Subject:
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Re: Arkham Asylum - A cool set, but a bit disturbing.
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 8 Jun 2007 13:51:24 GMT
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Viewed:
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8660 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
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For the good/evil struggle thing to work, it is the innocent who must
suffer.
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Ah! But that’s the difference between melodrama and drama. The more
sophistimacated challenge is for the reader/viewer to be made to sympathize
with a villain rather than always rooting for the innocent victim.
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And that, my friend, may be one of those “nutshell” differences between a
liberal and a conservative. Assuming you are serious with your assertion
(sophistimacated?), I challenge your notion that the concept of sympathizing
with the villian is a more sophisticated rendition of drama. I will never
understand the left’s fascination with evil, as if it can be analyzed and
understood. Dwelling in evil doesn’t provide insight or understanding, but
it does taint and corrupt those who choose to get too close to it. You lie
down with dogs, you wake up with fleas.
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First off, “sophistimacated” was just a means of letting out some air so that
I don’t start taking myself too seriously.
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Just making sure. Got that one from Duffy, did ya, Dave!?
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Let me disclaim that it in this passage I’m speaking specifically of fiction
rather than reality.
The reason it’s more sophisticated (which, in this context, implies only
complexity rather than an objectively “better” or “worse” aesthetic
sensibility) because it requires the viewer to make achieve more complicated
degree of pathos. Sympathizing with an innocent victim is sort of easy
because we’re culturally programmed to do so (“women and children first,”
etc.) In western culture, at least, it’s basically the default position.
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Hold on right there! I wonder why that is the case! And I certainly don’t
believe it is by Cawinkydink. And if it is so easy, than why would it be
restricted to our culture? I believe we worked hard for that to be our
“default position”-- it is a product of the Enlightenment.
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To
sympathize with the innocent victim, the viewer need do (practically) nothing
other than to watch and react. But to sympathize with a villain, the viewer
has to be drawn out of his default mode and given a reason to sympathize.
I may have portrayed it simply as a matter of choosing to sympathize with
the villain rather than the victim, but that’s not really the idea. Instead,
the drama must be framed in such a way that one’s sympathy for a villain is
justified by the circumstances.
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I guess what I’m saying is that these types of forays outside of the default, as
you put it, lead to, in my mind, to dark places. I know that you qualified your
statement by restricting your comments to the realm of fiction, but I believe
the ideas here transcend fiction and reality. And these ideas-- are they
influencing culture, or are they reflecting culture? Both, probably, but the
question is, in which order? When one starts to look for justice where it
doesn’t belong, I believe outcomes like suicide bombers murdering innocent women
and children start making sense.
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I’m also not talking about feeling sympathy for a villain who’s being held
accountable for his villainy; I don’t feel bad for the murderer who’s
incarcerated for life, for example.
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This implies that one is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, which,
given the poor state of our justice system, is little comfort in my mind. The
beauty of fiction is that villians can be made to pay for their evil deeds at
any time by God (or Chance, if you prefer), which is more satisfying, because
the justice is from beyond the failings of man and his weak attempts and
understanding of justice.
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In the final attempts to analyze evil, where does it get one? At best,
genuine sympathy for the evildoer, and what good can come from that?
Tolerance? Great. Let’s learn to tolerate evildoers. My suspicion is that
the purpose of such endeavors is to discover how stinky someone else’s
laundry is, so as to feel good about the fetor of their own. Good old
relative moralism!
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I prefer the term “moral relativism,” if you please!
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Culpa Mea!
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It should be reiterated that I don’t believe in “evil” as an actual, absolute
thing,
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Nor do I, BTW.
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so the most I can say is that, when possible, it improves one’s
understanding to study those behaviors in others that are so abhorrent to me
that I would characterize them as “evil,” but I don’t thereby presume to have
any ability to diagnose “evil” in an absolute sense.
And the value of studying such a person is that I might gain an understanding
of what drives him to act as he does.
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Again, I ask, to what end? We already know what they are doing/did was not
good; what else can be gained, especially in a free society where people are
free to act badly? I believe the ultimate goal is to reduce accountability to
zero. No one can be held responsible for their actions, because who are we to
judge? (Moral relativism) It is the incidious and inevitable outcome of
Political Correctness.
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That’s more complicated than
speechifying and sloganizing about the “axis of evil” and “evildoers who want
to kill life” and so on, but ultimately I think that it would be more useful
in fostering peace than would firebombing a city full of civilians, for
example.
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Okay, forget the word “evil”. I’ll bet, however, that you would still object to
the substitute “bad”, or even “not good”. Because within your liberal, PC
mentality is the abhorrence to judge, whether it be the actions of persons or
cultures.
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IMO once the guy is strapped
down (or otherwise rendered harmless) then his jailer has no business or
right to inflict further harm upon him. We’ve had this discussion before,
of course, and I’m sure we’ll have it again and again. But in brief, it’s
not a question of “innocence” in any absolute sense; the torturer is the
villian and the recipient of the torture is the victim who deserves our
protection.
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What would you say is the reason the victim deserves our protection?
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Why would he not?
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Because he is not innocent.
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That is, why would he deserve torture?
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Because he reaps what he sowed.
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By what absolute
measure can we say “his evil act justifies these electrodes placed on his
genitals,” I wonder?
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Okay, now that brings up a sticking point. Though the bad guy deserves bad
things to happen to him, there still is no justification for those bad things to
be initiated by people. Only God (or Chance) can, er, execute perfect justice
so that the bad guy gets just what he deserves.
So, of course, I don’t condone the torture of bad people, even though I might
believe that they deserve it. Torture is bad, so in my mind, the torturer might
as well be strapped to the table next, with another torturer waiting on deck,
with the whole thing blossoming into scene reminiscent of a MP sketch.
JOHN
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Arkham Asylum - A cool set, but a bit disturbing.
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| (...) It is, as Dave suggested, an entirely cultural notion. Look to untamed nature to see the natural "might makes right" position, where the strongest (whether it be physically, or in terms of mental cunning) survive by killing, maiming, or simply (...) (17 years ago, 9-Jun-07, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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