This author asks, how would psychologist Jordan Peterson analyze Joker, the supervillain?
The fictional Joker feels justified to abandon goodness and embrace evil because he has suffered so much. Eric Harris, one of the real-life murderers at Columbine High School in 1999, had a similar motivation: "I hate you people for leaving me out of so many things . . I HATE PEOPLE and they better . . fear me."
But Jordan says most people don't degenerate into the "hell of resentment," even in tragedy. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, for example, "had every reason to question the structure of existence when he was imprisoned in a Soviet labour camp . . . He had been arrested, beaten and thrown into prison by his own people. Then he was struck by cancer. He could have become resentful and bitter . . ."
But Solzhenitsyn would not choose vengeful bitterness. He "encountered people who comported themselves nobly under horrific circumstances," so he tried to do that, to improve himself, and wrote a book to expose the abuses he saw.
He wasn't overcome by evil, but rather chose to overcome evil with good. The Bible says to do that.
from Foundation for Economic Education
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