Evil Books

[cuchulain]

So I had a friend in high school who played dungeons and dragons, right along side me a several other friends. Yep, I was and still am something of a nerd. Anyhow, after a couple of years playing, this friend started having rough times coping with his life, and it got to a point where he was institutionalized because he was really thinking he was his character. About the same time, the vampire killings happened around Murray, Kentucky. Some kids acted like vampires and killed some people, and the media and a lot of religious groups tended to blame it on the game "Vampire: the Masquerade". It even got to the point where book stores in Kentucky quit carrying RPG's for a time in response. My wife's mother, when I first started dating my wife, told my wife that I was evil because I played Dungeons and Dragons and that was Satanic. My grandfather used to sit outside of concerts, such as AC/DC, because that stood for antichrist devils children, and protest. That was his opinion, by the way, not mine.

The theme in all this is this: I have noticed a lot of Christian outrage over some things that happened because people did something bad, what they would consider evil, after playing or reading roleplaying games. But I don't notice much outcry from the Christian community when it comes to doing evil things based on the bible. The bible has inspired more death and what Christians would call evil than any roleplaying game ever created, yet no outcry. Myself, I don't think it is the book, or movie, or videogame. I think it is the psychosis of the individual, or group of individuals, who engaged in the activity. My friend, he thought he was his character. That isn't the game making him crazy, that is the form of crazy he took. If roleplaying didn't exist, he would have thought he was a comic book character, or a movie character, or maybe even a bible character...it would have been something, because he couldn't cope at the time with his life and what was going on. The vampire killings would still have happened if the game didn't exist, it simply would have had another outlet.

so my question, or topic, is: Books, games, music, religious writings...do you consider any of it truly evil enough to inspire evil acts in society? And even if it is, does that give the right of censorship? I guess I answered myself above, but in case it wasn't obvious, my opinion is no, it is the person, and they will channel their crazy into some outlet, regardless of if it is banned or not. And, no, censorship in my opinion is just wrong when the government gets involved. I mean, I am a parent, I censor what my kids watch in terms of violence and nudity, and how old they are at the time. But as far as organization and governments, I think censorship is always wrong on that front. Other opinions, disagree, agree?

[Rev Douglas Trouten]

I know where you are coming from. I myself am a nerd, played AD&D, Magic: The Gathering, etc... in middle school and high school. Had a friend of the family constantly trying to tell me that I was going to Hell for playing those Demonic games. The thing is for AD&D, majority of the players play Good Characters fighting Evil, yet you have people who still claim that is is an evil game. Its all because of short sighted people who look for the easiest scapegoat to blame for everything. Granted you have had some individuals who have difficulty telling fantasy from reality.

Take the Tom Hanks movie, Mazes and Monsters, it was supposedly based on a true story of a Michigan State Student who disappeared,which at the time the news in accurately reported it was due to Dungeons and Dragons, even though this wasn't the case, he went to the Steam tunnels below the campus to commit suicide due to sever depression, and when that failed he ran away, only later to be found down in the Southern US. This movie and the false news reports are a couple of the things that has lead to a Negative Perception of RPGs.

I don't play AD&D anymore other then on the computer (Baldurs gate, Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights). I have moved to playing some miniature wargames by a company called Two Hour Wargames, specifically their Zombie Survival game and post Apocalypse game, along with one of their Starship/Spaceship combat games. What I like about THW is that the games can be played solo, co-op or against other players, and you can combine the rules for different games such as their WWII squad level combat game, Nuts, with their Zombie survival game, All Things Zombie or if you do the Zombie/Post apoc game combo they have rules for gladiatorial fighting that you can use in your game along with another post apoc style game called Qwik (based on the game in the movie Salute of the Juggers). Luckily these games can't really be called "Evil" since technically depending on the game they can be viewed as a Historical re-enactment (Nuts the WWII game or FNG the Vietnam.Modern Day combat game) or as a Sci-Fi re-enactment (All Things Zombie you can re-enact Movies like Night of the Living Dead, or 5150: Fighter Command, the Space fighter combat game, can be used to re-enact the dog fights in Star wars of the Rebels vs the Empire), though you probably will have those who try to claim they are evil.

[Cornelius]

If an ** is going to kill someone because another ** with a guitar tells him too then he was an ** to begin with and going to do it anyway. -Pete Townshend

It's all about avoiding personal responsibility and accountability. Also pushing ones morality (which is subjective) and/or religious beliefs on others to conform them to your way of thinking.

[panpareil]

The most evil book I have ever read or yet come across is Les Chants de Maldoror by Isidore-Lucien Ducasse also known as Comte de Lautréamont. Very thin, very hard to read not because of the difficulty of the language but because of the difficulty of the imagery.

[Brother Kaman]

The most evil book I have ever read or yet come across is Les Chants de Maldoror by Isidore-Lucien Ducasse also known as Comte de Lautréamont. Very thin, very hard to read not because of the difficulty of the language but because of the difficulty of the imagery.

