I often switch the genders or races in my mind to see if I’m being sucked in by a sexist or racist plot.
Okay, middle-aged guy has an affair with sexy female photographer… sorry, he’d be universally reviled as a horndog with a mid-life crisis.
And, yeah, for my mid-life crisis, I
went to the library!
Call me provincial then, but killing someone is always murder. There’s nothing moral about it, even if the dead guy is a mass murdering shithead.
Mind you, if it was necessary to kill to one to prevent the deaths of others, I would also kill the murderer while regretting the necessity of doing so. There is no right in this sort of situation. And while it may be the lesser of two evil things, it is still nonetheless an evil.
Good idea, and so that’s what happens on Bridges- if a man had done that, it’d be portrayed as him being a huge cad, instead of being soooo romantic. Even worse with Eat, Pray love, where she dumps her husband because he wants to have kids, runs off to eat a lot and have a couple of affairs and somehow this is life affirming and romantic, instead of being incredibly selfish and shallow.
Some of this thread reminds me of an argument I once had with an obnoxious co-worker. I mentioned that I thought human life was precious; he then had to go on about whether I would save Hitler or a tiger in a fire. Oh to have that much time on my hands again.
I don’t agree with this at all. Killing someone in the defense of innocents, including yourself, is not evil, and it is completely moral.
I think you’re using different definitions of evil. Barking Dog seems to be saying that the act of killing someone is never a good thing, only less awful than the alternative. It’s a tragedy and a terrible outcome no matter how necessary it is.** RikWriter** is pointing out that it doesn’t make the person who pulls the trigger morally culpable or in any way a less ethical person. I agree with both of you, and don’t think we can drop either perspective without losing our humanity.
Yep. I’ve advocated before seeing soldiers as a tragic, terrible, awful profession, something that should be pitied, not glorified. It’s not a very popular viewpoint :).
Anyway, Kobal2, that’s the best explanation of Batman I’ve ever read. Thanks!
In Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls, and the Myth of the Exotic Oriental, one of the Asian women interviewed by the author is a Vietnamese woman with a backstory similar to Kim in Miss Saigon – she’d been involved with an American serviceman during the war, had a baby, and stayed in Vietnam while the guy went back to the US and married someone else. Her response when asked if she had thought of dealing with this the way Kim did was basically “WTF, who would do that?” When she learned that the story was based on an opera about a Japanese woman she said that maybe that was the sort of thing the Japanese did, but Vietnamese women could handle tough situations.
There is an attempt at trade, but not really understanding the natives and their ecology and their desires and needs. The unobtanium is handy.
It seems to me whatever made those mountains float would have been far more valuable and far more readily available than a deposit of anything buried under the giant living tree. The tech description I read online said that was also the unobtanium, which just boggles my mind. “Over here is a floating mountain, all by itself. Over here is a pile of the same stuff under a giant tree that his home to a sentient species, and happens to actually be a sentient being itself. I know, let’s bulldoze the tree and make the people move and ignore the floating mountain nobody cares about.” :smack:
While there are some “good” humans, the man in charge of the mining project cares more about getting the unobtanium than trying to understand or negotiate.
Their plan involves making an Avatar that they can plug a human identity into, then sending that Avatar to talk with the people. They want him to ingratiate himself with their tribe and become a member of their tribe, so he can then get a vote in their tribal council and convince them to move. So when he shows up and tries to wave them off of bulldozing a stand of glowy trees (that have real importance to the natives, not just sentimental attachment, but actual memory impressions of their ancestors), they don’t say “Hey, that’s our guy telling us to stop, maybe we should see what he wants,” they say “Look at that blue idiot, run him over.” :rolleyes:
But there’s no reason the humans should get to run roughshod all over Pandora just because their own economy sucks.
The analogy about the drunk crashing his car, then coming and taking your kidney is about right.
I guess they don’t have dictionaries in the provinces, because that’s just not what the word means, all questions of evil and morality aside.
