Who is the most evil character in the Dresdenverse?

[Arjan]

Evil's only a problem that way if you assume the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent God.  We have no confirmation that the White God in the DV fits these criteria.

MSTR is omnipotent, omniscient but not omnibenevolent of course. Cats are not.

Jim's handling of free will is however much influenced by those who try to explain evil with free will.

[Arjan]

In the Dresdenverse you absolutely can, as the Angels have shown.  It's about Choice.  If you could do no wrong, if you could not say "no" to good, then you are not a free being, you're a robot, a slave.  The only way for you to have free will is to be able to say "no" to good.  It is freedom vs peace.  Within the Dresdenverse the Angels job is to ensure freedom to choose from those who would deny that Choice.  In a place where freedom exists, evil will happen.

You can explain some evil with free will of course but can you explain all evil with free will? If you can imagine a better world with the same amound of free will then answer is clearly no.

[groinkick]

MSTR is omnipotent, omniscient but not omnibenevolent of course. Cats are not.

Jim's handling of free will is however much influenced by those who try to explain evil with free will.

Flip it to the other side of the coin.  In the Dresdenverse TWG is simply another deity created from some ritual or worship, and is not omnipotent...  Then evil and good do not exist but are instead falsely created beliefs, fantasies....  Simple human constructs.  Therefor no action done is actually evil, it simply is.  Evil, and good would be simple illusions of human creation much like superstition.

[Arjan]

Flip it to the other side of the coin.  In the Dresdenverse TWG is simply another deity created from some ritual or worship, and is not omnipotent...  Then evil and good do not exist but are instead falsely created beliefs, fantasies....  Simple human constructs.  Therefor no action done is actually evil, it simply is.  Evil, and good would be simple illusions of human creation much like superstition.

Dostoyevski?

There are several faults in this logic. First whether something is a human or a godly creation you can always say that it simply is. Illusionary or real doesn't matter, just call reality an illusion as well. You can render everything unimportant that way even eternal torture or bliss in hell or heaven. It just is, it has no meaning. God made it, so what? God just is.

Or do good and evil just have meaning because god commanded it so and would they lose meaning with the power of that god? Then good and evil have no meaning at all.

Or the other way round you don't need an almighty god to think some things are important. People did that for millenia with not almighty gods or none. We see a lot of things in the dresdenverse Through Harry who is heavily influenced by christianity and lives in a christian country but the same world would probably look radically different but strangely the same through Gards eyes.

Furthermore everything that is just superstition is real in the dresdenverse. Human stories are real in some way. So good and evil are also true because they are human stories. This is a story driven universe.

Good and Evil have meaning if they tell us how people can live together.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

We see a lot of things in the dresdenverse Through Harry who is heavily influenced by christianity and lives in a christian country but the same world would probably look radically different but strangely the same through Gards eyes.

One of the things that is really solidly in both the Norse sagas and as I understand it contemporary Norse religion is that Odin has no qualms at all about killing humans because they have souls and will therefore go on to some afterlife or other, whereas he will go to great lengths not to kill entities without a soul because that would mean ending them forever.  I would really like to see this come up in the DV.

[wardenferry419]

I am thinking that Shagnasty might be the winner of the poll.

[LordDresden2]

Based on what we know, I have to vote Kemmler.  The question, after all, is not 'the worst Harry has knowingly met', that would probably be a tossup between Shagnasty and Nicodemus, but 'in the Dresdenverse'.  Of the entities we know about, that looks like a clean win for Kemmler.  He was so bad that Bob recognized it as evil.  JB himself has said that Shagnasty is just 'cheap muscle' for the real big boys.

Kemmler apparently was the single most important cause of the Great War.  The level of suffering, early death, agony, destruction, etc. that this implies is almost incomprehensible.  Even today, the world, Western Civilization, and the nation-states involved have not entirely recovered in some ways, we're still picking up the pieces a century later.

It rather looks, over the arc of the books, as if a lot of the problems Harry and Thomas are trying to cope with now have at least some roots in Kemmler, too.

[LordDresden2]

I am thinking Shagnasty was so evil that it nearly drove Harry mad seeing it's true nature.

It's not clear how much of that was how evil Shagnasty was, and how much had to do with Shagnasty's alien nature, though.

[LordDresden2]

Like, you know, being willing to let the world burn to save his daughter?  (We have WoJ that Harry absolutely meant that at the time.)

