Can I finish Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series? A rant.
The final book in Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series was recently released, but I'm not sure I can bring myself to read it. I've borrowed a copy and it's sitting here with me now, but after reading just a few sentences I find it difficult to continue, because I know that the ending that I want is not going to be the ending that I get. The
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What if Terry Goodkind was purposefully showing us, the readers, how a brilliant, earnest, and well-intentioned young man could transform into that which he had once hated? What if we were being shown the evolution of a true fanatical killer? What if this was to be the greatest lesson of all, where in the final book it is revealed that Richard is the true evil now, and that someone else must now stop him?
Would that be a mindfuck, or what?
Alas, I don't expect this to be true. Goodkind clearly believes the Objectivist bullshit he spews
I used to participate in the newsgroup humanities.philosophy.objectivism, and many of the self-styled Objectivists (or "students of Objectivism", as some of them insisted) were very much like how you describe Goodkind(*) -- apparently thinking that those who disagreed with them were evil -- MUST be evil -- and deserving of death. Their arguments were often pathetic, and clearly more motivated by base emotions than the "clear identification of reality" as they claimed.
But there were a few who claimed to be Objectivists and were reasonable people nonetheless. These people had taken to heart the very Objectivist principle "that critical and logical thinking was extremely important, and that one could not believe in something because of fear, hatred, desire, or anything else." These people would, I think, say that it was right for Richard to *hate* the pacifists (or at least to despise them), but wrong to *kill* them. The need for critical and logical thinking applies to moral evaluations most of all, and there is a great difference between "deserving to be killed" and "not deserving to be saved." It would be hateful (they'd say) for someone to insist that Richard stay and defend people who will not defend themselves. But Richard's actions show that his moral evaluations come from his emotions rather than his intellect -- he has concluded that they deserve to be killed based for no other reason than that he hates them. He may have Objectivist sympathies, but he is not (they'd say) an Objectivist.
Personally, I'd rather read *your* end to the series than Goodkind's (based on your descriptions -- I haven't read the series at all). But I doubt even my "reasonable Objectivists" would write it your way. It seems to me that even they would have the Objectivist aesthethic, where art is supposed to portray heroes to us, and where villains are to be shown as the evading fakers of reality that they truly are. Personally, I like a story that makes me *think* about right and wrong -- to "check my premises", as the Objectivists like to say. Yet I don't think I've ever met an Objectivist who thinks that it's good to show how a man who starts with good principles and intentions can still go bad. (Well, maybe just one....)
(*) BTW, "Goodkind" seems like the wrong name for an Objectivist. It should be "Goodstrong" or "Goodlogic" or maybe "Goodbenevolent". "Kindness" is taken as a code word for *altruism* -- one of the primary evils of the world (per Objectivists).
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