[quote]Joy Divison wrote...
[quote]CulturalGeekGirl wrote...
If you actually read my former post, you'd see that someone illiterate and unaware of the slaughter is not implicated.Nor is someone who is aware of it but at least makes some effort not to support it completely (that would include someone who does not report undesireables, who refuses to indoctrinate their children with propaganda, anyone who makes the slightest effort not to participate). The "5" is someone who actively ignores and denies the atrocities... an active sympathizer, an active denier. Someone who voluntarily contributes to the continuation of the regime, by spreading their propaganda or deliberately supporting them financially, or by working directly for them.[/quote]
I didn't ask about those who are illiterate and unaware.
You may have meant what you say here, but this is not what you said previously. You said "citizens who ignore atrocites at a 5." Now you are saying "actively denying" and "voluntarily contributes to the continuation of the regime." That is a significant difference; one implicates much of society, one does not. [/quote]
Actually, no. I'm not moving any goalposts. My original phrasing was IGNORE, to ignore somethign you have to be aware of it, to make an honest effort to forget about it, to pay it no mind. Not noticing something is different than ignoring it. Not being involved is different from ignoring it. Ignoring it is when someone is aware of something and pretends it does not exist. When they deny it. Tha'ts denial.
I'm sorry I didn't give the full essay the first time. But yeah, if you know that people are being taken away, and you pretend they aren't so that you can live your happy little life, if you actually IGNORE it, the word I originally used, then yeah. You're implicated. If you read the original post, you'll see that I directly contrasted it with anyone who does anything to even tokenly oppose the regime. If you do something, anything to show that you disagree, to hamper them, to stop them from moving forward, even something as silly as telling your children what it could be like without them... then good. Then you're not tarnished. If you refuse to do anything, to even admit that something is wrong. If you see others in pain and pretend they do not exist, then yeah. You're the reason that the regime can continue. If a lot of people didn't ignore the problem and carry on, then the evil leaders wouldn't be able to continue. If everyone refused to tell their children that a minority group was evil, then hatred would die out. This particular brand of evil needs the support of people who consider themselves innocent, in order to survive. Without those million tiny little "yesses" it'd fade away. The five evil people at the top can't keep it going on their own. They need that army, the one that's willing to
ignore. If there's a woman who tells her kid that maybe we should think for a moent, maybe we should wonder whether or not what's being done with the mages is right... just by dong that, she removes a brick from the wall. But every mother who says mages are cursed, she adds one back on. And I think we need to stop equating them. We need to say that yeah, the woman who encourages independent thought in her child is better, more just, and more innocent than the one who simply repeats the regime's message of fear and hatred.
Because all it takes for evil to win is for good men to do nothing.
[quote]
[quote]CulturalGeekGirl wrote...
It's the difference between simply living in a country that has a particular regime, and joining the party and going to the meetings and hanging out in the secret clubhouse. When the clubhouse goes up, the people who are hanging out there will die. The people who aren't hanging out at the the regime's clubhouse won't. So when there's a regime that oppresses a minority, don't hang out at their bloody clubhouse! It's not hard![/quote]
I don't see a world of black and white where clearly definied villains (and only them) hang out at a bloody clubhouse. In a oppressive theocracy, is a place of worship a bloody clubhouse? What of those idealistic students who join an ostensibly progressive in an honest motivation to promote social reform only to have that movement veer out of control and oppresses its own citizeny? Just blow up the bloody clubhouse, it's not that hard, right? [/quote][/quote]
Please, I'm the only person who has actually formally acknowledged and defined
my shades of grey. Everone else says "shades of grey shades of gray blah blah blah" without explaining where on there scale someone who opposes evil (because you asked me not to say authoritarianism) with violence goes, versus someone who knows that people are being imprisoned, having their minds rent open, and being convinced they are monsters... someone who knows all this and does nothing. Someone who is willing to let generation after generation scream and weep behind stone walls for their own personal saftely. Nobody will answer that question, nobody else will explain their shades of grey, if they even have them.
So no. I don't see them as clearly defined villains, and I never said they were, nor did I imply that they were. I don't sort people into heroes and villains, unless they're at the very very extreme ends of the scale. But when I say shades of grey, I explain them. I enumerate them. If you have questions about them, I answer.
When I ask why you value the life of someone who sees injustice and
does nothing over the life of someone who uses violence to oppose it, you won't answer. You refuse.
As for good people legitimately trying to reform the Chantry from inside... well, if we'd met a single person like that in the entire game who wasn't dead, I'd definitely have a hugely different view on everything, But we don't.
As for place of worship vs. authoritarian clubhouse: this is why I so love freedom of religion and keeping religion and the state separate. Because when you have those things, you don't get that kind of conundrum. But yeah, when the church runs the military, and the military and their commanders live in the place of worship, you get in a weird situation where a place is the seat of evil power while masquerading as a holy place. That's the fault of the evil regime though, they are deliberately exposing innocent people to danger by mixing military action with religious establishment.
[quote]
[quote]I've used terms that describe things, sure, but only to describe things those terms describe. It's still a bad thing, even if your particular society doesn't disapprove of it yet. [/quote]
If these things are obviously so bad, why has it taken thousands of years of human history before concepts like apartheid and racial segregation were even articulated, let alone for institutions to codify laws to prevent them and for societies to overwhelmingly disapprove of them?[/quote]
So wait...
