@Ieldra2: I still feel like maybe you're personally connecting corruption with "divine goodness". When I say corruption, I'm not at all speaking about the Maker giving you a high five.
Not quite, but if you use the term, you are implying you mean more with it than simple health concerns, as in your cancer example. "Corruption" isn't just concerned with health but with purity, and consequently has a dimension of judgment and a vibe of blaming the victim. Well, judgment is all right if there actually is an intrinsically preferable state from any reasonable point of view. Blaming the victim is not, in spite of a long-standing tradition where sickness is concerned. However, consider this: both your typical "abomination" and people like Wynne or Anders are the result of the same thing: merging with a spirit. I think the story makes it abundantly clear that this is not an intrinsically objectionable state of things, even though it is usually somewhat dangerous.
Was Anders "corrupted in spirit"? You can influence how this is perceived by Anders himself in DA2 by making story-related decisions and choosing specific options in conversations. Even in the worst case, I wouldn't go further in my judgment than to say that merging with justice has damaged his personality. For if you talk about this in terms of corruption, then it's not a matter of health but a matter of purity, and judgment becomes a matter of ideology.
When we embrace an addict - we can be said to be enabling an addict, and I've met people who would be very offended if they had become addicts and I sought to intervene, but I simply cannot sit back and say: "That person chose to be addicted to heroine. I don't have a right to try to stop them." I find that cold and cruel.
Do you feel you have the right - or the obligation - to use force to prevent someone from being "corrupted" thusly? I can accept this as a personal decision of yours, however, I would strongly object to having such a right institutionalized. Which is where an organization like the Chantry comes in.
I don't believe that not wanting people to be carved out (possessed) and used as a flesh suit is some sort of moral judgement really - nor do I feel that having people turn into ten foot tall flesh bags intent on converting others (by force if necessary) in other ten foot tall flesh bags is healthy for the populace.
Well, neither do I, but even so I don't use force to prevent people from smoking in RL. If someone is fully aware of what he's doing and still does what I'd consider extremely unhealthy, I'd rather err on the side of non-intervention. The worst dictator of all is not the one who wants to control you for his own purposes, but the one who thinks he knows better what's good for you, because interventions in the name of your own good accept no boundaries.
I also truly don't feel it's always about what an individual wants. Individuals make wrong choices all the time, and I believe things like morality are designed because a majority of people have made observations about the "best possible baseline" for humanity to form civilization and have found that leaving it as optional - is no option at all.
I don't think there's ever going to be a society where stealing whatever you please... or killing whomever you please... is functional for society. So what's the point on arguing whether a sky god made it up? We're sapient creatures - the only ones we know - if thought is ours alone (and it is, regardless of belief in aliens) then we make the rules and those rules are fact.
There is a very simple difference between stealing and killing and becoming an addict: you are doing damage to others. I feel that I have no right to use force to prevent others from doing whatever they want to themselves. Whatever I may think or feel about it, I have no right to be shielded from things I dislike, even if consider them deeply offensive, if no actual damage is done.
In turn, the Chantry may consider merging with a spirit to be "corruption", but from my viewpoint it doesn't have the right to intervene based on that idea. Also, consider the example of the ancient magisters' breach of the Golden City: the mass sacrifice of slaves for magical power is nothing more than a sidenote, if at all, in the Chantry's story. What really concerns them is that the magisters have supposedly trepassed on the Maker's territory and tainted its purity with their "sinful" presence. In other words, the Chantry condemns what would be a commendable act in my view (an act of gaining indepedence from the gods) were it not for the blood sacrifice, while making almost no mention of that, which is the only morally relevant action, the one that actually condemns the Magisters.
Which means that the Chantry's ideology is diametrically opposed to my view of things. It claims as moral matters that which are matters of ideology. That magic is dangerous, not the least to the one who uses it, of that can there be no doubt. Being with magic, however, is not a taint, and being without magic is not intrinsically better, any more than being without power makes you a better person just because your potential evil will inevitably have a lesser scope.
So, it's no surprise at all, isn't it, that I want to disassociate myself from it, and that I would resent being made complicit in accepting any association.
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