You are an immortal. You and your ilk may only be killed by the severing of your head. If you kill a fellow immortal, you gain that immortal’s power, and if an immortal kills you, they gain yours. All of your (eternal) life is spent preparing for the Gathering, when all the immortals will commence slaughtering each other until there is only One. The more immortals you have killed, the more power you have, and the more likely you are to be the One.
If an evil immortal is the One, mankind is doomed to an eternity of slavery and torment. If a good immortal is the One, mankind will enter into a paradise on Earth.
What are your ethical obligations? Can one ethically seek out and slaughter as many immortals as possible, on the theory that you are more likely to be come the One and save humanity from slavery? Is it ethically permissible to kill even evil immortals? Should you refuse to show up at the Gathering? Are you obliged to sacrifice yourself to another good immortal, so that a good person is more likely to end up the One? Or are you obliged to simply commit suicide, to prevent any evil immortal the opportunity to claim your power?
First, they’re based on where and when you came from. Some of these guys are thousands of years old. What are the ethics of somebody born in the Bronze Age?
**Can one ethically seek out and slaughter as many immortals as possible, on the theory that you are more likely to be come the One and save humanity from slavery? **
That was one of the standard practices, of the “It’s what we do” way of thinking.
**Is it ethically permissible to kill even evil immortals? **
Oh, especially them.
**Should you refuse to show up at the Gathering? **
I was under the impression that they couldn’t really avoid it. Drawn like moths to a flame, they were.
**Are you obliged to sacrifice yourself to another good immortal, so that a good person is more likely to end up the One? **
“Hmmph. Not much power to be gained from somebody who’d let himself be slaughtered. How’d you survive so long with a mindset like that?”
Or are you obliged to simply commit suicide, to prevent any evil immortal the opportunity to claim your power?
“There can be only one.” For an immortal to deny his power to his victor is to go against this core principle.
Seems as if these people are a part of an entirely different moral realm than we normal mortals are. They can’t be killed (except in the way mentioned) and they can’t father children (she didn’t mention it, but I watched the show too.)
I do not think that we can simply say that some of them came from a different time in which that was ok. “Moral Relativism” is incorrect as far as I am concerned. There are some things that are just wrong, such as hunting down people and killing them for personal gratification (aka gaining their “power.”)
On the question of killing the evil immortals, I would think that appropriate and possibly necessary. The regular authorities are not able to control them and it may be the duty of some sort of Immortal police to do it. If one were to be attacked and someone is trying to cut off your head I don’t see much of an option there for not defending oneself, even if that means you have to hack off someone’s head and thereby gain something from them.
Ethics can be kind of slippery. Frequently they depend on when and where you are. Not having seen the tv show, I only have the movies to rely on and it never seemed that there were all that many immortals around at the same time and they seemed to be equally balanced between “the good guys” and “the bad guys.” They each felt morally responsible for erasing the other type.
One thing that this brings to mind, if there can be only one, why were they born at different times? Isn’t that against the point?
I see “there can be only one” not as an ethical statement, but as a law of nature (or in this case - the supernatural). At the time of the Gathering, all immortals will come together in final combat until one is left. They can no more go against this than water can flow uphill.
Do not immortals have free will? Do they not have strength of will? If we expect smokers to go cold turkey, we can we not expect immortals to kick the Gathering habit?
Gee, Sua as an immortal, I would need a few hundred years to think this one over. Given the few decades of my limited philosphical training, my first instinct is survival. I would seek out “good” immortals and learn from them (so I dont have to lop their heads off) live on sacred ground so I dont get my head lopped off. I would just generally kill anyone out to kill me. If they are more powerful, I would run away and gain more power or skill.
it would probably be a good idea to have a guy named Duncan MacCloud as my mentor and protector until I get the hang of this kill or be killed lifestyle.
How do we know there can be only one? Or that there will even be a “Gathering”?
What, you believe everything you see in the movies?
Personally I think it’s all just a sly justification for a bunch of ancient, traditionalist, decapitation fetishists who’ve deceived themselves with a bunch of spiritual mumbo-jumbo.
I would start having sex with Elizabeth Gracen as quickly and as frequently as possible.
