Virtue Surplus
Apr. 25th, 2008 03:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rowynThat's a term ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ceruleanst used when I was talking about the protagonist in Ghost several weeks ago, to describe the concept that "enough good deeds will offset a certain amount of evil ones".
I don't think many people subscribe to this idea at any kind of extreme. No one's going to say "Well, you saved 50 people from certain death during a disaster last month, so it's okay that you murdered that one guy today for cutting you off in traffic".
Yet it's still an interesting idea, in some ways. It reminds me of various other sayings, like "the ends justify the means" or "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one". Or an Ursula LeGuin short story, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas".
Usually, people accept a certain amount of negative consequences in return for desirable things. One could assign a portion of the blame for the deaths from every airplane crash to the Wright Brothers, or hold Henry Ford partly responsible for the tens of thousands who die in car accidents each year. But we don't look at airplanes or cars in terms of the damage they do: we look at them for their benefits instead. And those benefits can be measured not just in convenience, but in human lives, too. Famine in the modern world is not a matter of food production, but of transportation: improving technology in this area has helped tremendously.
It's easier to forgive unintended consequences, though. Plane crashes and car accidents aren't an essential part of faster transportation: indeed, people make changes to them all the time to make them safer. Which is one of the benefits of the drive and ambition of modern society: we're never satisfied.
But it would be different if the negative consequences were not unintended, or if they wasn't even an apparent connection. Rapists aren't the price we pay to have an effective military, and to say that they are is an insult to every man in uniform. The two don't go hand in hand .... necessarily.
But what if it happens that they do? What do you do with someone who is mostly good, who has done great things that few could match -- but who's also done something terrible?
At what point does the hero become a villain? Which flaws can you overlook? Is it okay if the firefighter who's rescued hundreds of people from burning buildings cheats on his wife? What if he beats his children? Maybe he's a chronic shoplifter. Maybe he got a co-worker killed once, by accident, and then covered up his part so he wouldn't get blamed or lose his career. Does the good that he's done make the evils more forgiveable, or less?
What if the events really are correlated? What if that cop really did need to torture his captive in order to find the location of the bomb that would otheriwse kill hundreds?
Or is that a hypothetical case that never matches reality? Does evil ultimately beget evil, even if the intentions were good, so that truly no good comes out of a sinister act?
Sometimes when I think about all the horrible things we hear about people in power, the way no presidential candidate can escape attacks upon his character, and I wonder if they're all true. If that's the way everyone would look if they were put under a microscope to be viewed by 300 million prying eyes. All those flaws, amplified and expounded on and presented in the worst possible light. How would I look, under such scrutiny?
Is the problem with stories that they only present a tiny portion of the whole? We ascribe such weight to the things we know, but in every person we judge, there's a lifetime of experience we do not know.
I don't know where I'm going with this. I don't have any answers, only more questions.
ceruleanst used when I was talking about the protagonist in Ghost several weeks ago, to describe the concept that "enough good deeds will offset a certain amount of evil ones".I don't think many people subscribe to this idea at any kind of extreme. No one's going to say "Well, you saved 50 people from certain death during a disaster last month, so it's okay that you murdered that one guy today for cutting you off in traffic".
Yet it's still an interesting idea, in some ways. It reminds me of various other sayings, like "the ends justify the means" or "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one". Or an Ursula LeGuin short story, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas".
Usually, people accept a certain amount of negative consequences in return for desirable things. One could assign a portion of the blame for the deaths from every airplane crash to the Wright Brothers, or hold Henry Ford partly responsible for the tens of thousands who die in car accidents each year. But we don't look at airplanes or cars in terms of the damage they do: we look at them for their benefits instead. And those benefits can be measured not just in convenience, but in human lives, too. Famine in the modern world is not a matter of food production, but of transportation: improving technology in this area has helped tremendously.
It's easier to forgive unintended consequences, though. Plane crashes and car accidents aren't an essential part of faster transportation: indeed, people make changes to them all the time to make them safer. Which is one of the benefits of the drive and ambition of modern society: we're never satisfied.
But it would be different if the negative consequences were not unintended, or if they wasn't even an apparent connection. Rapists aren't the price we pay to have an effective military, and to say that they are is an insult to every man in uniform. The two don't go hand in hand .... necessarily.
But what if it happens that they do? What do you do with someone who is mostly good, who has done great things that few could match -- but who's also done something terrible?
At what point does the hero become a villain? Which flaws can you overlook? Is it okay if the firefighter who's rescued hundreds of people from burning buildings cheats on his wife? What if he beats his children? Maybe he's a chronic shoplifter. Maybe he got a co-worker killed once, by accident, and then covered up his part so he wouldn't get blamed or lose his career. Does the good that he's done make the evils more forgiveable, or less?
