if mean, think about it: if you were a middle class American, would you rather believe your comfort were the product of blood-soaked global resource extraction, or your just reward for not saying "fuck" when there are kids around and only cheating on your spouse when you're drunk
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it's a weak proxy, but the trangressiveness of saying fuck around kids (actually around parents of young kids, the kids don't care) can be justified in that it at least produces the desired emotional response if for the wrong reasons.
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The other day I watched Trigun for the first time & it occurs to me that what's notable about that show is essentially the way it paints moral certitude as morally wrong.
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The reason Vash is good is that he puts more effort into finding creative ways to maximize positive outcomes than anybody else, while the antagonist is basically only an antagonist because he has a rigid set of heuristics based on illusory moral clarity.
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Maybe the appropriate way to disrupt illusory moral clarity is to demonstrate that there are ways to achieve ideal ends & that thinking more carefully is actually worthwhile? (i.e., showing a third option)
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Knives is a fanatical genocidal nihilist. He has a kind of certitude in his beliefs but I hesitate to describe fanatical genocidal nihilism as a kind of morality. He seems to believe that there are NO humans who deserve to live and has no criteria for distinguishing them.
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Vash is his opposite and also displays a kind of certitude in his belief that ALL sentient beings deserve to live. Vash avoids killing to a fault, as shown by the negative consequences of his mercy on many occasions in the series.
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it's the human characters in the series that show moral ambiguity and are ultimately the ones with a workable philosophy. Meryl and Milly representing utilitarianism, considering the costs and consequences of actions. Wolfwood representing the Sin/Salvation dialectic as a human.
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Where Vash refuses to kill and Knives refuses to save, Wolfwood is the human who is burdened with choice and free will. He must carefully consider ever occasion where he kills and must learn to live with the consequences of his willful actions.
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