Laticauda

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

I agree, though I also think there's a discussion to be had about society's obsession with punishment over anything else, and how sometimes it's okay to let go of the past and appreciate that someone has become a better person and is working to attone for that they did and do good things from that point onwards, which is overall better for the world as a whole than them being forced to suffer endlessly for their past actions for the sake of vindication or revenge. If you're going to take the stance that someone can have a moral debt they must be forced to pay, then you have to likewise acknowledge that there must be a point at which it can be paid. If you try to claim that some things can never be made up for and thus some moral debts can never be repaid, then that only highlights the problem with that sort of reasoning. Because if someone takes a life then saves a life, and you claim that one is not enough to make up for the other, then you're essentially treating life 1 as more valuable than life 2. And what if they take 100 lives but save 1000? Can human lives even be stacked up against each other like that to say which group has more "value" than the other? That's the paradox of a moral debt, something can not simultaneously be priceless and yet also not hold enough value to balance the scale against itself at the same time.

In real life this can be complicated further because it can be hard to judge whether someone has truly learned from their mistakes and genuinely changed their ways, but in a fictional story you often get to see for sure that the character truly is sincere. So to tie that in to what you said, just because a viewer/reader is capable of accepting a character's redemption in a fictional setting, where they are 100% certain that the former villain has had a change of heart and feels bad and will continue to do good things into the future, that doesn't mean it's a moral failing on the audience's part. But it's also worth noting that being willing to give someone a chance to improve themselves and grow as a person instead of demanding their eternal damnation and punishment isn't a moral failing either even outside of fiction.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

I mean if the villain's redemption is well written then typically the guilt from their past actions is the punishment for said actions, and their current actions are largely focused on atonement and reparation. That sort of thing often makes them even more relatable because while not everyone has killed another person, everyone in the world has hurt someone else at some point, maybe unintentionally, maybe unknowingly, maybe due to extenuating circumstances or their own trauma, or maybe because they were just a worse person at the time. Does that mean they are never allowed to be a better person and must eternally suffer for all the wrongs they've committed? Is it not better to encourage their goodness in the present than to forcibly drag them back to when they were bad over and over again for the sake of vindication? Does society really benefit from that sort of thing? And what if they end up saving more lives than they've taken? Something to think about.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

I mean being obese will result in a hard time growing up no matter what your name is let's be honest.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I think "good person" is a nebulous and generally subjective term. If some people need an external factor to hold themselves accountable then as long as they willingly seek out that accountability then that's all that matters to me ultimately, I'm not going to try and micromanage how other people reconcile with their own morality in a large uncaring universe, or act like I'm an authority on how people are supposed to be "good", all I care about is how they treat other people at the end of the day. But a lot people use religion not as a way to hold themselves personally accountable for their actions, but rather as an excuse to get away with doing bad things and dictating how other people can live their lives without having to suffer consequences. They use it to ESCAPE accountability, and that's when I take issue with it.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (5 children)

If I had been named Triniteigh I would have legally changed my name as soon as I was old enough. That's an atrocity of a name. Some are so funny they circle back around to something that would at least be interesting to have as a name (Raddix Zephyr is dumb but in more of a fun way, and I would genuinely not mind being named Leviathan), but Triniteigh is just so, so bad.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

If you can get away with dropping a couple of classes and still have enough credits then try to do that to lessen your workload. You can also potentially reduce it further if you request accommodations.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

It is waaay faster and easier to use than an oven.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

That depends on the culture and the method of distribution, many cultures that practice oral history did have widespread interest and access to it and an understanding of how their culture fit into the broader scope of the world to some degree, though the way they understood or related to it might differ from culture to culture (some cultures tie their history to places, or names, or events, or people or seasons, etc). As another example, the Romans are well known for their prolific historiography and many of their surviving texts are still referenced to this day. Look up Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger, who were just as well known and respected as historians at the time as they are now. While written works such as the Encyclopedia Natural History (written by Pliny the Elder and believed to be the first encyclopedia) would often be released to the public to be copied and spread, they would also often recite written works orally so illiteracy wasn't as much of a barrier as you'd think. Oral history is a lot more important in providing a record of a culture's history as well as making that history accessible to others than a lot of people think. It was important in ancient Greece as well, and is a huge part of many other cultures around the world including many indigenous ones. It's also not as inaccurate or unreliable as some people might think, as there were many methods these cultures used and still use to preserve the accuracy of their oral history as it was passed down from generation to generation.

Now in terms of awareness, obviously there was propaganda and rewritten history going on back then just as there is now, but it's not as if none of the citizens would have been aware of that. One of the papers I wrote for a class about the importance of comparing primary sources featured 3 different accounts of what Athens was like and the views people there held at a certain point in history from 3 different people of varying social and financial status, and there was absolutely awareness of that sort of dissonance between what their government claimed and what the reality was even among the more common folk. So I would say they did certainly have a significant understanding of how their culture fit into the broader scope of human history.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

At this point that's the equivalent of complaining about people calling gun violence a problem because "guns don't kill people, people kill people". If you hand the public easy access to a dangerous tool then of course they're going to use it to do dangerous things. It's important to recognize the inherent danger of said tool.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (3 children)

As someone with an academic background in history, historical record keeping both written and oral existed long before the printing press.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

You also needed an original to make the fake with Photoshop, with AI you don't need that so there are no receipts, so to speak, to pull to prove that it's fake.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

I'm willing to bet there are a lot of librarians who would enjoy working a night shift. I'd apply for that job.

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