I recently watched the anime Claymore after its recommendation by a friend. It is described as follows:

The series is set in a medieval like world where humans coexist with creatures called Yoma sentient monsters that feed on human innards, a nameless and highly secretive organization has created an order of half-human, half-yoma warriors to protect humans from the yoma, for a large fee. The people of this world have dubbed these warriors as "Claymores" based on their gargantuan, unsheathed swords, or the "Silver Eye Witches", based on their appearances and seemingly cold nature toward others.

Claymores are in danger of losing control of their powers if they activate more than 80% of their demon strength, changing them into a form of yoma called an "awakened being".

It is the oft-told tale of the demon-hunting warrior. The twist is the very act of demon-slaying causes the heroine to become more demon-like, and the more formidable the Yoma, the more the heroine has to call forth her Yoma powers. It is ironic that the protagonist can only defeat her antagonist by becoming more like the latter.

This is reflected in popular culture and history. In warcraft, Illidan Stormrage, a demon-hunter, combats demons through calling upon demonic powers. In Bleach, Ichigo Kurosaki fights "hollows", evil spirits, by partially becoming a "hollow".

Does this hint at a fundamental aspect of the nature of "good" and "evil"; that perhaps successful confrontation of "evil" requires some element of "evil", in order to be truly "good"? For instance, to preserve the virtue of fairness, sometimes vengeance is an appropriate response, to punish "evil" with "evil". It is such a natural reaction that to do otherwise invokes the uncomfortable bitterness of "injustice". The irony is the role reversal that happens when the act of "justice" is played; victim becomes aggressor and the circle is complete.

What is evil?

There is of course the unambiguous sense as characterised by popular media, instanced by mass murderers, rapists, abusers... There is a clear protagonist-antagonist relationship, a good-evil dichotomy. Yet in most cases, evil is enabled by people who do not prevent it when they can. Edmund Burke famously said, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing". The intention is clear. It is the responsibility of good people to ACTIVELY circumvent evil deeds. Yet, the majority of people always remain in their starry-eyed passivity, waiting for someone else to fight the noble fight. This does not make them neutral (there is really no such position). No, it did not take a mere fascist dictator to precipitate the Third Reich... It took the majority of Nazi Germany to witness, and some to execute, the deaths of an estimated six million Jews in the Holocaust. The greatest acts of evil that have transpired throughout the sordid course of our blood-soaked history have been accompanied by the unwitting endorsement of weak-willed masses, people who, by letting evil happen, stand alongside it.

This by no means undermines the massive, selfless effort of a passionate minority who give their very best towards making positive changes.

But this post is about those people who choose to avert their eyes from the cruel, the hideous, the violent... By being in the position of being able to help, but choosing to withhold, to merely observe, one has already stepped away from good into evil.

A sterling example would be a recent Chinese television programme Little Nonya that memorably showed the tragic rape of a woman, a plight certainly exacerbated when she saw (whilst being raped) her sister witnessing the act and withholding the help she desperately needed. Same as Amir abandoning his childhood friend Hassan when the latter was being raped by the bully, Assef, in The Kite Runner.

Literature is as real as it reflects reality, and indeed everyone of us are perhaps guilty of sometimes turning a passive eye to people who need. Not just people perhaps. In secondary school, I remember presenting about animal experimentation and its moral implications. I used graphic images of animal abuse during my presentation, which made my classmates squirm. I was made to stop the presentation halfway. Till now, I always felt there was something wrong done, not to me but to the subject matter. Only now in the context, I realise that what happened, the aversion from the evil acts due to disgust, uncomfortable feelings, ignorance, is a form of evil itself.

To say enough, I cannot stand the sight of rabbits with corroded eye sockets from "Draize" testing, of deformed faces of atomic bombing victims from Japan, or faces of countless dead in the Darfur conflict, is to say I do not care enough. Surely, that is morally wrong; we share a common humanity with these victims (even the animals), and it is our moral obligation to do our very best to help when we can.

Of course sometimes, because of political sensitivity, geographical distance, or resource scarcity, we cannot realistically help these people. But, we should at least not avert our eyes from what is happening. Know it, understand it, then feel it, their pain, their loss, their burden, and then be grateful for everything that you have not been denied, if only by the most arbitrary dice-roll of Fate.

To be honest, I would not have otherwise bothered to go through the rigorous self-reflection, research process. I always want to go forward, rather than return to re-examine the process. The whole process of university/ college application (from writing essays to preparing for interviews) has been a recounting and reflection of my activities and achievements in junior college and secondary school. I resisted the process somewhat, because the past is a closed chapter, whilst the future lies endless unwritten ideas and possibilities... My eyes have been opened. In contemplating the past, I feel I have become better prepared for university studies. I see clearly my strengths and weaknesses, where my passions lie, and how I want to chart my future path. "If you don't history, you don't know anything. You are a leaf that does not know it is a part of a tree."

To recap the interviews I had:

A written timed online interview with Wake Forest University
... Impossible to prepare for... yet, I found life gave me the answers I needed. Interesting questions, with the timer making it all so thrilling!

Lately, I have been reassessing my view of logic as a mode of persuasion privileged above appeals to baser emotions or instincts. I used to place logic on a pedestal, and perhaps I will continue forever to do so; the core of my being still clings to the persistent, and unchanging certitude of logic... The correctness, one-and-only-true-answer finality of logic lured me away from the mercurial hot-today-cold-tomorrow whims of emotions. For logic is the medium of choice of my educators, and it is with logic that they use to mold us. Perhaps we, desperate for approval, acquiesce... and as a result believe only logic and reason can claim to give us knowledge/convince us of "the truth"/persuade us to a point of view. 

The vessel of logic is words.  Words, their meaning and form, obey the dictates of logic. The instrument of communication, the sacred chalice of thoughts and feelings that we drink from and pour into others is... The custodian of our intellectual heritage as well as its executor is... The weaver of the real and unreal, both capable of reaching into our hearts and impelling us is...

...words.

But perhaps my reverence for words (my craft), and by proxy logic, is somewhat misplaced... After all, the heartbeat of words, the frame and flavour of their meaning, comes from logic's diametric cousin... A more powerful, persuasive force, that which moves us to action, the essence of charisma - emotion. And this emotion is no one's stranger; it is, to me, an old friend I am reacquainting with. Everyone is born a master of their emotions; as children, they use it deftly to persuade, or even manipulate, others (parents) to their will. As we grow older, knowledge and its associate, logic, fight for primacy in our heads, such that we begin to lose our natural talent, our emphatic sense. Yet, if our goal is to move others, is it not necessary to re-emphasize this neglected gift?

Logicians might decry the fallaciousness of argumentum ad hominem (personal attacks), but can one deny its effectiveness? Or that of argumentum ad populum? Even sceptics must mitigate their arguments to be consistent with the reality of their emotions. Surely, logic as a tool of persuasion is subservient to appeals to emotion.