Everything comes at a cost and nothing except perhaps things of the absolute smallest scale, is perfectly moral. Everything has knock-on effects both positive and negative depending on who you are, especially at that level of decision-making. Good is not “I’m happy with the results” and I never said it was. Whether people are happy has little to do with it, and it was never about feeling good about oneself, someone so focused on how they ‘feel’ about it would be unlikely to make these kinds of hard choices. It’s about looking back at the event and judging its effects after some time has passed, heads have cooled and the effect of a set of actions can be evaluated by its results and nothing else.
I don’t get why we’re arguing about this. Nobody thinks killing is intrinsically a good thing and that has never been something we’re arguing about. I simply think when you analyze decisions that leaders of billions of people make, attempting to apply axiomatic truths is quite extreme. A leader who cares about his people does what is necessary to benefit them in the long run, whatever the cost may be. Is that not good, for a leader?
Nope, if you want to know what I think, you should read what I wrote, think about the merits of the words themselves, and then not do literally anything else with that catty little head of yours.
I think this discussion has veered away from “what is tyranny” and “what is good” (always a difficult debate anyway) and is now just an argument of the merits of order versus chaos masquerading as a debate about the good.
Order, and anyone bringing it, is good when chaos reigns.
Some level of chaotic freedom, and anyone bringing it, is good when an excess of order becomes too restrictive.
But, while true, this is tautological. The only thing we can discern here is clearly we all have different tolerance levels when it comes to order and chaos. I’m of the opinion that you kill a traitor before an enemy, and that it is good to kill traitors. I don’t see this as particularly controversial.
If you knew more about my family’s history regarding those events, you’d realize how absurd it is to gatekeep this, besides the fact that I am, at face-value, a half-Sebiestor commenting on… a Sebiestor, while a Vherokior tries to tell me that I cannot. Hilarious.
There’s more to be said on the matter but this is no place for me to discuss something I consider private.
Damn, son, I’m over here trying to give you an out, and you double down. That’s admirable.
I actually agree with you, but I suspect my countrywomen will have a very different viewpoint. For one, it’s a very personal Republic issue. For another, our societies tend to teach more rigid views of what’s honorable and when means dictate ends.
Let me know when you’re done with that shovel, my friend.
I’m guessing you mean “traitors to my cause.” Whatever that is.
Pretty much every defector ever can be described as a traitor … assuming they really defected. If they didn’t, they still might be considered traitors-- by the cause they nominally defected to. But assuming they did defect, it’s not usual practice to kill such a useful person.
All that’s assuming actual treason, rather than the use some power-jealous regimes sometimes have put the concept to.
A lot of people feel the way you do, of course. There’s an element of, well, treason-- a sense that trust has been, heh, betrayed-- where a traitor is concerned. It’s someone who was supposed to be “on your side,” but wasn’t when it mattered.
But in the end a traitor is really just another flavor of enemy.
In the context to which I was referring, many, from the most prominent members of the Republic government all the way down to a few security guards who nearly killed Karin Midular after she dissolved the government, had taken bribes from Karsoth’s regency to outright betray the Republic to a foreign power with a history of internecine warfare.
Any definitional vagueries aside, that warrants a swift drop and a sudden stop and the entire country benefits from it.
No, nothing is perfectly moral. I’ve never claimed anything is. There are always tradeoffs and considerations. That doesn’t mean that something immoral becomes moral. It just means that ‘immoral’ is a whole lot easier to get to than ‘moral’.
Which is kind of the point of morality in the first place, you know? If it was easy, we wouldn’t need a system of labels to watchdog ourselves over it.
A leader who is cruel and oppressive[1] is not doing what is necessary to benefit their people in the long run, in part because that leader is setting the example that cruelty and oppression are useful tools that should be engaged in.
That ‘and oppressive’ bit is important there, Jason. Oppression isn’t a one-time thing. It’s not a ‘I answered the necessity of the moment’ thing. Oppression is systemic. It is constant. Oppression that just happens once and is overwith is just cruelty. It’s the ‘and oppressive’ that makes the leader a tyrant, which is what the original post was about. And oppressive. And oppression will never produce a long-term greater good.
I have no idea what your family did, and you’re not inclined to tell me, so why bring it up?
I say you don’t get to tell me or anyone else that politically motivated purges are righteous and good. As far as I know, you don’t live in the Republic. I do, and so does everyone I love and care about, and I damn well won’t have to take ■■■■ from someone who has no personal connection to the society they talk about and does not have to live with the aftermath. No, Jason, I do not want a society where people can be executed by just shouting "they’re colluding with [enemy]!"and I certainly wont have you telling people that someone was a “tyrant, but right.”
