In our last module, among other things, we partly explored the intellectual grounds on which one may understand evil in film The Exorcist, and likewise evil in its central character Regan, as "atmospheric."The film implies that we find Regan in a condition of "demonic possession," she is possessed, in other words, by a demon whose ultimate pedigree is not only "atmospheric" but supernaturally atmospheric: atmospheric in a sense that it transcends the categories and the assumptions of mere "nature" and the "natural sciences."And we recognized that to comprehend evil as "atmospheric" -- versus as a diabolical force intrinsic only to persons or to one child, Regan -- is to comprehend evil in ways that overlap both with the ways in which the ancients Greeks and Romans comprehended evil (namely in supernatural ways) and with the ways in which the biblical traditions comprehended evil (also in supernatural ways). To elaborate, we recalled that both "daemons" (which is the Latin-Roman word for "demons") and daimons (which is the ancient Greek word for "demons," and which also means minor "god," "godlike," "power," and "fate") -- both the Roman word "daemon" and the Greek word "daimon" correspond to the Biblical phrase "pneuma akatharton" (which means "impure spirit" in the English translation of the Bible's original Greek) and "spiritus immundus" (which means "spirit of impurity" or more loosely "evil spirit.) All these words above designating an "evil spirit" set free in the universe give expression to Aristotle's famous definition that ... "evil is the absence of good"...in a person, in a time, in a place or in a thingIn sum, all of the above definitions constitute the Pre-Modern concept of evil as both a universal phenomenon (something atmospheric and eternal) and as a reality of "conflict" in which what's of the essence of evil is a deprivation-- the deprivation of "good" or "goodness" in a person, or in a time, or in a place, or in a thing. Evil, in other words, can never be a thing, or a person, or place, or time, but rather evil is a form of deprivation: it is the absence of that "good"that gives to a thing its fullness as a thing, that gives to a person his/her fullness as a person, that gives to a time its fullness as a time, that gives to place its fullness as a place. This gets the film Exorcist into the category of "religion" and "myth" -- not only on virtue that the film involves a the exorcism actions of a priest, but it also gets the film into the category of "religion" / "myth" on virtue that in the film the languages of "possession" -- i.e., the languages of "being possessed" by a spiritus immundus or a pneuma akatharton--- are absolutely central. In other words -- to bring us back again to our last module's lecture -- we are called to emphasize something that might be comprehended essentially (and traditionally) as a pre-modern point of view towards evil -- and which encompasses a theological (and/or biblical) point of view towards evil... a point of view about the eternality, the universality, the timelessness of "the conflict of good and evil" and in which the entire drama of the conflict involves negotiating with a deprivation, with something missing. Implied in evil understood as an "eternality" is the axiom that evil is never not there, and never not understood, experienced and known as being in competition with an oppositional force, namely "goodness" and/or "redemption," at least in the account of pre-modern and indeed theological thought. And I also in our last module highlighted that numberless thinkers, philosophers, poets, priests, prophets, artists, composers, et. al, have taken up "the conflict between good and evil" both as an eternal theme and as an "open system."Indeed, both in the Harry Potter series and in the film The Exorcist evil is depicted in its fundamental and indeed traditional form as an "open system" of evil.How / why is evil experienced by us as an "open system" in these works?Because evil in these works is experienced as an interior "conflict between both good and evil" (inside a person) and an exterior "conflict between both good and evil" (shooting through the whole of physical life); and, moreoever, evil is experienced as an "open system" because these exterior and interior conflicts are depicted in these works in such a way that always the door remains open (hence "open" system) to an "alternative outcome," namely the possibility of the outcome that goodness and / or redemption can have the Last Word in the person and in physical life as a whole. In other words, as long as there remains even the slightest possibility, the slightest rumor that goodness / redemption can possibly -- someway, somehow -- have the Last Word, we are, technically speaking, engaging with an "open system" of evil in cinematic and literary aesthetics. A Post-Modern (i.e., "Natural") Concept of Evil in the Film The Thin Red LineHere I'd like to transition into an examination of a film, The Thin Red Line, in which a pre-modern concept and evil -- as mythical, theological, religious and "supernatural" -- merge with a modern and/or postmodern concept of evil -- as essentially natural..as something that contemporary natural scientists and also contemporary artists and intellectuals associate with the "law of entropy" or the "axiom decay and dissolution." In contrast to inner-evil, there’s the evil outside of us, civilizational and biological evil which we all equally share – thinkers these days understand it as "objective evil" (versus subjective evil) and comprehend it as evil in the external world and / or in nature as an empirical scientific fact —as when Terrence Malick’s opens his captivating war-film, The Thin Red Line, with the questions… What's this war in the heart of nature? Why does nature vie with itself? The land contend with