Are you sincerely arguing that apartheid and segregation are fine, as long as they occur before the words are invented? Because that's the only possible interpretation of this argument I see. You're saying it's morally acceptable to persecute a minority until someone comes up with a word telling you not to? I don't even... I can't... What?
[quote]Joy Divison wrote...
[quote]Meredith and the Divine are aware that a man who desires to carry out a tranquil solution exists in their ranks, and they do nothing to remove him from a situation where he routinely deals with mages and has the opportunity to make them tranquil.[/quote]
They might have been considering just that. He is killed shortly after his proposal was denied. And unless there is actual evidence that he is abusing his position brought to Meredith and the Divine, they would have no reason to do so. After all, you are against punishing people for the potential to do harm, right?[/quote]
Well, if there's no evidence that mages are being tranquilled illegally, then that means that Elthina and Meredith are already being grossly, unforgiveably, criminally negligent at their jobs. There's
one goddam rule... you can't tranquil a harrowed mage. So... the second a harrowed mage gets tranquilled... you start loking for who mighta done it. You isolate suspects. You put them in a situation where they don't have the opportunity to do it again. Honestly this is the most basic stuff in the history of being a responsible human being.
Then some guy hands you a paper that says "Hey, you know what's a good idea? Let's tranquil every single mage!" That's not enough, in your mind, to at least get that guy transferred to someplace where he won't have access to mages, at least until you finish an investigation?
No, the first thing a responsible person does it send him back to his job, let him get in a few extra victims. I mean come on..
If you are honestly equating putting someone who has formally stated a desire to abuse a minority group in charge of that minority group with allowing someone who has never expressed a desire to harm anyone to freely walk the streets... then I don't think it's possible to have a sane conversation. The two ideas are so obviously, ludicrously divergent than I can't even concieve of a mind that would consider them equivalent. Unless... am I being punked? Are you Ashton Kutcher?
[quote]Joy Divison wrote...
I agree with you that mages should not be locked-up in a circle simply because of they danger they potentially represent and I winced the one time I sided with the Templars just to see the ending. I am not disputing what was happening at the Gallows was fundamentally wrong or that the key figures in the game would have recognized what was going on was wrong. Indeed, the game makes this clear with characters such as Cullen and Thrask.
Where I am challenging you is the extent of the culpability and knowledge of the partipants in DA2 and in regimes you find despicable. For every Ser Alrik, there are numerous Ser Wesleys who joined the templars maybe because they were devout Andrastians (is that religion propaganda which perpetuates the oppressive system of the world of Thedas?), honestly believed the Circle was a good compromise to deal with magic, out of a sense of civic duty, or just to get out of the slums of Lowtown like Keran. The Ser Wesleys are contributing to the continuation of an oppressive system, but it would seem to me the culprit is the social and historical context which led them to believe they were doing something "good" as opposed to "bad."
[/quote]
And I agree. I agree that people like Cullen and like the templar Alistair would have become if he weren't rescued by the Wardens are largely victims of the system. But that's just it.
The system will keep shielding itself with people like that. It will keep replenishng its ranks with idealistic cannon fodder. That's another part of the trick. I mean hasn't anyone seen the sound of music? One moment they're singing "I am seventeen going on eighteen I'll take care of you" and the next minute, well, they've got a gun.
Stopping the system stops that too. Every horrific regime probably contains soldiers who joined for the promise of a good meal and a bed to sleep in.
Most of the time, I'm the first person to run in with my trenchcoat flapping and my eyes wide and crazed, lift my hand and raise my voice and shout NOBODY DIES TODAY!
But if there was one lesson that Dragon Age 2 taught, it was that the most influential person in the city could do nothing, even
working for seven years, nothing to stem the tide. It taught us that even people as great and powerful as the Warden lose relevance and fade away to uselessness. It taught us that not even the good king of an independent nation could do anything to influence policy. It showed us every possible form of peaceful attempt, and then it showed all of them
failing. It was the most depressing thing I've ever seen in a video game. I think that was on purpose... I hope it was. Thedas is a world where heroes and clever people aren't given the opportunities to use that cleverness to put forward the optimal solution. Hawke couldn't save anyone. No one could be saved. The only way out was the only way out of anything in Thedas; blood, violence, death, despair.
At the end, we were left with a simple questoin:
Let it stand? Or bring it down?
I don't like the way that it was brought down. I have a million billion better plans for better ways to bring it down. But the lesson of Dragon Age 2 was either 1) Hawke is a hideously incompetent moron and so are all his friends or 2) there was no other way to ensure that change would happen. We aren't given access to any better plan. We are shown repeatedly that any attempt to make a difference in any other way is utterly futile. How else do you explain the fact that you can't save anyone, can't save the moderate templars, can't kill Meredith, can't make any god damn difference in the world at all, until someone sets it on fire?
We aren't given a middle path. We are never shown any evidence that a middle path might work or be achievable, We're asked to make a simple choice: freedom vs safety, war vs peace through oppression. Those were the only options on the menu. The only ones set before us.
If there'd been another way, if we'd been given another path, then it would be different. But the structure of the story dictates this specific choice. The structure of the story gives us no column C, no middle path. In fact, we are explicitly shown over and over and over again that the spokesperson for "compromise" is really doing nothing but enabling continued oppression.
I'm not saying everyone in that blast was a villain who needed to die. I've never said that.
What I have said is that given the choice between having some sympathizers get caught up in collatoral damage or continuing the current regime, I will reluctantly prefer the former.
Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 10 octobre 2011 - 09:51 .
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