Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT Strips 3626 to 3630 (4th to 8th December 2017)
pwhodges:
--- Quote from: snufflebottoms on 04 Dec 2017, 04:54 ---Looks like the pronoun war is going to continue - already see a few posts using her. *grabs popcorn*
--- End quote ---
Global Moderator Comment Stupidity or carelessness we try to treat gently, but wars we pounce on...
jwhouk:
Tillmeister, Tilodora, Til the night wind blows, Til There Was You...
Sent from my NXA8QC116 using Tapatalk
Neko_Ali:
--- Quote from: pwhodges on 04 Dec 2017, 05:22 ---
--- Quote from: snufflebottoms on 04 Dec 2017, 04:54 ---Looks like the pronoun war is going to continue - already see a few posts using her. *grabs popcorn*
--- End quote ---
Global Moderator Comment Stupidity or carelessness we try to treat gently, but wars we pounce on...
--- End quote ---
Yes, I noticed the mistake in my post this morning and went back to change it.
Case:
--- Quote from: Shjade on 03 Dec 2017, 20:08 ---
--- Quote from: Case on 03 Dec 2017, 16:07 ---
--- Quote from: hedgie on 03 Dec 2017, 15:34 ---IIRC, the Operative admits that what he does is evil, and that he's a monster.
--- End quote ---
Yup, but he does evil to achieve good, to "make all of them Better Worlds" (Admittedly, he's also a few sandwiches short of a picnic, but it's the principle that counts ... :-D)
--- End quote ---
Right...but if he recognizes he does evil, he's not amoral. He has a moral sense, and is concerned with the rightness of his actions.
--- End quote ---
Abstract: I never claimed it to be a philosophy designed to withstand scrutiny for very long ... (with The Operative, it mostly doesn't have to :-D).
(click to show/hide)
Uhm - 'concerned' is not the word I'd use in that context (cf. below), but as they say: YMMV (and the subject may be a lacking a few sammiches ...)
--- Quote from: Shjade on 03 Dec 2017, 20:08 --- He values the ends over the means, but he's not indifferent to the means. If he were, he wouldn't have had the moral event horizon breakdown at the end when he realized he was on the wrong side, because oh well, I guess I was wrong, but whatever, who cares how wrong it was.
Basically the Operative just...er...operates on a utilitarian sense of ethics.
--- End quote ---
Hmmmh - Way it looked to me is that basically he likes killing just as much as he likes showing off that he's really good at it and the whole "utilitarian ethics mumbojumbo" is merely his way of not acknowledging to himself that his enjoyment of brutality is what it's all about for him. He's not merely 'not indifferent to the means' - he is actually rather enthusiastic about them, and his whole pseudo-philosophical blurb is designed to obfuscate - primarily to himself - that for him, the means is the end, really.
We're talking about a dude who engineers an gravity-assisted 'suicide' and then (apparently sincerely) congratulates the victim on their honourable death (conveniently forgetting the 'involuntary' element) - instead of simply killing the mark in the fastest, least painful way, which is what a 'concerned utilitarian killer' would have done. He even 'offers' the latter option to the victim ("would you rather be killed in your sleep, like an ailing pet?"), just before making him a stage-prop in the enactment of his own 'honourable suicide'.
Methinks that his epiphany at the end is not so much about him realizing he was on the wrong side all along as it is about him running out of flimsy excuses for not acknowledging that he really, really likes what he does, and that this is his reason for doing it. Recall that Shepherd Book all-but-admitted to Mal that he'd been sort of an 'Operative' once ("The man they like to send is a man who believes hard") before mending his ways after he realized the callousness of the whole outfit - methinks that 'concerned' is a word more appropriate for the likes of him. Also recall that Mal immediately distrusts the Operative's 'epiphany', whereas he trusted Book implicitly.
Also: (click to show/hide):laugh:
Part of my liking the character stems from his 'affirming' my deep and abiding distrust of utilitarian ethics, which is in turn due to its lack of inherent safeguards against abuse - try to construct a utilitarian critique of Fascism, for example, and compare the result to the humanitarian version (Basically: "Because human dignity, QED"). IMO, there's few things scarier than a righteous person.
OldGoat:
I gave Tillie (I'll call them that, but their mother still yells, "Matilda Birch!" if they're in trouble) a 7.
Criminy, people, it's Jeph's universe. He gets to write it as he sees fit. A few of us seem to be loosing sight of that.
--- Quote from: badbum61 on 03 Dec 2017, 22:08 ---Tucson, Tucumcari, Tehachapi, Tonopah...
--- End quote ---
If you give me weed, whites, and wine I'll probably end up in the emergency room.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version