I watched and (mostly) enjoyed the new Battlestar Galactica, but I thought that it pulled this kind of crap all the time. Most notably in an episode where (for some convoluted reason) the crew have found some way that they can release a virus that will kill all the cylons.
So, let’s review. They were (from their perspective) unprovokedly attacked in an attemped genocide which was intended to kill every single human being in the universe, and only barely failed to do so, so untold billions have been reduced to 40 thousand or so who are being constantly and actively pursued by the beings who committed the genocide in the first place, and thus, due to the incredibly overwhelming odds, are almost certain to get wiped out soon. And they suddenly, miraculously, have a chance to wipe out the genociders. And they don’t do it? And part of the reason they don’t do it is because, in their society, biological weapons are viewed as immoral?
I mean, I can just barely maybe almost see someone making some argument where self-defense doesn’t apply when it comes to genocide on that scale, but how the frack does it matter that the method of revenge would be biological weapons?
Shee-eesh.
Yeah, I wonder why… :rolleyes:
Do you feel the same way about police?
Oh, hell, yes.
Why, after poisoning their own planet, should it be okay for humans to just go on to the next one and do it again?
This is why we cannot have nice things.
You’re welcome :). One thing I forgot to say, which I think plays into it as well, is simple, pig-headed pride: if Joker somehow went so far as to make Batman kill him, he’d have basically won their little game. He’d have proven that Batman just can’t redeem everyone, neener neener raspberry. Since so much of Batman’s personnal narrative boils down to “if I try hard enough, I can save everyone and prevent every single bad thing from happening”, and so much of his “superpower” stems from his confidence in this, it’d destroy him.
The interesting thing is, the feeling is mutual: I don’t recall whether it was in the Animated Series or one of the big comic book arcs, but there’s at least one story where Joker finally has Bats broken and beaten and at the point of a gun, then goes something like “Naaah, just wouldn’t be any fun without you to try and stop me” and walks away, just like that. They both need each other, and they know it. And Joker… he kinda wants to be saved too, I think. But then, he also wants to show Batman just how wrong and ridiculous he is. That pride thing again.
I think Joker himself put it best at the end of The Killing Joke:
"See, there were these two guys in a lunatic asylum. And one night, they decide they don’t like living in an asylum any more. They decide they’re going to escape ! So they go up on the roof and there, just across this narrow gap, they see the rooftops of the town, stretching away in the moonlight… stretching away to freedom. Now the first guy, he jumps across with no problem. But the second guy, he daredn’t make the leap. Y’see…y’see he’s afraid of falling. So then, the first guy has an idea. He says “Hey ! I have my flashlight with me ! I’ll shine it across the gap between the buildings. You can walk along the beam and join me !”. But the second guy just shakes his head. He says: “What do you think I am, crazy ? You’d turn it off when I was halfway across !”
And that’s pretty much Batman and the Joker in a nutshell. Which is which guy is left as an exercise to the reader.
Not necessarily. Humans already know how to mine stuff that is buried underground. I don’t think humans (even in Avatar’s hypothetical future) are so great at mining mountains that are floating way up in the air. There could be any number of practical difficulties, particularly convincing a bunch of squishy people to work under the damn things while your company breaks chunks off (which would presumably have a negative impact on the whole floating ability). And why climb halfway up a well to get something that’s right under your feet?
That tree wasn’t really in the way either. It was removed with one good rocket barrage, total time on target of less than five minutes using assets that had been idling at the base. And voila! Look at all that cheddar!
Most of the time in TV shows and movies where there’s a villain who needs to be killed, I’m annoyed by the characters’ hesitation to so do. Perhaps this is because I’ve never been in a position where that would really be an issue, so can’t empathise with it properly.
The Prime Directive is another one. There was an episode where Riker was forced to abandon an entire civilisation to die because of it, even though he’d got to know them and saving them would have been easy and his presence there, though accidental, meant that the Prime Directive had essentially been broken already.
