Against Eco-Villains: A Villain Post

A villain post about villainous motivations

As a card-carrying villain, one has to have a certain sense of standards.

It doesn’t do to be one of those assholes who actually make the world a shittier place, like someone who doesn’t pick up after their dog in the park.

No, any self-respecting villain must have style, panache, flair.

But those aren’t the standards I’m going to rant about today, oh no.

Now that I have you captive, my dear audience audience - literally, as is often the case when a villain such as myself indulges in the odd monologue or two to their helpless heroic counterpart - I want to speak of a villain’s motivations.

What drives a previously upstanding citizen to the great art and science of villainy? When in the course of human events does it become necessary for one person to dissolve the moral bands that have connected them to their society?

And why do so many morons - I won’t call them by the distinguished title of Villain - in movies nowadays justify their idiocy with environmentalism, of all things?

(Your reminder:

This is not intended to be a balanced or nuanced post. This is not intended to carefully consider all sides of an issue. It is not intended to extend empathy or understanding to the people involved. It is not intended to be fair. It is not even intended to be correct.

This is intended to be a villainous rant about why Hollywood screenwriters are imaginatively bankrupt when it comes to the motivations of villains, and keep using environmentalism as an intellectual crutch for a villain whose motivations they want to be sympathetic.)

Shall I begin?

Types of Villains

There are many kinds of villains, of which I am but one.

“But aren’t all of you evil?” I hear you ask, dear hero, and of course we are.

But there are villains, and there are villains. Don’t mistake one for the other.

Some of us are simply maximizing a utility function that no one else is maximizing. Gotham’s clown prince of crime, for instance, oft acts as an agent of chaos, maximizing anarchy and confusion with nonsensical deeds.

Others are trying to make someone in particular suffer. Yes, I know revenge is a common ‘heroic’ motivation, but we of the dashing goatee-and-cape/red-leather-and-heels class can also find our purpose in the misery of another. Blofeld, that pioneer of feline companions, wanted his nemesis James Bond to suffer.

There are villains who are in it for the fun, and villains who find themselves cast in the role involuntarily.

But the particular category of villain we’re talking about today is the rather lackluster kind of villain without either originality and cleverness - the kind of villain that brings shame to the game - the villain with an environmental justification.

Villains With Good Causes

Sometimes a person will resort to villainy out of the goodness of their heart.

The road to villainy is indeed paved with good intentions.

Also bad ones.

It’s a checkered pattern, like a chessboard.

I, of course, only step on the black squares.

I digress.

The point is that there is a class of villain, no less dastardly than the rest, who believe, consequentially, that their villainy will have positive results for the world.

They are the villains who truly believe that the end justifies the means.

Many of these villains are confused about the nature of things - many often think themselves the hero! - but the beauty of this kind of villainy is that it doesn’t matter what kind of end one seeks, if one believes it justified enough.

If one believes that the end justifies the means, and that the end is sufficiently good or desirable or worthy, then, well…

Absolutely any means are justified.

I do so enjoy the irony of these villains who still believe they are heroes, justifying their atrocities to themselves and the world with their flimsy logic.

Why Environmentalism?

All that being said, what causes do these do-gooder villains tend to pick?

What righteous crusade leads them down the path to hell?

And why, for the love of all that is evil, is it always environmentalism?

I understand the draw, at least in part. I, like many of you, enjoy breathing clean air and drinking clean water. I enjoy the vicious savagery of nature untouched by human hands, all the plants and animals free to kill each other as evolution intended.

But it’s hardly worth murdering people over.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d kill a hero in a fair fight (or if I thought they were going to start a fair fight), but I actually have evil schemes that need looking after. The villains that kill people for the environment want…what, more parks? More trees?

Oh, they think they’re saving the world from climate change, as if that couldn’t be done with current technology already.

No, to them the only way to do so is to get millions of people killed.

It’s sloppy, inefficient, and a gross waste of a good motivation.

The kind of villain we’re talking about is often called the Well-Intentioned Extremist, and they can sometimes be a sympathetic figure.

But not if every one of them is the exact same kind of extremist.

Where are the villainous well-intentioned extremists for eliminating global poverty? Or curing cancer or tuberculosis? Or solving aging?

Why don’t modern villains cause destruction in the name of tax reform, public health, or agricultural subsidies?

Environmental causes don’t even rank in the top ten of global causes of death each year. I doubt they feature highly in the top one hundred, and yet these would-be villains are willing to get millions killed in their name.

Where are all the villains who unleash monsters or start wars in the name of curing heart disease? Where are all the villains who mind control the population into exercising more to solve the obesity epidemic?

And environmentalism isn’t even a good cause area for villainy, because the world is more or less going to solve the problem by itself, eventually. Unleashing catastrophe to prevent climate change is like burning down a house to stop it from being demolished.

Yes, it technically works, but this kind of stupidity is beneath any real villain.

So You Want To Be A Well-Intentioned Extremist?

Every hero deserves a good villain, as they say, and every villain deserves a powerful motivation. People don’t turn to villainy - real villainy, super-villainy - for petty and nonsensical reasons.

Perhaps their homes and families were destroyed in the heroes’ crusade as collateral damage. Perhaps they’re disgusted with what passes for authority and law in their society, and no longer feel themselves bound by it. Perhaps the whole point is that they don’t have any motivation at all, and how terrifying that can be.

A villain’s motivation is at the very core of them as a character, and it’s shameful that so many would-be villains rely on the tired trope of environmentalism. To be a villain is to challenge the very nature of things, to defy the heavens and the hells and walk one’s own path, to take the road less traveled by.

And the environmental crusader is not one’s own path. It is not the road less traveled by. It’s been a popular and ‘righteous’ cause for more than half a century.

If you want to be a well-intentioned extremist, look elsewhere for your cause. Look to the invisible graveyard and the many harms of government failures, or to fighting the grim reaper himself, who is the doom of us all. Look to weaving dastardly schemes against dictatorships or crafting cunning plans to bring down the corrupt and the powerful.

Anything but another tired attempt to justify one’s actions with the specter of climate change or pollution or overpopulation.

Please, villains, villainesses, and non-binary villains of all stripes.

Do better. That is to say,

Do your worst.