As a child, I was raised and taught to abstain from anything or any form/depiction of evil that may eventually induce me to negative conduct. That's not to say that I didn't watch cartoons with villains but, ultimately good trumps all in those animated series. So that wasn't anything that involved moral dilemmas.
As idealism and images of a perfectly-run world of law and order get washed away with time and experience, beliefs in realism form a core of my principles; my eyes now see a world of grey. Religion tries to define what's black and what's white. Ironically, it makes things all the more grey. In attempting to draw a line, the line actually creates a new split and an additional school of thought; generating more confusion, conflict and endless debate.
I've been wondering why we shun the sight of evil when in fact, it grants us the ability to empathise with victims of evil. I don't mean that we should participate in all these acts of horror or allow ourselves to be influenced by them. Is it wrong to see how POWs get tortured? Wrong to witness the brutality of humanity? I say, if we get a grip of ourselves, disallow ourselves from being shaken by these images, we receive that very gift of empathy. We share the pain of these victims, we understand the state of their souls, we grow to care for others.
There may be other means of caring for others without having to undergo the traumatic experience of reliving the victim's story. You can say that you can love the person, love every single person in the whole world and so you'd care for everyone. Love everyone for who they are. But you won't truly know the circumstance of each individual. It's hard to see how you can artificially effect an emotion without having a proper stimulus. Yes, I'm a realist. I believe in opening one's eyes to see events or people who are forgotten in the illusion of utopia.
