the silver branch, the small white flower

[grey_damaskena]

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."

~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Comments

Uh, what?

[subsiding_leaf]

Maybe I'm just in a bad mood, but all those comments about punishment really pissed me off, even if we're just talking about vampires:

First, if vampires need human blood to survive, I don't see why an act that is essential to their survival deserves punishment. That is like saying predators all deserve to get "iced" because they hunt & kill their prey for food. From what's known in vampire lore, vampires aren't even as cruel to their food as human beings are. It's not like I'm saying we should just sit down and get killed by vampires - but just as predators have "the right" to hunt their prey, the prey has every right to defend themselves. In other words, vampires can hunt humans, but humans can & should defend ourselves from being eaten - there's no "right" or "wrong" here, unless you simply believe humans are special and on the top of the food chain and those hunting us can therefore only be indulging in "bad" behavior.

Plus, who the heck is this person to say something as highhanded as "behavior can't be trusted without internal motivation"? Is he God? A mindreader? I hope he doesn't apply that philosophy in real life, since I shudder to think exactly how he expects to be able to know the internal motivations of the people around him. Because we aren't mindreaders, we can ONLY judge by behavior. To exterminate a bunch of beings who aren't hurting anyone because you happen not to "believe" that they are not actually behaving with good intentions is a sorry justification for killing out of fear.

Second: "What she meant was that if there are a few demonstrative punishments, people will fear the punishment and remember it, and behave themselves to avoid it. Once that is in effect you will no longer have to punish people."

She is totally oversimplifying. If that were really the case, we would have no more crime. Punishment has been demonstrated to be less effective at preventing unwanted behavior than positive reinforcement. It's not that it doesn't work at all, but proponents of public "demonstrations" (or, say, the death penalty) keep trying to make the argument that punishment is the most effective way to stop others from engaging in bad behavior, and that's simply not true. It works, it's just not as effective as other techniques. What it is really effective at though, is to make the punishers feel good about themselves, and soothe public opinion.

Essentially, I do not like how either of these people I don't know (^^;;;) are attempting to justify violence born of fear with pretty excuses. I know they're just talking about vampires, but, well - I get the feeling that you brought up their points to talk about more than just vampires. /soapbox

Re: Uh, what?

[grey_damaskena]

Both Lázár and Tokugawa are my roleplay characters, present and just pass. Regarding your reasoning, the "unless" pretty much sums up Lázár's position, which is essentially that humans are off limits to non-human things. He's not really a deep thinker: vampires are monsters, he hunts and kills monsters. It's a rather dark game and set in a dark world, in which humans are largely helpless against the supernatural forces that prey on them as they please, and the characters are mainly motivated by their personal hatred for those who have wronged them (one type of monster or another), so they don't tend to be reasonable in any case.

As for Tokugawa, she was presenting a more standardized and law-based philosophy to counter Lázár's vigilante approach. She would be the first to admit that she's oversimplifying, but then she's a great deal more reasonable than he is. :-)

Ok, a little TLDR. Your posts do that to me.^^

[subsiding_leaf]

ROTFL, that's awesome. I remember Tokugawa being your roleplay character but didn't know Lázár was - I thought that had been another player's character and you had given up Tokugawa, and were asking other players while everyone was in character or something.^^; Oops.

Well, given my position that humans are just like any other animal (and, ok, I am oversimplifying my position too, for ease of discussion), I don't consider humans as particularly off-limits, so Lázár and I would not get along.^^;

I also am growing somewhat less fond of the "humans at the mercy of more powerful beings" theme. (Which is not to say I don't like them at all, since I understand the appeal entirely.) It's just that it begins to feel like role-playing victims to me (similar to "playing Indians"). We are the most powerful living organisms on this planet so we feel ok imagining more powerful beings that we can easily hate, rather than imagining solutions to how we can still be decent individuals in our current positions of power, where all other living things are at our mercy. It just eerily reminds me of non-Native colonialist literature where everyone wants to be the victim because they are aware of their own bloody history, where their (our) ancestors were culpable of grave misdeeds to get to the top. Their (our) guilt causes them (us) to evade serious questions of ethics, opting for what they (we) see as the less complex, more virtuous position of victimhood.

Blah blah blah, other readers of your LJ probably think I'm a troll....

Re: Ok, a little TLDR. Your posts do that to me.^^

[grey_damaskena]

Vampire morality is also a little more complicated than standard predator-prey morality because predator and prey can talk to each other. Moral arguments are always more complicated when both parties are represented, funny that. ;-)

And I do have a rather unfortunate tendency to put up random stuff on LJ without explanation, it must be said. I know what's in my head, so I sometimes forget that other people are not so . . . er, privileged? If it can be called such. ::sweatdrops::

I can't claim to be hugely fond of the genre, mainly since I'm a bit tired of it. First since it's been done into the ground, and second because the moral issues are not complicated enough to bear continued repetition. I've heard some theory that there's an American cultural preference for underdogs and supporting them, but I haven't done any particular examination of the topic beyond that. Perhaps, lacking the position of underdog, Americans will try to create it for themselves by making a more powerful imaginary enemy?

You imply that the other readers of my LJ read the comments of others on my LJ, which I'm not sure is the case. Since I seldom get more than two-way conversations going here . . . ;-)

Re: Ok, a little TLDR. Your posts do that to me.^^

[subsiding_leaf]

I will readily believe that folks from the US love the underdog - certainly I have heard that idea put forth by others, myself.^^ The problem and the reason it's becoming rather distasteful for me to see US media/entertainment cast the US as underdogs is precisely because, give me a break, the USA is the LEAST underdog nation in the entire world. It becomes damned embarrassing to see a developed nation running around trying to cast a country like North Korea into bad guys, as if it's actually going to be a legitimate threat (I am not denying that NK dictatorship has serious problems, but it is NOT a threat to the USA).

I am not entirely sure sapience makes the morals more complicated if the vampires absolutely need human blood to survive. No amount of talking is going to get past that basic fact, which simplifies matters.

I think what will become more complex is not the morality (what is right - in this case, both parties are "right," they both want to survive) but the actions that must be undertaken to suit the morality. If both beings are sapient, the moral thing to do is to talk it out and figure out a way that they can co-exist, but the nature of the relationship makes it so that the co-existence is unequal by its nature (unless the vampires can provide something back that is equal to the value of, you know, fresh blood). Basically I think what I'm saying is that the situation is actually morally simple (there's not much grey area), but whether or not both parties are willing to take the difficult, moral route is the more difficult issue.

I think your readers do also read the comments on your LJ - I've had people refer back to stuff other commenters have said, so.^^