Then I would find a really good hiding place. I’m not really into the whole “amassing of personalt power trip”, especially not if it involves personal danger.
The whole Gathering is a myth meant to scare those only a few centuries old. Who knows when it started, but doubtless it was by an evil immortal who sought rationalization for murder of his fellows.
It’s sad to think over the millenia how many immortals have passed because of this stupid belief.
I can’t tell you how many times there’s this big buzz about the Gathering. Last time it was supposed to be May 1985 in Timbuktu. IIRC, I a few idiots actually called early for hotel reservations, and I’ll be damned if there wasn’t a decapitation or two.
You’d think we’d learn from the transients, wouldn’t you? It hardly seems a decade goes by without someone announcing the coming of the tribulation, or the end of the world, or the lining up of the planets.
I see no reason to give any credence to this Gathering myth.
The “myth” of the gathering is supported by the quickening. Any immortal who kills another immortal absorbs the others essense. Since the only to die is to get your head cut off, either by another immortal or by accident, so it follows that eventually, thru the centuries, there will be only one because not even immortals live forever.
Yet new immortals appear throughout history. For there to be only one at some hypothetical future point you would have to demonstrate that the rate of loss of immortals is faster than the rate of growth. Even if you can demonstrate that (and you can’t) this in no way logically suggests that we will all suddenly feel compelled to go to a distant land and engage in some silly and meaningless head chopping competition. The suggestion is preposterous.
As for The quickening, it proves nothing. If I’m very hungry and I eat some meat, I gain energy and feel good. If I gain energy from an immortal and feel good, this doesn’t prove anything.
I think the quickening is over-hyped. After all, I can get the exact same sensation from listening to a Moose’s heartbeat and jumping off a cliff. No immortals need die. Does this mean that there will come a time when we will all be compelled to visit the zoo and listen to Moose’s cardiovascular occurences in some stylized futuristic competition as well?
Rather than propose some mythical supernatural rationale for these occurences why not simply accept what common sense dictates?
It seems clear to me that the quickening is nothing more than a heightened adrenaline response, nothing more than an artifact of the different chemical and biological processes of our immortal anatomy.
Occam’s razor suggests that this makes much more sense in explaining the facts, than some hypothetical gathering compulsion for which there is no evidence, followed by some compelled metaphysical blood-bath in pursuit of some vaguely obnoxious promise of a “prize” that smacks of omnipotence.
By what rationale do you accept these silly tells that do nothing more than cater to bloodthirsty psycopaths with God complexes?
You must cast off the inhibitions of mortality to understand this. People who cannot die except thru beheading (a very uncommon way to die) will tend to develop god complexes very easily. Some primitive cultures define a god thru his immortality, it would be very easy to get swept up in this and reason that by taking another immortals power (whether true or not) it would increase one’s godhood. Such is the nature of evil. That is why there are bad immortals.
Good immortals would be content in their long lifespan, gaining knowledge and wisdom thru the ages, but eventually they would come in contact with evil immortals and a conflict would ensue. But even good immortals would have a difference in opinion that would degrade into a situation where someone loses their heads.
Not to make this worthy of Cafe forum status but in the series, immortals that were created were few and deaths were many by comparison. Creation was random and sporadic and there was nothing that made anyone believe that any immortal was going to be created after the gathering.
Its like facing your own extinction. There is hope to avert it but some would like nothing better than to make it happen. When one cannot die, and has seen a great many things, will one eventually test the limits of their immortality just to feel alive?
Senility and crazed psycopathy among the aged immortals requires no supernatural explanation.
This (you can only be killed by being beheaded,) thing is also silly. I’m sure complete immolation would do the job quite well along with any other number of massive and catostrophic injuries that totally destroy the body.
The decapitation thing is simply the most efficient way around the incredible regenerative capabilities.
Actually, I haven seen or heard of any immortal getting senile. I’ve heard of a few going mad but it was temporary (2 hundred years tops) The watchers have seen and recorded immortals live thru bullets thru the head, drownings, burials, lightning strikes (closest to immoliation) and falls from great heights. I grant you they werent the completely the same afterwards but still quite alive.
According to the series, the oldest known immortal is 5000 years old. His code of morality predates Judeo-Christian teachings. (which was interesting)
