Our knowledge of the world before our time is based on hearsay and speculation. We are told what suits agendas. We learn misconceptions believing they are true.
Our knowledge of the world today is limited to our own experiences and what is claimed by other people. Our memories are faulty and biased. We hear from people trying to convince us what suits their agenda.
I am a writer of fiction mindful that perception is not reality. None of the characters truly know themselves or others. Their notions of their world are biased no matter their honesty. The same universe is very different from the perspectives of the various inhabitants.
My genre is usually action-adventure. When horror it is usually survival horror, a subgenre of action-adventure. The stories are usually struggles of good against evil.
The villains may not be as villainous as the heroes believe them to be. The heroes may not be as heroic as we would assume. This could be a matter of moral ambiguity. The point of a story may be to show that the world is not “black or white” but rather “shades of gray.”
There is no moral ambiguity. People are confused by their notions. They assume good and evil are matters of right and wrong as codified by law, scripture or unwritten rules. Their moral compass is honor or ethics rather than actual conscience.
I never vilify or glorify my characters. They speak their own minds. Their motives are personal. Readers typically confuse this with moral ambiguity. They assume I am cynical or nihilistic. On the contrary: I wholeheartedly believe in freedom and justice.
In my fiction, like in reality, people live according to
their perspectives… but the truth is what it is regardless.
People can be victorious and evil. They can be great, and we can revere them for their greatness. Where they stand with God, however, has to do more with the standard of God rather than their own standard. A lot of people, even great ones, mistake their own ambitions for those of the Lord. In the end, those who thought themselves so great may not be great at all.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. I have learned recently that some of our heroes were actually the villains and some of our villains were actually the heroes. We cannot see the truth from within reality. We need that outside perspective... and that comes from God.
DeleteGood and evil are not matters of opinion. The problem is that even people who are basically good have evil in them. Our characters should reflect this inconsistency.
ReplyDeleteYes. We cannot judge them on their own terms. We cannot judge other characters through them. The story should be above and beyond its characters.
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