Maybe it's a product of growing up in an environment with a very real threat of violence from ideological fanatics, but when I read that sequence, my sympathies were absolutely with the world.  It constantly bemuses me how many readers sympathise with Harry in that scene even when he is clearly saying "I consider you personally and all your loved ones acceptable collateral damage so long as I get what I care about" to everyone else in the world.  The people I have heard that from before have not been ones I could consider good or sympathetic.

The thing is that most parents, in Harry's place, would do that.  It doesn't make it right, but it does make it quite normal.

Uriel rebuked Harry for it, but the rebuke was as much about the generalized indifference as the priorities.  As he pointed out, it's a lot easier to say 'let the world burn', than to say, 'let Molly burn'.  The generalization hides the nature of the choice.

But note that while Harry recognizes this, it doesn't mean he still wouldn't prioritize Maggie.  She's his child.

[wardenferry419]

I agree.

[Rasins]

Okay, I chose Peabody. 

While he didn't directly do much in the way of busting heads or anything, we really don't know the extent of his influence.

Also, all the others seem to be to be pretty much straight up out for themselves, or at least Ends-justify-the-means types.

Peabody lied and betrayed the people he worked for and who trusted him.  To me that is the greatest evil.

You can pretty much plan on how to handle the others, but a traitor .... that's not something you can easily foresee or plan for.

[jonas]

Okay, I chose Peabody. 

While he didn't directly do much in the way of busting heads or anything, we really don't know the extent of his influence.

Also, all the others seem to be to be pretty much straight up out for themselves, or at least Ends-justify-the-means types.

Peabody lied and betrayed the people he worked for and who trusted him.  To me that is the greatest evil.

You can pretty much plan on how to handle the others, but a traitor .... that's not something you can easily foresee or plan for.

Ohhh, Well reasoned there.

[Ananda]

Dostoyevski?

There are several faults in this logic. First whether something is a human or a godly creation you can always say that it simply is. Illusionary or real doesn't matter, just call reality an illusion as well. You can render everything unimportant that way even eternal torture or bliss in hell or heaven. It just is, it has no meaning. God made it, so what? God just is.

Or do good and evil just have meaning because god commanded it so and would they lose meaning with the power of that god? Then good and evil have no meaning at all.

I’m not sure I see the fault here. Yes, our surquedry tends to have us only consider a biological point of view, but, if we try to step outside ourselves, we may see there is perhaps no point of view. There is what is. It’s our sensory input and perception of passage of time that allows our nervous system to process and affect behaviours. We’re just a cool nervous system interacting with sensory input in linear time on a large mass orbiting other large masses. The amount of reality we perceive and assign meaning to is very limited and narrow. So, things almost certainly just are and we add meaning because that’s what we do. I’m fun at parties, though.

Also, I wrote genoskwa but meant skinwalker guy in my previous post. What was its fancy name? Nagloshi? I hated that shagwhatevs nickname, so I could never remember what it was called.

[Arjan]

I’m not sure I see the fault here. Yes, our surquedry tends to have us only consider a biological point of view, but, if we try to step outside ourselves, we may see there is perhaps no point of view. There is what is. It’s our sensory input and perception of passage of time that allows our nervous system to process and affect behaviours. We’re just a cool nervous system interacting with sensory input in linear time on a large mass orbiting other large masses. The amount of reality we perceive and assign meaning to is very limited and narrow. So, things almost certainly just are and we add meaning because that’s what we do. I’m fun at parties, though.

Also, I wrote genoskwa but meant skinwalker guy in my previous post. What was its fancy name? Nagloshi? I hated that shagwhatevs nickname, so I could never remember what it was called.

The fault in the reasoning was that an all powerful got gives that meaning, sets an absolute standard for good and evil (add here the meaning of life if you want). That we need that all powerful god for that reason and that for that reason the white god must be all powerful.

And yes at the end language and all the words in it were evolved with us. We gave the meaning to words and we change those meanings. We make the stories. Mostly because those meanings are useful for us in this reality.

If you go for something like good has only meaning because god is almighty you will run into problems.

[wardenferry419]

Good and evil are man-made constructs; but, they are necessary constructs. Giving objects and ideas meaning gives life meaning. Our experiences, those events that happen to us or that we cause to happen, define who we are as a person. We categorize  these experience as a part of understanding. If one interaction feels positive and/or gives pleasure to our selves and others; it is labeled right and good. If another interaction feels negative and/or gives pain to ourselves and others; it is labeled wrong or evil. Very few experiences are entirely one side or the other and very experiences are not linked to other experiences; so, our categorizing of experiences is constantly in flux and continously developing.