by hoarding the world’s ugliness. Amoral sense is the court of passion, the framework of daring. The earth’s consolation prize, it turns dismal failure into a badge of success. It woos evil obliquely, though evil is too confused to acknowledge the signs; with some knowledge, it simulates unknowing. Its lack is never noticed, while its opposite is praised with empty words and never followed. Its influence on life is seldom acknowledged, through everything good is a side effect of it.
Rise of the Anti-Villain
Most people are basically good. I speak not of Rousseau’s man in nature, but the modern goodness that thrives in a complex affluent society—one stemming not from willpower but likelihood. The goodness of non-interference, of deference to law and the division of labor. “Leave it be,” these good people say, “the firefighters will put it out when they get here. Everything will probably be fine.” But nothing is ever simply allowed to run its course, let alone flourish. Those who live and let live are vulnerable to the hunter in the shadows. A restrained Epicureanism, a “going with the flow”: it is this mildness of character, this apathy disguised by pleasure, which makes these advocates of peacetime morality basically good. Those who grow up among the Sybarites, their sympathies dulled by specialization and suffering at a distance, are quickest to revert to the survival instinct when available resources become scarce; at bottom both inclinations are governed by a radical selfishness. Whichever one happens to be dominant is simply a matter of macroeconomics.
No classical hero was ever selfless. Saving the life of another was a sideshow of his glory, confirmation of an antecedent arête. Chivalry is killed when laurels are handed out for small acts of altruism. Heroes are a psychological privation in a society that rebukes merit; the hole needing to be filled, it is covered with a rug. Replacing bravery with common sense, the statistical savior exploits a moment of rescue time during a red stoplight and wins the glory of an evening news spot.
To be superlatively evil: to have all the most civilized vices and all the most dangerous virtues—characterization too customarily human to be stranger than fiction today. From this breach the anti-villain emerges as a balance to the emergency-rescue citizen. His opposition is as much a product of randomness as the champion’s—casual irresponsibility of littering an underfoot banana peel to thwart the daring bystander rushing towards the crosswalk target. Cast in a supporting role without auditioning, the anti-villain is an antagonist whose only villainous qualities are neglect and incompetence. Not Darth Vader, but a storm trooper with a jammed blaster. His only threats are mordant remarks delivered to amuse a world without steadfast malice. With irony in his soul he commits feats of misdemeanors, deflating a murder mystery into manslaughter. Evil by default, he is the most fascinating character in the absence of a candid and upright protagonist. A bungling villain is always more interesting than an accidental hero.
An International Allegory
The foreign vices obtained passports to countries that had not yet learned to appreciate their subtleties. But upon going through customs they faced communication barriers.
Schadenfreude looked around, frowning . . . everyone was so happy. So deliberate. Not even an unfortunate accident to raise his spirits. So he stubbed his toe and laughed.
Ressentiment, correcting his upward glance, had learned to laugh at his inferiors for the sense of obligation they imposed. He gave careless orders, then waited for them to laugh at him—this is how he learned to admire himself again.
Esprit, long used to subjugating handlers to his method, had lost the autonomy of ventriloquizing his genius through prodigies. The prodigies had learned much from him and wanted to become their own masters, refusing to be dominated by their talent. The only type of mind that would now consent to be inhabited by him was an esprit faux, so he resigned himself to flowing through those who lack the rationality to govern him properly. To maximize his influence he formed an esprit de corps of misaligned minds who proceeded to escort wisdom down the ladder, presenting insights the populace could recognize as its own. Every nitwit he sanctioned became a twisted wit who amused the company with puns on truisms and trivia questions for troglodytes. Esprit did not know the answers to the trivia questions or grasp the puns. Surely, this did not mean he had been mitigated into a Petite Esprit; on the contrary, he was too elevated for his new vessels—this is how he reestablished a sense of control. But deep down he feared the approaching day when they, too, no longer needed him.
Desengaño had not always been seen as a vice. But when skepticism became the dominant attitude, he was suddenly reproached for being too sure of himself. He saw too much, it was said—this is how he stumbled. But he knew how to tell himself he still looked good after his accident. He put on glasses over empty eye sockets to feel the weight of his sight. If he could no longer be Argos, he would attach a knife to his cane to hear where he was going. If his other senses wouldn’t compensate with any Tiresian insights, he would shut himself indoors and metamorphose into Morpheus, sleeping all day, dreaming up new illusions and awarenesses.
Virtù, with the welfare of the people in mind, flexed his disposition to public opinion polls. Fearing the determination to do what is necessary would be mistaken for the whims and cravings of a tyrant, he willed himself to do what he wanted so as to be seen as intrepid. When Fortuna dealt him a sex scandal, he responded with a board meeting and a blowjob to give him the courage of denial, a womanizing jazzman aspartaming his alibis with a sip of Diet Coke. To crush charges of warmongering he summoned all the eloquence dyslexia could muster, and rallied a martial spirit to invade territories where liberation would be immediate and internal collapse postponed until the next term. His achievements sponsored by election fundraising, he maintained the state by employing speech writers and resolved international crises by taking diplomatic missions to golf courses. Virtù’s new strategy: the good citizen as good man, the art of filling a moral void with a power vacuum. The princes of the world deposed, statesmen rise to bow.
These vices had learned how to reason too much. They could no longer entice their common enemy—their only friend. For it was now up to man’s virtues to save the vices from oblivion, to nurse them back to their old forcefulness. Opposed to these new self-defeating vices and without the old evils to define themselves against, the virtues had no choice but to push themselves into their extreme forms and act as surrogates for vice: Salubriousness’s obsession with itself had driven it to the point of malnourishment; Amour became too intoxicated, Amicability too ulterior. Virtue wanted to revive the basic vices once again; the ambiguous modern forms of vice were too internalized to cause any real damage and took all the fun out of moral struggle. In the end the virtues didn’t have to do anything; the new vices simply faded away—no one knew how to pronounce their own bad intentions. Faced with holes to plug, the virtues proceeded to draw native vices out of their own degenerated states: Gluttony from malnourishment, Lust from infatuation, Greed from parasitism.
Morality, like everything else, needs to occasionally repolarize itself to fuel people’s need for taking sides.
The Anti-Hero
One can stand alone only by dispensing with the customary character traits. Heroes are a dime a dozen—I want you to be more singular than that. With a book that is a leviathan, I will make a goldfish of conscience—in proportion to its minuteness it will glow brightly and dazzle everyone.
Seneca formed a prudent person by heavily taxing Britannia, bringing about Boudicca’s revolt, and writing epistles about prudence in place of a diary of greed; Homer fooled the entire world into thinking he was a single great bard instead of a lineage of unknowns; Scaevola thrust his hand into the flames to make Porsena think he was willing to risk all—the truth was, he had always been left-handed; Judith beheaded Holofernes because she ended up not satisfying him in bed; Castiglione became a great courtier: first his ambassadorial incompetence in the Spanish court led to the sack of Rome, then he instructed everyone on how to be an ideal Renaissance gentleman.
Flourish talents