Just as the Holy books are paper and ink, so is Les Chants de Maldoror. Good or evil come from interpretation and belief.

[panpareil]

Just as the Holy books are paper and ink, so is Les Chants de Maldoror. Good or evil come from interpretation and belief.

Check out the thoughts conveyed in this little tome. They are just not right.

[cuchulain]

the thoughts conveyed may not be right, perhaps they are downright evil. Yet it is ultimately the responsibility of the reader to understand that, and so laying any blame on the book for the actions of the reader is silly. I think that is ultimately what I am trying to convey. I could attend a satanic mass, in which they instruct me to go forth and slay as many people as possible. But in the end, it is still up to me to decide if that is the right course of action or not(purely hypothetical, btw). If I were to decide to listen and kill, then I would be the one responsible, not them, in my opinion.

[Cornelius]

Oddly enough Satanism advocates responsibility to the responsible and admonishes shifting blame.

[cuchulain]

I don't think that too odd, Stormson. I think the oddity is that people ASSUME Satanism to be a certain way, without researching it. Like a lot of things, I suppose.

[cuchulain]

I intended to type Stormbringer...my bad

[mark 45]

i don't think any book,game or what have you is strictly good or strictly evil.it's what humans do with it when they get a hold of it.

[Brother Kaman]

i don't think any book,game or what have you is strictly good or strictly evil.it's what humans do with it when they get a hold of it.

As are all things.

[Assassin]

If you can let a book, game, music, or a movie make a change to your life where you can go kill someone I think you should get what you get. I play many games on Xbox sorry I am a gamer not really nerdy except those few months I played WoW but anyway I don't go get my ghille suit and lay in a field shooting people in the head screaming head shot waiting for them to respond. I am throwed off but not that bad so really a weak minded or someone on drugs human being must be operating on the least amount of brain juice you can have.

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[Fawzo]

If we can judge a Book as evil that has inspired more mass torture and death then any other in recorded history then The Bible by far is the Evilest of them all.

One can judge a tree by its fruit correct?

[panpareil]

If we can judge a Book as evil that has inspired more mass torture and death then any other in recorded history then The Bible by far is the Evilest of them all.

One can judge a tree by its fruit correct?

All you are saying is the book that is read the most is the most evil.

[Brother Kaman]

As I said before, a book is a book. Paper, ink, glue and binding. Perhaps digitized on other media. A collection of letters, words and sentences. Nothing about it is evil. Only the actions taken by one who reads a book can be called good or bad by a society. Same for video games, music or a man on a soap box in the local park or even an internet forum.

[Seeker]

I don't think anyone would claim that the medium (physical or digital copy) was evil.

What is less clear to me is whether there is evil content. Yes, the reader is ultimately responsible for his or her own actions. But if the message of a book is one which encourages or persuades people to commit evil acts, then can't the message be said to be evil? If the author said the same things face-to-face, would you consider them evil? If so, then the book (message) is evil. If not, then would you say that books have no effect on their readers (or spoken words on their listeners)? If words have no effect, then why do we communicate at all?

[panpareil]

A few more titles where the readers have caused the misery and death of hundreds of millions of human beings:

Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson

What Every Mother Should Know, by Margaret Higgins Sanger

I would also add the work of W.E.B. Du Bois although I have found no seminal work that outlines his pro-socialist anti-capitalist elitism.

[Rev Douglas Trouten]

Ask almost any school aged child and they will tell you that any book that they are required to read is evil, especially those school text books they have for each subject. LOL

[Tsukino_Rei]

The most evil book I ever read was in the Trinity College Library in Dublin. It was an instructional book of torture methods used at the height of the protestant catholic civil war. I only saw two pages of it because it was behind glass, alongside various news papers of the day open to reports of torture and violence from either side of the conflict. There is no violence on television or in movies or in video games that comes close to that reality of THAT imagery. Even Game of Thrones.

As to Dungeons and Dragons being evil, no. Of course it isn't. RPG's are just another form of story-telling. They are a form of story telling in which the reader creates a character to take part in the story. This makes them an excellent tool for imagination as in part the reader may also become the writer - but it's no more evil then any other medium of story telling. When I was a girl I was raised in fundamentalism. There was a period of time in which a Sunday School teacher leant me a book, she knew I loved to read, about the evil satanic new age movement and how it was infiltrating today's youth (me) - through Care Bears, My Little Ponies, Smurfs, and the Muppets. I ** you not. These things were banned in my home for a time based on a fear mongeror who made a small fortune and the tele-evangelists who made an even bigger fortune by telling parents that all the evils in todays youth came from the dark guidance of Papa Smurf. No amount of reasoning could convince the grownups around me that they were being ridiculous.

So, as you can imagine, when the same group of people came along to warn me of the Satanic driving force behind Dungeons and Dragons I rolled my eyes and walked the other way.

Edited December 13, 2014 by Tsukino_Rei