• Mood: contemplative

Sanity of Evil

I finished listening to "Dark Rivers of the Heart" by Dean Koontz today. His books always cause me to contemplate life, purpose, power and good/evil. This particular books featured two villains that had different motivations. Roy Miro was a government agent who was also a sociopathic killer. His angle was a strong sense of "compassion" that drove him to want to end the suffering of others. He killed often and randomly, with no sense of guilt. Instead he believed that he was fulfilling a duty to the world as a whole. The other villain was the hero's father. The father was a serial killer who indulged in the deaths as art. Now in prison, the father had previously killed two or three people a year.

The contrast between the two villains occurred at the end of the book. While both villains were evil personified as sociopathic serial killers, the father said that Miro was insane. He said that only insane people kill in a sociopathic way in the pursuit of purpose. Only those who killed for fun were sane. Who was the "worst" killer? Miro dreamed of killing off 90% of the population in pursuit of his perfect world. He was sanitary, caring and "compassionate" in this dogged pursuit of death. The father killed much less often in pursuit of "art" and fun. His crimes were sadistic, messy and had no inherent "redeeming" goals.

Who was more evil? Was one of the evil characters sane and the other insane? Before it can be said, "neither is more evil, both are equally insane", consider that there is a judgment call on people being "more good" (i.e. Mr. Rodgers and Mother Teresa). Food for thought...