I don't believe in devils. Indifference and misunderstandings can create evil situations. Most of the time, people who appear to be evil are really victims of evil deeds.
Interpretation
Evil often arises from indifference and misunderstanding, rather than from a malicious intent.
In this quote, Max Von Sydow suggests that the concept of evil is often misunderstood; rather than being inherent in individuals, it frequently stems from societal indifference and a lack of understanding. People's actions may appear evil, but they can often be victims of unfortunate circumstances themselves, highlighting the importance of empathy and deeper awareness in human interactions.
In practice
During a lecture on ethics, this quote can be used to illustrate the complex nature of human behavior.
Film acting, if you don't play the lead, you come, and you do your scenes in a few days, and you act with a couple of colleagues. All the rest of the actors you never see, and you don't even meet many of them. And you don't know what will happen with what you've done. Maybe it will be in the film, maybe it will not.
What is important, I think, is to reach as many people as you can and do it as well as you can. Reach them and inspire them or amuse them, or maybe in some odd moments help them to discover something they hadn't thought of before.
The more I had to act like a saint, the more I felt like being a sinner.
It's not a matter of learning lines. It's a matter of getting into the ideas and the will of the person. It's a matter of, 'What does he want to do? What does he want to achieve?'
You are being suffocated by tradition... Why don't you say, 'I am going to build a life for myself, for my time, and make it a work of art'? Your life isn't a work of art ---it's a thirdhand Victorian whatnot shelf, complete with someone else's collection of seashells and hand-carved elephants.
Between two groups of people who want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy but force.
You see, it's actually very good that a human activity is performed very close to death, because that's where life is. Life is, at its most valuable and most full, very close to the boundary of life.
Feeling that morality has nothing to do with the way you use the resources of the world is an idea that can't persist much longer. If it does, then we won't.
The essential things in life are seen, not with the eyes but with the heart.
If freedom makes social progress possible, so social progress strengthens and enlarges freedom. The two are inseparable partners in the great adventure of humanity.
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