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

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.^^