What if the events really are correlated? What if that cop really did need to torture his captive in order to find the location of the bomb that would otheriwse kill hundreds?
Or is that a hypothetical case that never matches reality? Does evil ultimately beget evil, even if the intentions were good, so that truly no good comes out of a sinister act?
Sometimes when I think about all the horrible things we hear about people in power, the way no presidential candidate can escape attacks upon his character, and I wonder if they're all true. If that's the way everyone would look if they were put under a microscope to be viewed by 300 million prying eyes. All those flaws, amplified and expounded on and presented in the worst possible light. How would I look, under such scrutiny?
Is the problem with stories that they only present a tiny portion of the whole? We ascribe such weight to the things we know, but in every person we judge, there's a lifetime of experience we do not know.
I don't know where I'm going with this. I don't have any answers, only more questions.
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no subject
Date: 2008-04-26 12:03 am (UTC)I can see it as the product of a cold, pragmatic way of looking at things: "Yes, Vlad the Impaler is bloodthirsty and prone to killing people without much reason ... but without him, we would be overrun by even more bloodthirsty murderers."
I can see such logic being applied to, say, someone in the Star Wars universe who has chosen to defend the Empire because he actually believes that it is necessary in order to suppress all of the petty, genocidal wars that would pop up between various planets if the Empire weren't there to keep them both in line ... and to keep various threats from outside the galaxy from encroaching.
From a strategic standpoint, I can understand the person who would make such decisions, and opposing the hotheaded hero who wants to punish evil here at hand (heedless of the lurking evil at the gates that THIS evil is keeping at bay).
However, when a so-called hero saves the world (and himself with it) and then proceeds to feel justified in, oh, let's say, raping a girl who really OUGHT to have been honored to spend the night with him ... I can see various folks simmering and feeling obliged not to do anything harsh to him, because they OWE HIM. But you know it's wrong. What, did he get 1,000,000 Good Points, and this one Rape brought him down, let us say, buy 100 Evil Points?
I don't see it that way. Good, Evil - it's not a linear scale. His actions here tell us that he is capable of taking such actions again. And if he "justifies" his own actions because he saved the world previously, we might do well to see just how much surplus he thinks he still has - because he could very well decide to "cash in" and commit more misdeeds later on. The good citizen might feel obliged to thank him for saving the world ... but then he might be wise to move out of town, far away from Mister Powerful Hero, lest one of his kids catch Mr. Hero's corrupt eye.
Besides, power does not equal virtue. There are plenty of people who, given the power, might choose to save or destroy the world ... but it'd be a rare thing for any one person to really have that much power. Our imaginary hero, let us suppose, was in the right place, at the right time, with the right skill set and/or super powers. He succeeded in keeping the world from being destroyed by some particular catastrophe. That doesn't mean that Grandma Jones over there, had she similar power and abilities, would have done any less. And if saving the world had required self-sacrifice, Grandma Jones might have done so for the sake of not only her children but for complete strangers, while Mister Powerful Hero might have wasted time looking for another way out.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-26 12:14 am (UTC)Like, Hellblazer, for a relatively sanitized version. Constantine can fight off the forces of evil because he literally sold his soul to the devil.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-28 04:13 am (UTC)But Mr. Powerful Hero might be self-sacrificing, too. The fact that a person has done, or will do, a contemptible act does not preclude the possibility that he has good qualities, too. The sins and the virtues occupy the same body; that's what makes the whole person so difficult to figure out. Sometimes, so difficult to reconcile.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-28 04:24 am (UTC)In the +terrible butterflies+ campaign, my PC, Seraph, helped another PC cast a spell that largely eliminated world hunger. It was an act that saved tens of thousands of lives every single day.
Later, Seraph cast a world-wide spell that she intended would protect ordinary people during a global magic duel between the PCs and some belligerent NPCs. Seraph's spell turned out to be unnecessary, and caused a panic amongst a large percentage of the population to boot, resulting in 50 or so deaths and countless injuries and other damages.
The consequences of the latter spell were unintentional, of course. But Seraph could've predicted them, and she could've followed a safer and less drastic course instead of doing something flashy and impressive (and terrifying to normal people).
And I never really forgave the character for that second spell. And I never figured out how to forgive her, either. What would be enough penance, what would be sufficient restitution? I don't know. Even though her existence would appear to be a net benefit for the world, I still feel 'meh' about her, like she screwed up in an irredeemable way. I can still play her and enjoy playing her, but I can't really like her any more.