more movies and a "definition" for "evil"

i keep renting and watching movies...

i watched "nuremberg" this week. if you know me well, you know that i have a fetish/obsession with world war 2 and all the complexities it entails... this movie is about the trials that went on in the german city of nuremberg after the war - the allies are processing the captured leaders of the nazi regime.

after watching in court a film about the concentration camps with all the horrors that happened in them, two of the main character are trying to make sense of what they just saw... they are trying to understand why would anyone commit such atrocitities.

one of them says that evil is the abscence of empathy. once you can't empathize with someone, you don't understand them, and if you don't understand them chances are you won't treat them like human beings.

i know that the extremes of the genocide that went on during the war are beyond meassure and cannot be justified. but under this definition, evil isn't this far-fetched thing, attitude, and/or behavior that is out there, that only "bad" people participate in. if this definition has any glimpse of truth (which i think it does) - then "evil" is a reality in my daily life. i lack empathy for others on a constant basis. it's a lot easier to be judgmental than to seek to understand.

i guess my point in all this is that by watching this movie i was reminded once again that there's no "us" and "them" and that nothing is out of my reach. i have the capacity to be both "good" and "evil". we all do. through this movie i learned to embrace this in me once again, to love the "whole" of me, and to know that others are just like me.