Additionally, you seem very sure that the entire Parliament was rotten, and yes, I read the same newspapers… But I don’t recall there ever being a proper investigation regarding the Parliament murders.
Again, this is usually true, but not always, and certainly not ‘axiomatically’ true, as if it’s logically impossible, as if you’d need to break apart the laws of physics and the fabric of reality, for it to be false.
If oppression is a constant, systemic and lingering, that means that you’d not expect to find many or any examples of short term, controlled oppressions, but there are plenty. Martial law is a version that every major empire in the galaxy currently has within its arsenal. There are some rather extreme contingency and continuity of government plans for a wide variety of scenarios that would be considered ‘oppressive’, and if your government doesn’t openly have such schemes, then you can be sure they have secret ones, which honestly should be more concerning to you if you’re concerned about tyranny. Quarantine is another example, it can mean the death of an entire planet. Some countries go much farther than that, and yet when the dust has settled the oppression is lifted. These are examples, but there are others in history, let alone metaphysical possibility
My argument has never been that tyranny, oppression etc. are good. My argument is that it is possible, not probable, for them to have more positive side effects than negative side effects.
Sounds like someone is ignorant of history. Yun’s execution squad openly left incriminating evidence of their treachery on the corpse of every single person killed. Massive amounts of data of all kinds. To my knowledge, most if not all of it was genuine and there was no big stink about anyone being wrongfully killed.
I don’t see where “political reasons” come into matters of state security against a foreign power, unless you think governments should have parties representing the espionage interests of foreign states. A foreign state that enslaved your people no less.
I’d argue that short-term, no, those don’t rise to the level of ‘oppression’. They qualify as ‘hardships’, yes… but hardships aren’t oppression. Oppression is a bigger thing entirely.
At the same time, ‘massive amounts of data’ on each and every corpse is a great way to obscure things, too. And ‘most of it was genuine and there was no big stink about anyone being wrongfully killed’? By… who?
Capsuleers objected, I believe. One of them, IIRC, includes a person who was actively involved in Matari politics at the time, and in this discussion until you told her to shut up because she didn’t know what she was talking about surrounding events she experienced first-hand.
But beyond that? A massive government purge just happened. People were openly gunned down in Parliament. Who the hell is going to be the fool who stands up to say ‘hey, I don’t think those death squads’ evidence is real’?
If someone did raise concerns, what makes you think anyone would have ever heard about it?
Not when it’s a necessity. Nor is ‘until you’re all dead’ really something that can be viewed as ‘short term’, since for the people it’s inflicted upon, it’s pretty much ‘forever’.
And that still doesn’t make it good. Only necessary. So when I say that these things that are terrible things, but don’t rise to the level of actual ‘oppression’ from an outside viewpoint… what kind of ‘moral high ground’ am I trying to claim?
I didn’t tell her to shut up because she ‘didn’t know what she was talking about’, I told her to shut up because she was being disingenuous and putting words in my mouth. I never said she didn’t know what she was talking about, I said she clearly didn’t know what I was talking about, big difference.
Regarding capsuleers objecting, capsuleers object to everything, are an emotional, histrionic lot with too much time on their hands and desperate for a pet cause to be outraged about.
Show me someone who gives me a reason to believe the evidence was tampered with and I’ll pay attention. Until then, it’s pretty much not disputed that the Republic had a massive issue with spies and bribes, with more than just the Amarr Empire by the way.
We all agree to quarantines because they’re obviously necessary to anyone with a basic understanding of pathogens, but at the end of the day, you are writing off an entire planet to die, slowly, and miserably, if a cure is not found. That level of power over other people is oppression. It is necessary oppression, but it is oppression if the word is to have any meaning at all.
But more to the point, how do we determine, when in the midst of a crisis, what is and is not necessary to do right now to protect millions of lives? With pathogens, it’s quite obvious, since hard science is hard to argue with. But on social matters, things become much more complicated, but someone is right and someone is wrong regarding what is necessary and only time will tell. And in at least one of those cases that could ever be conceived until the heat death of the universe, the tyrant will be right about what is necessary. So would you then lift your axiom crap, and apply the same moral exceptions to that situation that you apply to quarantines?
Just as a leader who institutes a planetary quarantine shouldn’t be hated or considered axiomatically evil for doing what is obviously necessary (assuming they do whatever they can to cure the disease and ease suffering), I would argue that at least in some rare cases, there are other situations in which a leader takes similarly dramatic and cruel steps which at a later date are understood or revealed to have been necessary at the time, and that person should also not be considered axiomatically evil. The only reason this is controversial is because it’s not so obvious at the time, as it is with a quarantine, what is and is not necessary. And there is a lot of potential for abuse, obviously.