In these dangerous times of excessive greed, cruelty, and oppression in too many places around the world, we count on our artists and activists, policy-makers, and regular people to recognize and counter this Love of Death & Destruction.

Why does it happen? How can we best address it towards that ideal of “The greatest good for the greatest number”?

Some of you may be creating fiction pieces, historical, contemporary, or futuristic, about oppression, killers, war, and destruction.

Some may cover events like this as real-time documentarians or journalists.

All of us are, and will continue to be, affected by it unless changes can be made.

Life is precariously fragile yet also stubbornly persistent. People have survived rebar rods in their brains and signposts completely through the chest. Yet swallow the wrong way or slip on a pickle at the burger joint, and it’s all over.

Our fascination with death and destruction may just be part of our fascination with existence itself -- the drive to know how things work, the desire to change things to our will, and the desire to control things can lead to willful acts of death and destruction.

It can also go the other direction with scientific discoveries, socio-political decisions, and compassionate actions.

As we see playing out today, Plato was right that “Those who tell the stories rule society”.

So what can you, as creatives and storytellers, do about this?

Let’s explore the situation more.

The Defining Myth

Shiva is the Hindu god of destruction and transformation. Shiva is also the name of a giant laser at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

Robert Oppenheimer, ‘Father of the atomic bomb’, said about it, quoting from the Hindu Bhagavad Gita: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one…. I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”.

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu, a 5th-century BCE Chinese general, strategist, and philosopher, observed, “An evil man will destroy his own nation to rule over the ashes.”

Or as John Milton wrote in Paradise Lost: “Better to reign in hell than serve in heav’n”,

A person’s attitude towards death depends greatly upon their belief about life after death. This belief affects their actions, from suicide bombing to gain entry into Paradise, to sacrificing themselves in moments of great danger so that others may live. Saints and martyrs willingly embrace death as proof and defense of their faith and in the “sure and certain hope of resurrection”.

Apocalyptic stories can be cautionary tales about what survivors might do/not do during and after the Death & Destruction.

Examples Of This In Media

• Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight.
• Marlon Brando’s Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now.
• Loki in the Thor movies. [“There are always men like you.”]
• The Divergent series and Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower.
• Kevin Costner in The Postman shows ways to recover from Death & Destruction.
• And don’t forget on the more intimate level, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, Body Heat, and Basic Instinct.

What media would you include in this list?

How Can We Counter That Love of Death & Destruction In Our Work?

Ridicule

Activist Saul Alinski advised that ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It infuriates bullies to be laughed at because it trivializes them. Driven by low self-esteem in the first place, to plug right into that weakness can eventually deflate them to impotence.

Humor saves our sanity in times of Darkness. It’s a measure of our humanity that very quickly after a disaster, the jokes begin in an attempt to restore normalcy.

Court jesters, whose job was to poke fun at the pretensions of power, were a clever immunization device against royal hubris, presuming the royals listened and learned.

In Robert Graves’s I, Claudius historical novels, many autocratic Roman emperors were pathetic jokes to the people; yet, because of their extreme power, fear ruled. Some assassinations seemed fueled by palace guards fed up with being laughed at behind their backs, particularly around Caligula and Nero.

Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Saturday Night Live, and others all wield humor as socio-political weapons. And then there’s The Simpsons and South Park, which have been absolutely skewering the presumptuous for decades.

Irony and satire are strong tools to create humor out of wrong or horrendous situations…and disarm them.

Civil Disobedience

Use the rules of oppression against the oppressor in ways that bring attention to your cause and hopefully, affect positive change.

A good example is Network, Paddy Chayefsky’s novel and film, which feature a disillusioned TV anchorman who starts telling the Truth - live on air. This approach kicks in when you’re “Mad as hell and not gonna take it any more”.

Work stoppages, strikes, blue-flu (when cops call in sick), boycotts, tying up customer service, email-phone-mail campaigns have often been effective.

The trick is to follow the rules – to the word, to the letter – so much so that you bug the heck out of the rule-makers by wasting their time and tying up their resources.

Activist Saul Alinski influenced civil disobedience in the 1960s. One tactic against usurious bank policy was for hundreds of depositors to line up, close their accounts and get cash, go to the end of the same line, and open a new account with the same cash. All legal, all time-consuming, and all heck for the bank.

