they can’t eat from *any* tree, and she begins to doubt God’s words (and improvise her justification with words that God didn’t say by adding to what He did say), and Adam says nothing to correct the situation, they finally decide to eat the forbidden fruit because the fruit is good for eating, and it would allow them to know good and evil *just like God*, and God surely must be holding back on them by forbidding it. Why would they think God is holding back on them? Pride. For some reason they believe they deserve to know what God knows. We still do.

It seems that a real villain will make his decisions based on pride (“I deserve this thing I want, and I will have it however I can get it!”) and will make whatever choices, sane or insane, that are necessary to keep his pride (and get his MacGuffin), even when the entire world or his own life falls apart by his actions. If you analyze every great villain, I imagine you’ll find that pride lurks in his or her heart, whether that pride is in himself, in a faulty system or practice he believes in, or in something otherwise irrational. If the villain isn’t proud, is he really a villain?

Obviously, this would apply to scheming or thinking villains. I don’t think monsters would fit this paradigm. For example, I don’t think Jaws has any pride. I think he’s just hungry and has a weird taste for human flesh. I’m also trying to figure out Heath Ledger’s Joker. In the movie, he’s regarded as a source of chaos, but then again, his undoing comes when he believes that New Yorkers would sacrifice their neighbors to save themselves. Pride in a faulty belief.

The rabbit hole is deep here, certainly, but I think we could clearly define our villains by their inability to humble themselves and defer their thoughts and actions to doing or thinking what’s right (or sane). I think even our antiheroes and morally gray heroes can fit into this category up until the point of change, making for some interesting conflicts, internal and external.

Someone up thread said evil is rooted in selfishness and while this is true it only applies if there is personal gratification. There is also the evil of indifference – where meeting out pain or disaster gives no reward but they it anyway because they can. And are they any better or worse than the person who presents a public air of a do-gooder that has the masses believing they are are wonderful while hiding a private catalogue of evil deeds – sometimes fact can be more extreme than fiction – https://www.theoldie.co.uk/article/the-oldie-scoop-that-exposed-jimmy-savile

Human nature can’t be compartmentalized with no overlaps. Who can say what a good or bad person would do in extremis?

And this is what we have to reflect in fiction. The ‘flawed’ hero is becoming something of a trite phrase and it strikes me that in recent years this has sometimes been taken too far. One example that comes to mind was a book I read recently where a police detective sneaks off for an S&M bondage flogging as punishment for failing to nail the bad guy. Far from making this character more real it made them ridiculous in my mind – no police officer wishing to keep their job would put themselves in this position no matter how guilty they felt.

We need to strike a balance and perhaps that is not found in dumping doses of good and evil (no matter which way they are weighted) in our stories but in making plausibility of their presence the favourite to win over our readers.

I’m a little bit Scandanavian too. Norwegian on my mom’s side. Supposedly, my great-great grandmother was a descendent of the first king, Harold Fair Hair. Perhaps it gives me delusions of granduer? My husband complains I’m not sentimental enough for a woman. Comes in handy in an emergency though. I unintentionally “caused a little accident” this past Sunday. Very exciting! Took care of it mostly by myself because I had no choice. Decided to turn it into a blog post which is on the schedule for next weekend.

Antagonists and villains aren’t the same thing. Look up my posts on the Big Boss Troublemakers. Villains are only one flavor of villain. Sort of like Rocky Road is ice cream but not all Rocky Road is ice cream.