entry seventy: power.

Aug 22, 2010 03:06

Seriously, let's get on with what we're supposed to be doing. I'm not standing by and listening to all of that and just shrugging my shoulders ( Read more... )

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stopthat_destro August 22 2010, 02:19:06 UTC
Just wait until you get used to them. They aren't so impressive.

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sorry, you just walked in on a small religious experience. pleasesmirk August 22 2010, 02:21:18 UTC
Oh, you shouldn't get used to something like this. That ruins the exquisite power behind it. Getting used to it is probably half of what's wrong with the Roundworld.

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Rex has had a similar one over NANOMIIIIIIITES stopthat_destro August 22 2010, 14:36:33 UTC
Please, there's always something better out there. A gun's a common enough tool where I come from, and the tools of modern warfare have surpassed it in terms of true power.

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and I just fail and forgot to change it. pleasesmirk August 22 2010, 16:54:15 UTC
That's because you take them for granted!

I'm sure there's plenty in Roundworld warfare which is far worse than this, if you treat guns so easily, but perhaps you need to go back to realising the strength and power of something so 'simple' in your mind.

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stopthat_destro August 22 2010, 17:00:14 UTC
This is like watching somebody discover fire, you know.

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pleasesmirk August 22 2010, 17:04:59 UTC
Oh, sod off. We're not uncivilised because we don't have guns, you know.

I'd... perhaps it makes us more civilised.

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stopthat_destro August 22 2010, 17:25:12 UTC
Out of curiosity, would you call somebody bashing another's head in with a rock "civilized"? Running a sword through somebody and leaving them to bleed out?

I ask because as civilization progresses, our weaponry advances with it. Each advancement chips away at the inherent brutality of warfare. What we have now-- beyond guns-- is cleaner, faster and can be targeted more effectively. In my time, you could destroy a city, a country, at the push of a button. You could even program your weapons to destroy infrastructure, leaving human life in tact. Imagine, wiping out your enemy without even killing one person. [THE BEAUTY OF NANOMIIIIIITESSSS.]

How is that uncivilized?

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pleasesmirk August 22 2010, 17:30:35 UTC
It's uncivilised because it's blind, it's inhuman - you never have to consider the humanity of who you're killing because you don't have to look them in the eye, you don't have to think about doing it, you just have to push a button.

Pull a trigger. It might be less visceral than the ways I've been trained to kill people, but it chips away at our humanity, makes warfare something distant, something at the end of the button.

It reduces human life to a split second thought.

People might have died in my charge in life, but I remember them. It can trouble my conscience because I knew their names, I knew they were human beings, I could look in their eyes. But if I could kill hundreds, thousands, millions of people just by pressing a button? It dehumanises your victims instantly. And thus war will perpetuate and perpetuate and more people will die because now? War is easy.

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stopthat_destro August 22 2010, 17:39:49 UTC
Nothing stopped war from perpetuating before the advent of guns.

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pleasesmirk August 22 2010, 22:06:58 UTC
Perhaps not, but now... what's to stop people? At least before, there was the brutality, the suffering.

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