Evil
has a banal part - some part of it is a response to boredom and contains
boredom that you are acting on.
And the fear of boredom is also at
work somewhere.
Fear helps one be evil. One fears the right or best
course.
Fear is only good if and when the danger happens. Otherwise it
is a waste and shows a mistrust there is no need for and is a form of
self-abuse. Fear is banal in a sense too.
So evil has a part that is
set up for disappointment.
In another sense, it fails to satisfy as a
whole when executed.
That makes two separate banalaties.
A third
happens after the execution for it looks uninteresting and a waste. The glow,
if any, fades.
With any of those, the person wants to see worse come
from it and may act to make sure it does come. Many think their harming
unlocks something. They are happy and satisfied when any misfortune comes to
others even if there is no apparent link to the harm they did. Some think that
their bringing darkness into the world damages it and as that allows for harm
to appear anywhere anytime, they still feel partly responsible. They want to
feel that.
That is to compensate for the lack of satisfaction or to try
and force that to come.
If they add in religious or spiritual or myth
considerations, then they engender a new additional way for it to be banal. It
is claimed that the evil person fails to respect and satisfy their own
spiritual needs so they will be frustrated.
Arguably, however, the
myth helps the evil person ignore that banality. The myth is a distraction.
Some say it even averts banality in the first place.
Some say both are
true. The myth is a buffer to keep you performing a boring evil. It makes it
seem mildly boring so that you will continue it.
It is a core Christian
notion that when you view evil through a religious, spiritual, or mythological
lens, it strips away the dark glamour of evil, exposing it as something small
and empty. This ties in with how evil is supposedly a lack of good and thus
garbage. And how God allegedly has not made evil for it is nothing in its own right.
Nobody cares. Nobody doing evil or turning from it sees that teaching,
true or false, as relevant. The teaching allows the Church to claim to be
doing something about human injustice and malice without contributing anything
of value. Nobody thinks of his cancer as healthiness that happens to hurt him.
Or that malice against him is best understood as a mere lack of love. People
just care if the evil disappoints - not why a theology thinks it disappoints.
And as we said, the teaching still makes evil important and attractive- it
makes it a matter relevant to the ultimate reason the universe exists.
More on the Loop
Even seeing the evil you do as partly useless and
empty has an effect.
Because the person feels too unsatisfied by the
stages of boredom, they often double down. Why? To compensate for the
emptiness. To force the satisfaction they feel they were denied. So they
actively try to make the situation even worse.
This maps out a
self-perpetuating loop where the primary driver of escalation isn't a desire
for more power, but a desperate, failing attempt to outrun existential
emptiness. Note however, that power-seeking is taking the form of trying to
force something on evil it cannot have. The loop relies on a sunk cost fallacy
of the heart and soul.
Is there a transcendent banal? If there is, it is put down
to seeing evil not as a powerful opposing force, but merely as a privation—a
parasitic absence of good that cannot create, only break.
This reminds
us of philosophical concepts like Hannah Arendt's banality of evil and C.S.
Lewis's view of hell as a place of infinite, petty dullness.
Those are
not the same. Arendt did not need God, sin or Hell. Her point was evil is
uninspiring.
Going beyond that is over-thinking. It is making evil look
more special by going too far. Focus on the uselessness instead of bringing in
new discussions that only prolong the evil and sidetrack.
Religion
and the media portray injustice and malice in vivid, dramatic ways. There are
terrifying depictions of Hell. The powerful and cunning Satan. There are
severely forbidden occult activities. It is feared that they grant real or
imaginary powers. Jesus had to die to break the power of sin. God is so good
that sin becomes important for he infinitely opposes it.
Those concepts
accidentally or deliberately provide a dulling or a cure for the very boredom
that drives people to evil in the first place. They turn a pathetic, hollow
act into a major or even cosmic rebellion.
Here is how they feed the
escalation loop:
1. The Validation of the "Cosmic Rebel"
When
scripture, horror movies, or war novels present evil as highly dangerous and
profoundly significant, they hand the bored perpetrator a ready-made identity.
The Myth: If Jesus had to die on the cross to defeat sin, then sin must be
an incredibly heavy, potent force. Potent socially, spiritually and in many
other ways.
The Psychological Effect: A
person suffering from the Impulsive Banal (Before) doesn't want to feel small.
If they commit a cruel act, the religious framework allows them to believe
they are engaging in a grand, cosmic war against God, rather than just being a
pathetic bully. It elevates their restlessness into "dark majesty."
2.
Preventing the Retrospective Banal (The Shield Against Realization)
One
banal is the realization of waste—looking at the wreckage and seeing it as
uninteresting. Dramatic myths interrupt this realization.
The Myth:
Sensationalized horror movies, grim war novels, and gruesome scriptures focus
heavily on the shock, terror, and dark allure of destruction.
The
Psychological Effect: When the perpetrator encounters the Experiential Banal
(During) and feels underwhelmed, the myth whispers: "You just haven't
unleashed its true terror yet. Look at how dramatic it is in the stories."
Instead of realizing the act was a waste, they double down to make it worse, trying to force reality to match the high-stakes drama of the myths.
3. The Allure of the Forbidden
By placing heavy bans on things like the
occult and framing them as highly addictive or spiritually perilous,
institutions unintentionally weaponize the human response to boredom.
The
Myth: Framing an act or object as a "dangerous, soul-corrupting taboo."
The Psychological Effect: For a deeply bored mind, a dangerous taboo is
an instant spark of excitement. It promises a cure for emptiness. If the
occult or transgressive acts were instead framed as merely tedious,
bureaucratic, or intellectually lazy, they would lose almost all their power
to attract the restless.
The Contrast: Myth vs. The Truly Banal
When
media and religion indulge in "grimdark" or highly dramatic depictions of
evil, they become accomplices to the escalation loop. They hide the truth:
that cruelty is fundamentally uncreative.
Philosophical maturity
involves stripping away this drama.
For instance, when C.S. Lewis wrote
The Screwtape Letters, he intentionally avoided writing devils as majestic,
fallen angels. Instead, he depicted them as petty, miserable bureaucrats
working in a dreary office building. He seemed to realise that the best way to
disarm evil is not to make it terrifying, but to expose it as incredibly,
painfully boring.
He ruined that by bringing in myths.
However
it suggests that to stop the loop, we need a complete shift in how we tell
stories.
Evil being banal makes people confident that it will
dissipate. That gives it a level of protection from intervention or attempts
to counteract.
Evil, if it is a mysterious energy, is not a mere lack
of good, will use power to look banal. It may bore some of its agents as a
strategy.
Evil people will also use those tricks as well to the
advantage of their nefarious plans. We have found that thinking you have
identified evil wins your interest. It explains why seeing evil in life or in
books/drama corrupts. It really takes an evil one to know an evil one.
APPENDIX: STUPIDITY AND EVIL
It is said that stupidity can be diagnosed and stopped for the cause and
effect pattern it gives rise to will backfire and expose itself. They think
evil is worse for more insidious and planned. That arguably glamorises evil.
Some say that evil significantly depends on stupidity or hopes for the
protection stupidity offers. And stupidity is a good cover for evil – persons
do not want to know what is best for you and act stupid when exposed. And if
evil is banal and foolish, stupidity is a part of it.
It is a case by case matter. Sometimes stupidity is worse than evil. The
danger of stupidity is that the person and their allies do not even know how
silly they are.