Koyasha wrote...
At minimum, if the religion were gotten out of the Circles, then they wouldn't have the constant and systematic abuse. And that exists in every single Circle, not just Kirkwall.
I don't agree. But then, I think the Andrastian religion is a
response to magic. There was a cult of the Maker, but Andraste and her followers became a continent wide movement (more or less) with the Exalted March (of sorts) on Tevinter.
Mages are feared because of what they are by people who are not them. Even if you remove the religion, when you look at the
sort of physical and mental abuse extended by templars... not all of it is for religious reasons. And if we can speak about human nature for a minute, the kind of abuse that follows from abuse of authority doesn't depend on what justifies the excess so much so that the excess can exist.
If someone can explode buildings and people with their
mind, that's scary. And if people can do that, well, the people overseeing them might absue them and humiliate them for that reason alone.
It's the Circle as an institution that is a cause (at least partly) of that abuse - IMO.
I'm not talking about physical abuse here, but the mental and psychological abuse of being constantly told that they are cursed and their existence and their magic is a sin, that creates individuals like Keili. I don't doubt for one moment Anders's claim that suicide was the leading cause of death for mages - if someone is told day in and day out that their very existence is a curse and a sin, I'm not surprised they would be driven to suicide by it.
That's a very good point, and one I hadn't considered. Being entirely areligious myself, I think I have a hard time properly grappling with religion as a religious versus a political authority.
Yeah, if it were that easy, Tevinter would have sent blood mages to take control of the Divine and slowly weaken and destroy the Chantry centuries ago. Not only has it never happened, but we haven't even heard of an attempt, which suggests that they believe the chances of success to be sufficiently low that it's not even worth trying to do. The idea that mind control is such a simple way to obtain power over everyone is something the Chantry seems to promote to give further reason for outlawing blood magic and making it a boogeyman.
Like I said: it's not an issue to concede the point entirely (or almost entirely) and retain the exact same argument.
If it can be used, and if it can
only be used to make suggestions (like the desire demon could) and
even then only be used by a small number of powerful mages and
only then on weak-willed individuals, it would still be a problem for a society.
But even with that, calling lightning from your hands or freezing people at will (or paralyzing them) is such a mind-bending power that
magic itself is the potential offender that could enslave non-mages.
Forcing someone to obey me by threat of force or mind control is not substantively different, and the concern is with the forcing part, versus the kind of forcing.
These are things that I agree with. But you should not put it as the Chantry without the Circle, because the Chantry IS the religious authority. What you're suggesting is exactly the same thing that most reasonable people are: An alternate method of control whereby the mages are taught but not abused, gain freedom to do as they wish, but with reasonable limits rather than lifetime imprisonment except on the occasions they are given special permission to go out and do something.
The Chantry is more than that. It is an organization that is anti-mage, and I think that to some extent mages have to be policed by an organization at least antagonistic toward them.
Essentially, I believe what the Chantry is (at its core) is a popular non-mage
response to mages, and I think the same kind of populist organization has to exist (especially) if we work to give mages more freedoms.
The rulers of each nation are, I believe, the best choice to hand the control to. They make the laws for their nation, and there is no reason for them to be a single authority that ignores all national boundaries and local laws to create some kind of supreme mage-authority, because any form of supreme authority that answers to no one is going to become corrupt. Rulers answer to their people in one way or another - either to their nobles or to economic pressures or to something else, but they are not supreme.
But mages are a supreme authority
onto themselves. It is not that extra-national organizations should
not be bound by nationa laws, but there needs to be a recognition that their mandate is mages alone and that their purvey is the just & equitable protection of non-mages from mages, while allowing mages the greatest freedom plausible.
Another important factor is that there would be more than one way of dealing with mages. Instead of a single authority ruling over all the mages, different rulers would undoubtedly try different strategems of dealing with their mages. Some would be more successful than others, some might be unsuccessful or actively damaging to the country, but trying a variety of different sets of laws would be far better, I think, than handing all that authority to a single central power that rules all mages forever, as the Chantry has.
Whereas I don't think it is the purvey of a king to decide how to address a mage, because a mage is not the problem of a king. In the same way as Grey Wardens exis as an extranational organization to combat a specific threat, I think ''Templars'' independent of the Chantry should exist as an extranational (but obviously less extreme) organization to counterbalance free mages.
It is not a national problem, but a human problem.
Modifié par In Exile, 11 avril 2011 - 06:00 .
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