Addai67 wrote...
And let me reiterate that I brought up the idea of quarantine not to suggest magic is a disease,
Sigh. Well, I might also have had something to do to latch on to that suggestion, and therefore sidetrack myself.
I didn't address your line of discussion about consent of the quarantined because to me that's irrelevant.
My main point wasn't whether it requires someone's consent or not, but that not taking the consent will have consequences, whether anyone wishes to admit it or not. It all depends on what you want to achieve in the end.
but to make a comparison between the moral justification of killing an entire limited population even if the individuals involved aren't personally "guilty." Others have taken it off on different tangents, which IMO isn't especially helpful. For one thing, in my analogy, the reason for "quarantine" is not simply being a mage but being in a population deemed too far gone to safely be allowed to live.
You're taken a moral stand above, and one which specifically states, in this context at least, something is good if it is deemed good for the majority. Although, on the surface, it seems as though the actions you suggest to be taken furthers your ends, it ignores the other consequences involved, some of which I already tried to bring out in my earlier post.
Let me state this upfront. The order of templars is the key in my opinion. Because it is they who could decide how two groups, the common folk and the mages, regard each other, and the Circles.
There is a difference between when 1) a Circle is completely annuled, with collateral damage incurred in that some of the innocent mages also are killed in the name of the greater good of protecting the common folk; and 2) when the templars go out of their way to save whatever mages they can. The message that each such action sends out to people in general, and mages in particular, could be enormously different and therefore have differing sets of far reaching consequences.
For, the irony of the matter is that it is likely among the common folk, the very people who're allegedly being protected, that future generations of mages will be born; and it is the common folk who decide whether to send their mage kids to the Circle, or whether to hide them and thus make them apostates. And more apostates would mean dividing and diverting the templar resources from the management of the Circles toward hunting apostates, making the whole process ineffecient at best, and totally unmanageable at worst.
On the other serious note, the actions could create unrest among other Circles who'd eventually get to know about the annulment and that none of the mages survived, raising doubts in their minds about their own safety.
And whether one acknowledges it or not, mages are a valuable resource, not in the sense of cattle who could be put to use, but in the sense of being allies during war, as healers during peace times, and so on. So, to tap into such a resource, the best way that I can think of at the moment is to follow a policy of give and take. Not one of intimidation, not one of threat, but pure and simple humane approach - go out of one's way wherever one can. If they're to be confined to Circles, make it worth their time - if you take more away from them, compensate them handsomly. You never know - such an investment might pay off heavy dividends in the future.
And, well, yes. I recognize the threat that every mage poses. But such a threat/danger need not paralyze our rational minds.
Hope I didn't go off on another tangent this time...
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