Greenpeace, people who chain themselves to trees, and other nature protectionists, for the most part, try to stay within the law as they conduct their protests, often with picturesque or sometimes tragic exceptions.

Greta Thunberg is an excellent example.

Czechoslovakia's 1989 Velvet Revolution and Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution accomplished their socio-political goals without violence.

Office workers can use this one well, like in Dilbert cartoons.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy pits colonists in civil disobedience against the multinational corporations trying to control the planet.

Iron-Jawed Angels portrays American suffragettes protesting to get the vote for women.

And of course, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. are icons of non-violent protests.

“Our Brand is Crisis” is a documentary and a feature film starring Sandra Bullock and Billy Bob Thornton. Formerly a political consultant who discovers the guy she helped put in office is corrupt, Bullock leaves and joins the people in their resistance against his regime.

So how can we encourage a synthesis of the positive aspects of big business with the good of consumers and producers? Encourage policy-makers to make and enforce regulations for the safety and well-being of people and the planet. That includes supporting whistle-blowers.

Key Element in Your Media – The Shining Action

The poised moment between wholeness and destruction, between life and death. That moment between the out-breath and the in-breath when all possibilities exist.

It can be as impersonal as the drone-pilot’s finger hovering over the “fire” button and the quiet village thousands of miles away about to be obliterated.

It can be as personal as two people sword-fighting and one getting and then pressing their advantage to the death.

Show it as a long, timeless moment of choice, and you will strengthen both what came before and what comes after.

In Saving Private Ryan, the Interpreter who was chosen to go on the mission lobbies to let a captive German go, instead of being killed by the other soldiers. Later, the German comes back and knifes to death one of the American soldiers. The Interpreter, in his anger and guilt, picks up a rifle and shoots the German he had previously saved.

It will instill the possibility of a moral dilemma you can play up in your story. Or the lack of it, which can be disturbingly effective, as in Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds.

Cinematic Techniques

Close-up on the torturous or killing cut. Blood and guts.

The reaction shot of the person doing the killing, to see the Love of Death & Destruction on their face.

Reverse angle to show what the victim sees: the bullet or arrow headed in their direction, the blade or missile coming down, etc.

The Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig explosion, environmental destruction in the Amazon.

This subject lends itself well to metaphors.

From the classics -- stepping out of the flames can represent the villain’s devilish mission or the hero’s escape from the fires of hell.

For the former, see Willem Dafoe’s Raven in Streets of Fire, Thulsa Doom in Conan the Barbarian, and The Terminator.

For the latter see Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and the cleansing fires at the end of Apocalypse Now, when the hero Captain Willard leaves Colonel Kurtz’s festering compound of death and destruction.

People circled around and watching with violence-lust in their eyes: cage fighting, sword fighting, cock or dog fights. See Fight Club, Raging Bull, and The Fighter for some great examples.

The thrill of some contests, like the drinking contest in Tibet at the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Miriam out-drinks the local bruiser to everyone’s rhythmic cheers.

The quiescent results of someone’s Love of Death & Destruction: in Apocalypse Now, moving upriver into Colonel Kurtz’s compound with its severed heads and rotting corpses.

Lines of crucified bodies, as in Spartacus or The Life of Brian; the Romans could have just exiled those people, but instead, they tortured them to death.

And it’s not all just fast cuts. Certainly, the frenzied action of battle lends itself to quick cuts. But for the coup de gras, that death cut needs lingering finesse as we watch the victim realize they’re about to die. Time slows down for a person in a life-threatening situation, so show us that achingly slow progression towards the tragic end.

Live by the sword, die by the sword. It’s quite satisfying to see the lover of Death & Destruction brought down by the very thing they planned to use against others. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, we are first horrified, and then we cheer when the evil Nazi’s face melts after the Lost Ark is opened. Similarly, you want to show us the expression of gleeful anticipation, the item itself, and then the shock, awe, and horror as they realize their plan has turned against them.

Conclusion

Since all life must eventually face death (it’s that “Circle of Life, Simba”), you will always have a connection with your audience when this is an essential part of a character or a story.

Be sure to make it increasingly clear whether your character is motivated by rage, madness, grief, or just plain morbidity.

The Love of Death & Destruction creates great characters and dangerous situations – just the thing for your protagonists to heroically overcome.

Let's hear your thoughts in the comments below!

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