The Villain

[Stevicus]

Do we need a 'bad guy' to blame?

It would seem to be a part of our culture. I'm reminded of a famous scene from the movie Scarface.

Spoiler: Say Good Night to the Bad Guy

Tony Montana : [to the restaurant patrons] What you lookin' at? You all a bunch of ****in' ********. You know why? You don't have the guts to be what you wanna be? You need people like me. You need people like me so you can point your ****in' fingers and say, "That's the bad guy." So... what that make you? Good? You're not good. You just know how to hide, how to lie. Me, I don't have that problem. Me, I always tell the truth. Even when I lie. So say good night to the bad guy! Come on. The last time you gonna see a bad guy like this again, let me tell you. Come on. Make way for the bad guy. There's a bad guy comin' through! Better get outta his way!

The thing is, he really is a bad guy. No doubt about that. But he's not the only one. Some make no bones about their badness, but there are others who like to pretend that they're good - or at least better than "the bad guy."

 

[Gargovic Malkav]

So is this a need we have? Do we need to have someone to blame?

It's a good way to distract oneself from their own failures and insecurities.
An excuse to see oneself as innocent and/or benevolent.
When you see yourself as such, you have no reason to improve yourself, because others are "doing it wrong".
But scapegoating works more like a painkiller rather than a medicine.


I used to hate humanity because I held them responsible for my (former)depression.
But the quality of my life (including my confidence and my ability to love) has improved a lot when I learned not to pity myself so easily (self-pity makes it easier to find an excuse to be selfish and mean) and tried harder to understand why others do what they do, no matter how unfair it seems.
This helps me to adjust my expectations, which in turn makes it easier for me to accept reality for what it is.

This doesn't mean I don't have the occasional temper tantrum anymore though, but I've learned not to take myself so seriously when I'm in such a mood. When it happens, I'm just blowing off some steam.

 

[Kooky]

Villains are, fundamentally, a rhetorical method to bind people together in the rejection of a common thing or person.
As such, it is most effectively employed to create a commonality among those who would otherwise not have a whole lot in common with one another. Nationalism, and national mythmaking in general, therefore often has a great need for villains, because their primary purpose is to create myths that can provide common ground among national population after all.

I feel like the Internet age, with its promotion of hyper-individualism, has fed an ever greater need for villains to bind disparate invidivualized people together. Fortunately for mythmakers, advances in psychology and marketing, and the data collected on demographics and individuals, have made it much easier to create villains that tap into the fears and insecurities of their target demographics. Modern mass politics, therefore, tend to be primarily driven by mythical villains these days - in the US, that could be communists, terrorists, welfare queens, antifa, BLM, Postmodern Neomarxists, Mexicans, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, AOC, etc.