FlintlockJazz wrote...
Dean_the_Young wrote...
Briefly:
Yes, I do consider life the most important part of life. If you lose your life, you have no liberties, but if you lose your liberties but keep your life you can regain them.
Maybe, but if your conquerers are unable to take slaves then fighting to the death can deter them from continuing their conquest. They are no longer able to take slaves, and they know that they will be fought every step of the way, making the cost potentially outweigh the benefits of conquest. You die, but your family and people remain free. Of course, this does not apply to the geth choice, its either a case of wiping them out completely or reprogramming them, but in some situations I can see it being less clear cut.
Or they might just kill you until you're dead as a matter of principle (Ghengis Khan), or until the only fragments left are willing to capitulate. I'm in no way denying or rejecting armed resistence to invasion: the cost-benefit holds true regardless. I'm talking about when you're already defeated and are offered a choice between dying now or living as a slave. The chance to resist by force has already passed.
Dean_the_Young wrote...
The Heretics are already trying to brainwash their views on others: they really have no argument in their own defense as to why it's not good for them if it's good for the rest of the geth.
You're already enforcing your views on the Heretics. You're going there to kill them, and to prevent them from doing the same to more. Killing them follows the rule that lives are paramount: not killing them will lead to more deaths. Not enforcing one's views on others is great as long as the varying views can coexist in peace. When one of them is genocidal, it's not protected.
True, but some could argue that just because the enemy intends to do something doesn't mean that you should or that its any more right. The heretics have chosen, of their own free will, to take attack the geth as is their right as a independant group, but they are also obligated to accept the consequences of those actions, one of which is the geth defending themselves as is their right. Destroying the base does not kill all the heretics, Legion says that there will still be pockets of them left, whereas reprogramming them will brainwash all of them except for those who are not connected to the network at the time but who will still get reprogrammed once they do so (and since it is via the network that they share information they won't know about the virus until they connect to the network...)
Personally I'd say those people need to be consistent when it comes to respecting other people's beliefs. If you hold that other people's beliefs need be respected, then by the Heretics own beliefs brainwashing is okay. If you kill them, however, you are imposing your own beliefs upon them, in which case you aren't respecting their beliefs, nor are you letting them hold them. Once they're dead, their beliefs are gone as well. So either you wipe out their beliefs without harming them, or you wipe out their beliefs and insist on killing them as well. Either way, you're destroying their beliefs.
The Heretics you don't kill on the station will be killed otherwise, by the True Geth, the Quarians, and the Alliance. And in the meantime, they'll do their best to hurt others and later aid the Reapers. Brainwashing ends the war with the Geth. Blowing the base keeps the danger alive.
Destroying the base could be argued as self defense and the consequence of war, whereas reprogramming could be argued as a hostile takeover.
Or as self-defense and a consequence of war: you'll be using them against the Reapers, after all. Back in the old days, it wasn't uncommon for armies to take the defeated and impress them into their own ranks.
Dean_the_Young wrote...
Yes, chattel slavery is better than death. You can escape slavery, and bring justice later. You can do neither if you die instead.
Alot of times it doesn't though, instead you wind up helping the very nation that enslaved you, which then leads to them being able to enslave more people. Edit: Also, breaking free usually costs lives, and so in breaking free you are accepting that the risk of death and the death of some of your comrades is better than being enslaved. Also though, in some ways being a chattel slave is preferable to brainwashing: at least as a chattel slave you still retain control over your own thoughts, and able to try and break free, whereas someone who is brainwashed doesn't even know they are a slave.
Someone who has been brainwashed isn't a slave. They are a willing believer. If you've ever changed your mind after hearing a compelling argument, you have effectively been brainwashed.
Being a slave also allo ws you to harm the nation that enslaved you, both as a slave (such as the sabatoge slave laborers did to the German rocket program) and later as a possible escapee. That your accomplices can die in escapes/resistence is an accepted risk by you in doing so and it was their choice: people who don't want to risk their lives over freedom won't.
If a slaving power already enslaves you, they have the power to enslave more people other than you. Moreover, not all people are like you even if you do desire a braveheart. There will always be people who will submit than see their familes killed, and these people will already provide that basis of further expansion (however much/little it may be). Getting yourself killed does nothing, wheras resisting from within the slave position and escaping not only offers harm to the enemy, it forces them to dedicate increasing resources to counter the dangers of yourself, people like you, and otherwise compliant slaves you can mobilize, risks that would not occur if the only people taken as slaves were the ones inclined to be compliant. About the only way to prevent that would be if you killed everyone before they could be taken as slaves.
Modifié par Dean_the_Young, 27 avril 2010 - 12:56 .
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Joking, but it goes to show how modern society likes to stigmatise those with a different perspective that goes against common consensus as crazy, and shows the dangerous road we walk when we start declaring dissent as wrong.