the sea? ls there an avenging power in nature? Malik’s film’s characterization of evil as an “avenging power in nature” correlates to the nineteenth-century scientific discovery of the “law of entropy,” also known as the second-law of thermodynamics.Advancing nearly decade by decade to its classic formulation by Lord Kelvin in mid-century ("On a Universal Tendency in Nature to the Dissipation of Mechanical Energy"), the law of entropy – characterized by numberless imaginative writers as the very “incarnation” of a malignant evil “energy” set free in the world -- guaranteed that an urge towards dissolution and decay -- what the ancient Greek’s would have associated with “Thanatos,” or “death instinct” -- was the irreversible destiny of the universe itself…so much so that, according the literary critic and biographer Felicia Bonaparte, these dissolute forces seemed to certain writers of fiction in the second half of the nineteenth century “the natural image of the state of planetary life.” ASSIGNMENTFor this module assignment, you will aim to seek out at least two portions in Malick's film The Thin Red Line in which, yes, Malick figuratively draws "a thin red line" between those two opposed forces on our "two-sided coin"...mentioned in my lecture. What I emphasize is the feelingfulness of a conflict , a war, a spiritual war on the "thin line" between good and evil that is experienced by both the characters in the film and by us audiences as a "thin red line" in which life as such can go in one or another direction -- either towards more life, or more death -- and in which what is experienced by both the characters in the film and by us audiences is a feeling of thinly teetering on a line between one and another outcome of life. (Insofar as we can say that we feel a tension between two orders of possibility and outcome, we are in an "open system" and not a "closed system" of evil.) You are looking for -- and isolating -- the tensional experience of teetering on a "thin red line" in the film. Please find at least two examples. Please describe the two (or more) scenes that you have isolated as examples of a "thin red line," employ quotations from these scenes, and explain to us how they stand as examples. In your response, please also name your scenes as "Thin Line 1," "Thin Line 2," etc. 500 words minimum;For this module of our course and also moving forward, we will examine fictionalized characterizations of evil as synonymous with two negative -- and indeed self-destructive -- civilizational dynamisms: (1) evil as synonymous with Kelvin’s modern and indeed scientific formulation of decay and self-annihilation as an empirically verifiable fact of planetary life; and (2) evil as synonymous with the ancient and indeed pre-modern Greek idea of Thanatos, meaning an instinct in the human and in the natural world towards death, decay, annihilation. But again, in both the premodern and modern (or postmodern) accounts alike, evil is, whether implicitly or explicitly, comprehended as just one side of a two-sided coin, a coin in which there exists on one side what we have identified as Thanatos (a death instinct, or a law of entropy, a.k.a. an evil spirt); and on the other side what the ancient Greeks simply knew as Eros (life instinct, an instinct for all that is lively and life-giving, a.k.a., a good spirit). Which brings us back to Aristotle's definition of "evil [as] the absence of good" in a person, place, time or thing understood always as a two-sided coin. In other words, in all persons, in all places, in all times, in all things there exists a war, a spiritual war: there exists the potentiality for evil-thanatos-entropy understood as a deprivation, in which there exists a lack of fullness (plenitude), a deprivation of a life-giving spirit, a deprivation of eros, or what the ancient Greeks and Romans and the Biblical traditions simply knew as The Good. Looking for "thin red lines" in the film The Thin Red LineFor this module assignment, we will aim to seek out those portions in Malick's film The Thin Red Line in which, yes, Malick figuratively draws "a thin red line" between those two opposed forces on our two-sided coin. What I emphasize is the feelingfulness of a conflict , a war, a spiritual war between good and evil that is experienced by both the characters in the film and by us audiences as a "thin red line" in which life as such can go in one or another direction -- towards more life, or more death -- and in which what is experienced by both the characters in the film and by us audiences is a feeling of thinly teetering on a line between one and another outcome of life. Learning Goals: 1. To comprehend evil in its guise as one side of a very "thin" two sided coin, a coin which bears on the other side the opposing force of "good"; and this is to comprehend evil in Aristotle's well-known definition as a "deprivation"-- something missing in a person, or in a place, or in a time, or in a place. 2. To begin to comprehend evil in its two guises: (i) according to its guise as a pre-modern form as supernatural, i.e., as a force that transcends what the modern natural sciences can say about evil; and (ii) according to evil's guise as a modern form as natural, i.e., as a force that is reducible to what modern natural sciences can say about it, beginning with the scientist Kelvin (mentioned above), the originator of the "law of entropy," also known as the "second law of thermodynamics."

Complete the Risk Management Tools and Decision-Making worksheet.Click the Assignment Files tab to submit your assignment.Key additions for this assignement:1. Consider how the tools you describe in Part A would enhance solutions for the issues you identify in the scenarios.2. What would be some follow-up actions to prevent the same risk issues from occurring in the future?