I’ve heard a lot of people saying the same thing, and never really understood their point. The only person telling him his Uncle did the murder is his father’s ghost. Hamlet can’t be sure it really was his father at all. Taking extra steps to verify the ghost’s story is actually the sane and logical thing to do.
And for people who believe in heaven and hell, killing Claudius while he was praying would have sent the murdering bastard to heaven. when otherwise he’d probably go to hell. That’s no revenge. And that’s the only time he has an opportunity to do it and doesn’t take it; the rest of the time Claudius, as a king would be, is surrounded by people.
He kills Polonius almost exactly halfway through the play, immediately after the prayer scene - a very decisive act, and he did think it was his uncle. So by halfway through the play, he’s resolute about killing Claudius, even though his only proof is a ghost that might be a demon and his uncle’s reaction to a play. That’s not really as indecisive as his reputation would suggest.
Me too. And also:
When Zoe has to choose between saving Mal or Wash and walks over to pick Wash before the villain has even finished his sentence.
:rolleyes:
Wrong again Chuck.
Nonsense.
In the comic-book universe of the Batman, the following is an immutable law of nature: Asylums/prisons will only hold the Joker as long as he wants to be held. They have no actual power to keep him away from society. There has, in 70+ years of Batman-related comics, never been a single time when a book opened with the Joker thinking “I have an evil plan. If only I weren’t locked away. Curses” and he stayed locked up 10 panels beyond that, the evil plot foiled by strong prison bars.
Every time the Joker gets free, he kills a ton of people. Could be less, could be more, but let’s just say 100 people. Some web-page I can’t find counted the bodies in every Joker appearance and it was upwards of 3,000 (and I think that’s way, way low).
Batman knows these facts. This isn’t the real world where prison breaks are rare and dangerous to the prisoners, this is a world where, to anyone, but especially the Joker, prisons have revolving doors. Batman putting the Joker in jail is exactly the same as letting him go. And Batman knows this.
Batman is so morally diseased that in one case, he attacked (shot or bataranged) one of his old Robins rather than let the ex-Robin shoot the Joker. He’d rather injure a hero and a friend than risk the Joker’s life (The ex-Robin was angry at Batman for letting the Joker continue to murder people after the Joker beat that Robin nearly to death with a tire-iron).
In another case, the Joker was dying through no fault of Batman’s. The Joker had (IIRC) just been on a rampage and Commissioner Gordon pleaded with Batman to just spend his next 10 minutes looking for more Joker-victims who could possibly be helped and let Joker die naturally. Batman ignored the potential victims to save the Joker’s life.
There’s no moral here about “better than the other guy”, no nuanced case against killing in self defense or defense of others. What there is is a creepy quasi-homoerotic, codependent relationship between two very disturbed individuals who see Gotham as their playground and the victims as chess-pieces who don’t really matter.
I enjoy Batman stories overall, but I tend to not read stories with the Joker anymore because of this. Whenever the Joker appears in Batman, Batman’s character changes to allow the Joker to get away with his mass-murders. They’ve made the Joker so over-the-top that there’s no possible excuse for not just killing him on sight. There’s no nuance, no moral-dilemma, just character stupidity and blindness by letting the Joker live to murder again.
I think you’re misremembering the episode a bit.
Almost everyone in the fleet (at least the top brass who are aware of it,) are in favor of the plan. It was just Helo that was against it (because he was in love with a Cylon,) so he killed the infected Cylons before the fleet was in range of a regeneration ship, so the “computer virus that also kills them because they’re sort of machines” didn’t get transmitted.
Well, the point I was trying to make is- and this has been amply upheld here- is that no matter which side you agree with, there’s still a moral dilemma. And the Navi could have tried to help the Humans out a little, allowed them to mine somewhere, or heck, maybe even mining a little for them.
Hamlet is the original* Emo, except he’s not a teenager.
*Well, no, not original, but he’s pretty gosh darn angsty.