Modern Representations
In several modern fictional stories, a character can be marked as especially evil or mischievous by receiving similarly bad advice from both shoulder figures, having a second shoulder devil instead of the angel, or being persuaded by the devil to kick the angel out.
One may view this image in Freudian terms, with the Angel representing the super-ego (the source of self-censorship), counterbalanced by the Devil representing the id (the primal, instinctive desires of the individual).
Benjamin Lawsky, the New York superintendent of financial services, compared the plight of regulators to having shoulder angels, that "regulators operating in the specific context of the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis had to listen to two compelling inner voices." "I think of it as really two either angels or devils sitting on each shoulder of the regulator — you can decide whether you want to call them angels or devils," he said.
Read more about this topic: Shoulder Angel
Famous quotes containing the word modern:
“Chaucer is fresh and modern still, and no dust settles on his true passages. It lightens along the line, and we are reminded that flowers have bloomed, and birds sung, and hearts beaten in England. Before the earnest gaze of the reader, the rust and moss of time gradually drop off, and the original green life is revealed. He was a homely and domestic man, and did breathe quite as modern men do.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)