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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Sat, 9 Jun 2007 17:47:33 GMT
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Viewed:
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8975 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, David Koudys wrote:
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And if I may intrude into this here, we have had some wonderful fiction on
the telly lately in which what is considered to be ‘the bad guy’ in the ‘tv
show universe’ is the person we most relate to.
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Generally speaking, this is the idea to which I object. Identifying with bad
guys is bad.
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Loads of examples, but starting off with ‘Captain Mal’ in ‘Firefly’--he’s a
smuggler a la Han Solo (another fine example)--they’re not villians, to be
sure, but, in their universe, they break the laws to succeed.
And yet here we are, the viewing audience--we don’t like the Alliance in
Firefly and we dont’ like ‘The Empire’ in Star Wars.
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Is Han really bad? Sure, he undermines the laws of an evil empire, but does
that make him “bad”? Shouldn’t we resist evil (bad)?
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Furthermore, going with Firefly, we have the movie ‘Serenity’, in which ‘The
Operative’ *admits* he’s the monster (as, he states, is Cap. Mal) and, due to
his own ‘monsterhood’, is unable to live in the ‘sinless world’ that he’s
endeavouring to help create by his actions in silencing River. Yet, by the
end of the movie (if Joss did his job properly), we feel sympathy for both
Capt. Mal, but especially The Operative, because it was his base axioms that
he believed in (Alliance = good, sinless) that were faulty, and when he found
that out he was left with nothing.
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I can’t comment on that, since I’ve never seen “Serenity” nor “Firefly”.
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I’m with Dave on this one--there’s more to humanity than attributing people
or events to ‘evil’ and ‘good’--this isn’t some ‘30’s movie where the guy
with the handlebar mustache ties the woman to the railroad tracks, but hte
guy with the white hat comes riding in to ‘save the day’.
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But what I’m talking about is judging actions. You just don’t become bad, you
do bad things which in turn make you a bad person.
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Bringing it back to reality, there was a guy and his wife right here in the
province in which I live (and I’ll never mention his name on the ‘net ‘cause
I’ll never add to the ‘infamousness’ of the jackass) who took it upon
themselves to kidnap a few teenage girls, and what usually happens in these
instances happened.
We could say that this guy was ‘pure evil’--and, left up to me, if he and I
happened to find ourselves in the same room, only one of us would come out
alive (at least, that’s how I *feel*, but finding myself in that situation,
would I be able to take another life? I dunno), but this guy had a mom and
dad--they knew him as a ‘cute kid’. He had friends and family who remembered
someone different than what he became.
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Right. He was a cute kid, because he hadn’t done anything bad yet.
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Crossing between reality and fiction, I’ve never been able to reconcile
this--I saw Star Wars when I was 10. Darth was tall, black and evil--he
kills people by crushing their necks and he blows up planets. And then in
‘Return of the Jedi’, I’m suppose to feel sympathy for him ‘cause he saves
his kid and, in the process dies himself? Futhermore, what are we to think
of regarding ‘cute little Anakin’ in Episode 1 of Star Wars? Here he’s all
cute and worried about mommy and the like, when we, the viewers, *know* he’s
going to grow up and become Darth Vader--killer of people and planets.
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This is precisely the crap that the liberal minds likes to project-- confusing
the lines between good and evil to the point where the two are barely
distinguishable.
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And then this brings up the wonderful time travel morality question that
we’ve all heard--if you could go back to 1900 and found little adolph playing
in the street... He hasn’t done anything yet!
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Which brings us to the second wonderful time travel question-- is it possible to
alter the future (which has already occured, BTW)
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Which I think then brings it back to Dave’s point--in this LEGO set, the ‘bad
guy’ is strapped on a table--he can’t *do* anything--he’s rendered
incapacitated.
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So what?
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Do not our ‘moral’ intentions then have to turn to protecting
those who *cannot* protect themselves? Protect the guy from torture??
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So you are saying that I should rescue him so that I can bring him to justice
using our judical system? Why am I compelled to defend the evil? Are there not
anymore good people left to defend?
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I think we’ve talked about this before, and I’ll remember that I’m mostly
speaking to a crowd that loves to misinterpret the 2nd ammendment--every so
often we’ll see the news in which ‘home owner shoots and kills robbers’.
Some cases, as previously discussed, the robbers were either incapacitated in
some way or were ‘fleeing the premesis’--no threat of harm to the home owner
or others, yet the shot is still fired and the guy is still dead.
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No threat, until the scum decide to do it all again the next day.
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Here I don’t have a problem with where the evil is. Was a crime committed?
yes--the robbers shouldn’t have been there in the first place. However, that
does not make the crooks ‘pure evil’ nor does it justify ‘death by shooting’
if they are incapacitated or in the process of fleeing the scene. The owner,
taking that shot, has now become the guy standing before the criminal
strapped to the table.
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Maybe. But you have to consider the possibility that there is a good chance
that these criminals will strike again, with a less than favorable outcome for
the innocent.
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I think that the world is full of ‘grey’--there is no black and white. It
really is one of the fundamental tennants I learned from the Christian
University I attended a long time ago (which I’ve adapted for my personal
use)--*if* the world is sinful, *then* everything and everyone is--there’s no
getting around it. If one says we live in a fallen world, then we’re all
fallen--there are no ‘perfectly good’ people and no ‘perfectly evil’ people.
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Of course the world is gray and nobody’s perfect; but that doesn’t mean our
standards should be gray. We should always be striving for white, which, in
part, means eschewing black. We cannot cross a divide while still keeping a
foot on both sides.
I am questioning those whose intent isn’t to strive for good, but to explore
and dwell in black. These are the people who make the world worse for everyone
else. Good people are respectful, kind, and have genuine regard for others.
Bad people don’t; they are basically selfish. And I’d go so far as to say that
good people are happy people, and selfish people aren’t. That may seem
simplistic, but not everything is rocket science:-)
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Even what’s-his-name from Ontario could speak a good line--he managed to
convince someone to marry him and he was a pretty good talker. And, as
stated, he did have friends and family who wondered what became of that ‘cute
kid’ they remembered.
Yes there are degrees and yes people should be held accountable for their
actions. In the process of holding people accountable, we must be careful to
not become that which we’re fighting against. I think Neitzche said
something like that.
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Yes, we need to choose our battles wisely.
Neitzsche: God is dead.
God: Neitzsche is dead.
:-)
JOHN
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